On The Non-Billable Podcast, Rebecca Anderson, Microsoft's head of legal for EMEA, stated that AI fluency is now the baseline for external counsel, not a differentiator. Microsoft expects all outside advisers to arrive "using and being fluent in AI," shifting focus to how strategically firms use the technology. Simply buying an AI platform is insufficient; Microsoft wants counsel to "help us scale, help us build the knowledge pools and the curated data for agents to operate from" and to invest in building "the next generation of lawyers." These demands mirror changes inside Microsoft’s own legal department, where Anderson leads a team of 40 lawyers across EMEA. Last year, the company reorganized its legal team after concluding the challenge was its internal operating model, moving from "legal as a service model to legal as a platform." Microsoft introduced an AI-enabled “frontline” for legal requests, AI agents for managing escalations, and a Word-based contract drafting agent. Anderson believes AI will lead to "new types of lawyers - legal design thinkers, legal knowledge engineers, legal process analysts."