Automation, Accountability, and the In-House Legal Tech Stack
- cosmonauts
- Feb 17
- 4 min read
As legal technology becomes more powerful and accessible, the challenge for in-house legal teams is no longer whether to adopt new tools, but how to do so without diluting accountability, judgment, or operational coherence.
Anastasia Kontaxi, Director and Assistant General Counsel at Bank of America, shares a practical in-house perspective on where automation adds genuine value, where clear boundaries are needed, and how legal teams can build a tech stack that supports decision-making rather than obscuring it.
In this exclusive Q&A, Anastasia reflects on the skills lawyers will need over the next decade, how to overcome resistance to change, and how to evaluate legal technology in a way that balances innovation, integration, and impact.
Enjoy the interview below.
Where should the boundaries of automation be in legal work, even if full automation is technically possible, and why?
For me, the key principle is that technology can support judgment, but it shouldn’t replace accountability. There are parts of legal work where the “output” isn’t the job. The job is weighing context, risk appetite, and consequences, and then standing behind a decision.
Even with very capable tools, I think lawyers should remain the final decision-maker whenever a decision calls for professional judgment and responsibility. We don’t just produce answers: we own the reasoning, the trade-offs, and the consequences. That’s why I’m comfortable with automation as an accelerator, but not as the final authority.
What skills and mindsets do you believe will matter most for lawyers over the next ten years that were less critical before?
A few things stand out.
First, technology fluency (without needing to code) will be increasingly important. This is a practical understanding of how legal tech and AI tools fit into real workflows: what data they rely on, how confidentiality and permissions are handled, what “good output” looks like, and how to validate results efficiently.It also includes AI literacy: understanding where bias can show up, how the quality of the input shapes the quality of the output, and how to use tools safely and confidently.
Second, curiosity and adaptability matter more than ever. This means being open to doing things differently, testing new approaches, and learning continuously. As tools keep evolving, the lawyers who thrive will be the ones who can evolve with them without losing rigor.
Finally, as routine drafting and research get faster, judgment and communication become even more valuable. The differentiator is the ability to frame issues clearly, give advice that is usable for the organisation and clients, and explain risk in a way that supports decision-making and accountability.
What are some effective ways to overcome resistance from lawyers who are used to traditional methods?
Resistance often comes from a reasonable place: lawyers are trained to protect quality and manage risk, so scepticism is usually a feature, not a flaw.
An effective approach is to keep it grounded in a real workflow problem, rather than leading with the technology. Start with a use-case that is genuinely time-consuming or repetitive, determine the success criteria upfront (e.g., quality of the work product, efficiency gains, cost savings), and give people a safe, structured way to try the tool. When it fits naturally into existing ways of working and the benefits are tangible, it becomes much easier to build confidence and get genuine buy-in. It also helps to be explicit that the goal is to augment legal work rather than replacing professional judgment.
From an in-house perspective, what hopes or fears do you have about the future relationship between technology and the legal profession?
My hope is that technology meaningfully reduces the time in-house lawyers spend on repetitive work and admin. That should create more space for higher-value work: understanding the organisation’s objectives and our internal stakeholders' goals, spotting risk early, shaping strategy, and being embedded partners in the decisions that matter.
Technology can also improve consistency and decision-making in very practical ways: better organised knowledge, quicker access to prior work product, and more visibility into patterns and data points (for example, where time is spent, where bottlenecks appear, and what issues recur). That kind of insight can help legal teams make better calls about prioritisation and resourcing.
My fear is twofold: over-reliance and fragmentation. Over-reliance happens when outputs are accepted because they’re fast and confident, not because they’re correct. Fragmentation happens when teams inside an organisation accumulate disconnected tools that don’t integrate, don’t share data, and create hidden operational risk. The best version of the future is one where adoption is disciplined, with sensible guardrails, a focus on outcomes rather than novelty and a clear understanding on what should remain human-led.
What impact do you hope your session will deliver to the Future Lawyer 2026 audience?
I hope attendees leave with a clearer way of thinking about the in-house tech stack challenge, because it is easy to feel overextended by new tools, security constraints, integration limitations, and the pressure to “do something with AI.”
The aim is not to tell anyone what they should buy or build. It is to share a set of questions and a decision approach that can help: how to separate real value from noise, how to think about integration and adoption early, and how to link tools to measurable impact. If someone leaves feeling more confident about how to evaluate options and how to have a constructive conversation about trade-offs, that is a strong outcome.
Anastasia’s insights underline a defining challenge for in-house legal teams: using technology to reduce friction and improve consistency, while ensuring that accountability, judgment, and responsibility remain clearly owned.
Anastasia will be joining Future Lawyer UK Day 2 on the panel “Curating the Ideal Tech Stack for In-House Legal: Balancing Innovation, Integration, and Impact”, where she will share a structured way of thinking about legal technology decisions, trade-offs, and measurable outcomes.
Register now to join the discussion at Future Lawyer UK.
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