🐸 Take 1: It’s a whole new world with Claude for Legal?
Anthropic has formally launched Claude for Legal. Claude for Legal is a dedicated offering that adds plugins (such as Commercial, Employment, Privacy, Corporate), MCP connectors to iManage, NetDocuments, LexisNexis, Thomson Reuters, and DocuSign, as well as open-source plugin ecosystem in which Harvey and Legora also participate.
What does this mean for EU Lawyers? The first question you need to ask is about data. Where does the client data go when routed through Claude’s connectors. All fingers point towards the US for now.
🐸 Take 2: The deadline for High-Risk AI systems has shifted to Dec 2027!
On 7 May 2026, the EU Council and Parliament reached provisional political agreement on the Digital Omnibus on AI: high-risk AI Act obligations (for example, AI assisting legal research and judicial interpretation) are delayed from August 2026 to December 2027.
For EU lawyers who have been racing toward an August compliance deadline, this makes a huge difference. How does this impact your firm's AI governance planning for the next 18 months?
🐸 Take 3: Legal professionals need to choose AI tools only after mapping their workflows.
Legal professionals we have spoken to however, adopt a trial and error approach.
The right tool depends on YOUR own workflow. Don't buy based on demos, test with your actual tasks first. The Spryngbase community offers some frameworks to help you map your workflows.
🐸 Take 4: More work with AI?
A survey of 240 lawyers and legal tech professionals conducted by Artificial Lawyer found that 42% of professionals now work more hours since adopting AI tools. Only 7% of respondents reported a real reduction in work hours.
Is AI causing more corrective work for legal professionals? What is your take?
🐸 Take 5: You can now ‘build your own’ Harvey Law
A former Latham & Watkins lawyer has released Mike (a free, open-source legal AI platform). Mike ‘replicates’ core Harvey/Legora functions including contract review, tabular review, and tracked-changes drafting.
For EU small and mid-size firms worried about data security with AI, Mike is designed to run locally, meaning client documents never leave your infrastructure.
Has anyone in your network actually tested it with real matters?
🐸 Take 6: In-house legal teams to wipe away law firms?
The CEO of LegalOn argues that in-house legal teams rather than law firms, will capture most of the AI productivity dividend, because firms on hourly billing have structural incentives against true efficiency.
This is of course a clickbait take but the question for small and medium law firms billing hourly is clear - When an AI does a five-hour task in one hour, where does the other four hours go?
If your firm hasn't revisited pricing and workflow incentives alongside AI adoption, then now is the time.
🐸 Take 7: Microsoft is coming for LegalTech
Microsoft has released a Legal Agent natively inside Word that is designed to handle contract review (clause by clause), directly in tracked changes, without a third-party add-in.
Microsoft explicitly disclaims that it provides legal advice and notes AI output may be inaccurate. Currently US-only via Frontier program.
It remains to be seen how this complies with EU regulations once launched.
Spryngbase is a community for AI forward legal professionals in the EU. Become a member here.