December 30, 2025
AI Is Moving Fast—Can Legal Keep Up?
As AI adoption accelerates inside global enterprises, chief legal officers and compliance teams are emerging as essential architects of governance, trust and responsible innovation — not as roadblocks, but as strategic enablers.
Editor's Note: This conversation is available as audio only.
Artificial intelligence is moving faster than most corporate leaders can track — and far faster than regulators can react.
Yet for all the uncertainty, chief legal officers say they've been here before. From the dawn of e-commerce to the rise of open-source software, legal teams have long operated at the intersection of innovation, risk, and ambiguity.
In this episode, Edgewood Management Chief Legal Officer Olivia Fleming and WWT's General Counsel and EVP of Compliance Erika Schenk talk about how AI places new pressure on enterprises to unify fragmented data, establish modern governance frameworks and confront grey-area regulatory environments that differ by state, nation and industry.
The biggest risk isn't algorithmic opacity — it's deploying tools without understanding how they work, where the data goes or what obligations they trigger.
Instead of resisting change, legal departments are positioning themselves as strategic partners who spot issues early, accelerate responsible adoption and maintain the human judgment AI cannot replace. Their message to business and IT leaders is clear: involve us early, and we'll help you move faster — safely.
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About the AI Proving Ground Podcast:
AI deployment and adoption are complex. The AI Proving Ground Podcast makes them actionable. Join top experts, IT leaders and innovators as we explore AI's toughest challenges, uncover real-world case studies and reveal practical insights that drive AI ROI. From strategy to execution, we break down what works (and what doesn't) in enterprise AI. New episodes are available every week.