Your role
AI skills for legal and compliance professionals
In-house legal and compliance teams now use AI for first-pass contract review, regulation summaries, policy drafts, and due diligence. The tools read fast and write fluently. They also invent case citations, miss a carve-out in a long clause, and accept confidential material into systems nobody has approved. The difference between practitioners shows in how they handle those risks.
This guide splits that difference into the six skills Emeri measures. Each skill has its own page. It covers tasks from in-house work, the skill at each band from E1 to E4, common mistakes, and a worked example. The pages describe skills. They do not give legal advice.
- 1
See where you stand. A free check of the six skills, about fifteen minutes.
- 2
Build the skills. Free guides and courses that fit legal and compliance work.
- 3
Prove it. One examined sitting, then a grade anyone can verify.
Where AI shows up in the work
- Contract review and redlines
- Comparing a counterparty draft against your standard terms, flagging departures, and proposing first-pass redlines. The skill is getting a review that reads every clause and cites the text it relies on.
- Regulatory research and summaries
- Summarizing a new regulation, guidance note, or enforcement trend for the business. The risk is a clean summary that drops an exemption, a deadline, or a scope limit.
- Policies and compliance materials
- Drafting internal policies, compliance checklists, and training notes. AI can structure the document, but the obligations it describes must come from the actual rules and your company’s facts.
- Explaining legal terms to the business
- Turning an indemnity clause or a data transfer rule into plain language for a sales or product team. The explanation must stay accurate when it gets simpler.
Step 1
See where you stand
The free check grades all six skills in about fifteen minutes, and shows which to work on first. AI use is encouraged. No account is needed, and nobody sees the grade but you.
Want to know more first? Read about the check.
Step 2
Build the skills
Start with the skill your check showed as weakest. Every guide, course and template here is free.
The six skills, for legal and compliance professionals
Each guide shows what the skill looks like for legal and compliance professionals at every band from E1 to E4.
Asking well
Turning a review or drafting need into instructions with a standard, a scope, a format, and limits.
Read the guide →Giving good context
Supplying the playbook, the jurisdiction, the company facts, and the actual source text.
Read the guide →Checking the work
Catching invented citations, misread clauses, and dropped exceptions before anyone relies on the work.
Read the guide →Putting it together
Turning one-off prompts into repeatable steps for contract intake, due diligence, and regulatory monitoring.
Read the guide →Getting real work done
Taking work from AI draft to a policy, memo, or redline that the business can rely on.
Read the guide →Keeping it safe
Protecting privilege, confidential information, and regulated data, and knowing what AI should not do.
Read the guide →Courses that fit legal and compliance work
Each course is written for every job. Here is why each one fits yours.
- Getting comfortable · 6 lessons
The everyday assistant
Its documents lesson asks for answers with quotes and page references, so a summary of a contract can be checked.
Start the course → - Every level · 5 lessons
Choosing your stack
Its privacy lesson covers which data controls to set, and which tools may hold confidential or regulated material.
Start the course →
Templates for legal and compliance work
Fill-in forms you can copy, each with a filled example.
AI output verification checklist template
A form for deciding how one recurring deliverable gets checked before it ships.
Open the template →Team AI-use policy outline
An outline a manager can fill in to set clear AI rules for one team.
Open the template →AI use disclosure template
A form for a short, plain statement of how AI was used in a piece of work.
Open the template →Step 3
Prove it
When you are ready, the certification examines the same six skills in one sitting. AI is allowed, as it is in the check. Pass, and your grade gets a public page that anyone can use to verify it. One retake is included if your first sitting falls below the bar.
Get certified — $129Questions
What AI skills do legal and compliance professionals need?
The six skills Emeri measures are asking well, giving good context, checking the work, putting it together into workflows, getting real work done, and keeping it safe. In legal and compliance work, checking the work and keeping it safe carry the most weight. Invented citations, misread clauses, and confidentiality lapses are where AI use most often goes wrong.
Will AI replace legal and compliance professionals?
Emeri does not predict what will happen to any job. AI does change where the time goes in legal and compliance work. Reading long documents and producing first drafts take less of it. Judgment about risk, negotiating positions, privilege, and accuracy stays with the professional. That judgment is what these guides and the Emeri assessment measure.
How can I tell what level my AI skills are at?
Start with the band descriptions on each skill page and note which one matches your current practice. The free Emeri check gives a measured view. It takes about fifteen minutes and returns an indicative band for each of the six skills.
Are these example tasks from the Emeri exam?
No. We wrote the tasks on these pages to illustrate legal and compliance work, and none of them appear in the exam. The certification has its own scenarios, which are graded against the same six skills.
Hiring for this role? The AI interview questions for legal and compliance candidates explain what a strong answer and a weak answer show for each skill.
Start with step 1
The free check takes about fifteen minutes. Your result shows your strongest and weakest skills, so you know which guides to read first.