AI Governance: Practical AI Advice for In-House Counsel

https://www.wardandsmith.com/article/ai-governance-practical-ai-advice-for-in-house-counsel

Publish Date: 2026-03-17 05:02:00

During Ward and Smith’s annual In-House Counsel seminar, Mayukh Sircar, a cybersecurity, data privacy and technology attorney, shared comprehensive guidance on the strategic role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the modern business landscape, the key risks associated with implementation, the evolution of AI regulations, and the playbook for AI governance.

“Mayukh was well on his way to a research PhD, having earned his Master of Science in Physiology and Biophysics from Georgetown, but luckily for us, he discovered a passion for intellectual property and decided to become an attorney,” said Laura Hudson, the firm’s Chief Marketing Officer.

To set the cadence for the event, which was focused on providing attendees with practical, deployable strategies for AI governance, Sircar began with an outline of the various forms of AI technologies. The most common and “primitive” form of AI is automation, which executes pre-defined, rule-based tasks aimed at enhancing efficiency.

“Think of this like a thermostat that turns the heat on when the temperature hits a certain level,” Sircar explained. Other examples include workflow approvals, data entry, and chatbots.

“The legal risks with automation are relatively low, unlike with Generative AI, which can create potential IP infringement and factual inaccuracies,” added Sircar. “We’ve all heard about the hallucinations, data privacy violations, and breaches of confidentiality.”

Generative AI refers to models that create new content based on patterns and structures in large amounts of existing data. “This is a reactive tool that needs human prompting at each step…it can’t independently verify its output,” commented Sircar. “These are the systems that many are already familiar with, like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude.”

Agentic AI is an emerging category. This technology can autonomously pursue goals, make decisions, and execute tasks with minimal human intervention. Rather than simply…

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