Blogs

As generative AI becomes increasingly embedded across organisations, legal teams are being challenged to move beyond curiosity and into capability. The question is no longer whether AI will play a role in legal work, but how it can be implemented in a way that is practical, responsible and scalable. 

Ahead of Legal Innovation Festival SE Asia 2026, we spoke with Viki Thillainadesan, General Counsel, Xendit, about her upcoming session and how legal professionals across Asia-Pacific are navigating the shift from traditional legal gatekeeping to designing systems that enable the business to move faster - without increasing risk. 

Can you tell us a little about your session and what attendees can expect to take away from it?  

For this session, I’ll be focusing on AI in legal and how we move from curiosity to capability. Lawyers tend to move slower because we’re conservative by nature, so right now many teams are curious and exploring what’s out there. My aim is to take attendees from being curious about AI to feeling empowered and capable, and then to seeing how they can use it.  

Because this is across APAC, I’ll use real-life examples from countries like Indonesia, the Philippines and Singapore to highlight differences in regulations and the risk appetites of different legal teams. A key message is that the practical challenge often isn’t the tool itself - it’s operationalising AI.  

I’ll cover clear use cases, suggested guardrails, change management, and how legal teams can set measurable outcomes to assess whether it’s working. I’ll also share a simple operating model that in-house legal teams can adapt, including a matrix for selecting safe or high-value use cases, governance that doesn’t kill speed, and how to embed AI into everyday workflows.  

It’s also a rapidly changing space - we’re experimenting, learning, and speaking with tool providers all the time. So, I’ll emphasise that it’s not about plucking one solution and running with it. It’s about understanding what you need internally, then going out and having the right conversations. 

How do you see the role of legal professionals evolving across the Asia-Pacific region?  

As lawyers, it’s inbuilt for us to be gatekeepers, particularly in-house. Something comes in, we analyse it, and our instinct is to ask how we best protect the company. With AI, that instinct often shows up as red or amber alerts. 

I think the role is shifting from gatekeeper to systems designer. By that, I mean breaking down what AI can bring into our workflows, into drafting, decision-making and everyday processes, and designing it in a way that works for us. The real issue isn’t AI replacing lawyers. The risk is lawyers being replaced if we don’t learn how to work with systems. AI is now accepted and expected, and when other teams in the business are using it, they’ll expect legal to be using it too. 

That means our role is evolving to combine review with designing how decision-making can scale. We’re also seeing legal teams use AI to translate laws into product and operational controls, not just documents. This requires closer partnership with risk, compliance, security and data teams, and a stronger focus on translating between legal language and the way the business operates. 

In many ways, this isn’t new. Lawyers have always been translators, taking law, case law and complex language and turning it into something people can understand and use. When I started law school, a lot of that language was still rooted in Latin. I see AI as something similar. It’s another system we need to learn, translate and make practical. 

AI is also pushing legal teams to operate more like an operational function, measuring things, applying risk tiering and enabling self-service across the business. The biggest shift is not being afraid of that. That’s why I keep coming back to the move from gatekeeping to operationalising. 

What misconception about legal innovation do you most want to challenge?  

There are a few misconceptions I’d like to challenge when it comes to legal innovation and AI. One of the most common is the idea that bringing AI into an organisation simply means buying a tool. There’s often an assumption that you go out, look at vendors, choose a platform, and everything is suddenly fixed. That’s not how it works. 

The hardest part is the preparation. It’s about understanding what systems you already have, how your legal team operates, and how the wider business works. From there, it’s about exploring what’s available in the market in parallel and asking the right questions. If a tool looks great but doesn’t work for you, is that a tool problem, or is it something internal that needs to change?  

Another misconception is underestimating the technical detail, things like data handling rules, workflows, quality checks, training and trust. These elements really matter, and we’ve seen examples both in Australia and elsewhere where things have gone right and where they’ve gone wrong. It’s about balancing pace, because moving too slowly or too quickly both come with pros and cons. 

I also think it’s important to reframe responsible AI. It’s not about avoiding AI or saying not to use it, but about using it thoughtfully, with the right guardrails. What works for one organisation won’t necessarily work for another. 

Finally, particularly across Southeast Asia, there’s a misconception that one policy can cover every country. In multi-jurisdictional teams, you can have common principles, but you still need local controls. It can’t be a one-size-fits-all rulebook. Different countries have different data approaches and regulatory expectations, so AI needs to be implemented in a way that reflects those local realities. 

Join Viki for her session “From Concept to Capability: Operationalising AI Responsibly Across Multi-Jurisdictional Legal Teams” at Legal Innovation Festival SE Asia 2026, taking place 12–13 March 2026 at Sands Expo & Convention Centre, Marina Bay Sands, Singapore. 

SUPERSAVER tickets available - purchase now.