Microsoft's Journey: Transforming Legal Work with Copilot and AI Agents
How do we actually embed AI into the way we work? This presentation outlines Microsoft’s legal department’s digital transformation journey. While AI adoption is clearly accelerating, the reality across legal teams still varies widely. In Microsoft’s legal department, we have seen the full spectrum: from early experimentation with Copilot and emerging agent-based solutions, to more cautious pilots, to teams that are still finding their footing. What our journey has made clear is this: meaningful impact does not come from rolling out AI as just another tool. When AI is treated as a purely technical deployment, the results rarely last. And when organizations move too fast, without preparing people, they often create fatigue rather than progress. The core lesson from Microsoft Legal is that AI adoption is not primarily a technology challenge. It is a human and organizational one. It requires trust, clarity of purpose, and a deliberate approach to how lawyers work with tools like Copilot and AI agents in their daily workflows. In this session, I will share concrete lessons from our own experience: how Microsoft’s legal department approached AI, what worked (and what did not), how Copilot and agents are changing the way legal work gets done, and how legal and procurement teams can build momentum that is sustainable, scalable, and grounded in real value.
About
Sigrid Windmolders
Sigrid has solid experience from several legal in-house positions. She started her professional career in 1998 at the beer brewery of Anheuser-Bush Inbev. After that she joined Hewlett-Packard Belgium (“HP”) where she supported for seven years the Belgian and Luxembourg Subsidiaries and gained some specialized expertise in the Public Sector domain by supporting the EMEA Public Sector Business Unit. At HP, Sigrid negotiated major outsourcing projects, consulting and support deals, leasing projects and overall IT solution projects.
In 2007 she joined LMS International (now Siemens PLM Software) a Belgian software engineering company, which is a leading company in test and mechatronic simulation in the automotive, aerospace and other advanced manufacturing industries.
After a short period at Colt Technology Services, an IT/Telecom service provider, Sigrid started in 2011 at Microsoft where she is working as a member of the Corporate External Legal Affairs Department of the Europe North region and responsible for the overall commercial legal support to the Microsoft subsidiaries in Belgian and Luxembourg. Currently, Sigrid’s main fields of expertise are privacy legislation, IP/IT law, and business law. Sigrid is also deeply engaged in, and enthusiastic about, the transformative AI journey we are currently experiencing.
Sigrid graduated from the University of ‘Leuven’ (Belgium) and holds a Master's degree in Law. During her Master years, Sigrid Studied one year at the University of Rennes 1 (France). She obtained a Master after Master's degree in European Law at the University of ‘Liège’ and a Master after Master's degree in Business Law at the University of Antwerp.
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