Across Indian corporates, law firms and their employees, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has moved from an experiment to an everyday companion. Producing working drafts, reviewing documents, analysing contracts, preparing briefs, generating research notes, and producing working drafts are now routine tasks supported by AI tools. The adoption curve has been fast and often unplanned, driven by employees using generative AI platforms long before organisations formalised any governance.
This rapid uptake has created risks around privacy, confidentiality, professional integrity, and handling of sensitive information. The legal industry is among the most exposed. Lawyers, in-house counsel, and practitioners often work with material that cannot be compromised. Yet many rely on third-party AI tools without understanding how data is processed, logged, or stored.
It is in this context that Ameet B Naik, Founder and Managing Partner of Naik Naik & Co., together with Saakar S Yadav, Founder and Managing Director of Lexlegis.ai, released the Corporate AI Usage, Governance and Responsible AI Handbook. This handbook arrives at a crucial moment for Indian corporates seeking clarity, structure, and guardrails around AI usage.
Corporate teams embrace AI because it solves real problems. It reduces time spent on routine drafting, summarisation, internal research, formatting, and exploratory analysis. In-house teams use it to prepare quick briefs for leadership. Practitioners rely on it to break down complex legal issues. For many organisations, employee-led adoption grew faster than oversight.
This unregulated growth brings concerns regarding unintentional exposure of confidential information, use of unapproved AI tools, uncertainty over data storage, factual errors in AI outputs, absence of audit trails, and potential breaches of professional obligations.
The handbook offers a practical framework for responsible adoption. It defines acceptable and prohibited use, clarifies data handling, outlines governance structures, strengthens security requirements, and reinforces the principle of human oversight. It ensures safe adoption without restricting innovation.
The handbook covers:
Clear definitions of personal and sensitive data
Governance structures with assigned accountability
Risk classification of AI systems
Acceptable and prohibited AI practices
Security requirements, including encryption and MFA
Human oversight principles ensuring lawyers remain final decision-makers
This Handbook will help organisations;
Set up a clear AI governance structure: Roles, approval steps, and oversight responsibilities become easy to define.
Guide teams on acceptable and prohibited AI use: HR, IT, and legal can align on what employees may or may not do with AI tools.
Protect client and confidential data through strict privacy rules: Prevents sensitive material from being entered into unapproved systems.
Create accountability through logging, monitoring, and reporting rules. All AI activity becomes traceable, reviewable, and auditable.
Improve legal defensibility and reduce compliance risk: Documented processes lower exposure to data breaches or governance failures.
Support structured employee training and awareness: Clear rules make it easier to build onboarding and refresher programs.
Provide ready-to-use checklists for real-world implementation: Daily-use, privacy, security, risk-classification, vendor-review, and deployment checklists help teams follow governance without confusion.
The checklists mentioned in the handbook will also serve as a practical toolkit, ensuring policies translate into consistent action.
AI tools are now deeply embedded in corporate workflows, but risks of data leakage, misuse, and flawed outputs are clearer than ever. A structured governance document is not optional; it is essential. This handbook by Ameet B Naik and Saakar S Yadav arrives at the right moment, offering clarity, structure, and a reliable reference point as corporate India adopts AI at scale.
Ameet B Naik is a litigator, renowned for his strategic acumen, mastery of courtcraft, and ability to steer high-stakes disputes across courts and tribunals. With over three decades of shaping complex outcomes, he has influenced Indian jurisprudence—especially in media and entertainment—advancing personality rights and free-speech law. His litigation expertise spans dispute resolution, white-collar crime, corporate and commercial conflicts, IP, insolvency, and international arbitration. Frequently leading landmark matters, he is widely recognized and consistently ranked for his contributions.
Saakar S Yadav is a technologist and platform architect with deep expertise in large-scale digital systems, including national judicial infrastructure. As Founder and Managing Director of Lexlegis.ai, his grounding in enterprise-scale architecture, compliance-centric AI systems, and secure engineering shapes the handbook’s technical and operational depth.