{"id":157789,"date":"2026-07-22T08:37:47","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T16:37:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/07\/22\/organizing-legal-work-with-copilot-notebooks\/"},"modified":"2026-07-22T08:37:47","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T16:37:47","slug":"organizing-legal-work-with-copilot-notebooks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/07\/22\/organizing-legal-work-with-copilot-notebooks\/","title":{"rendered":"Organizing Legal Work with Copilot Notebooks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tech Tips: Ben Schorr shows how Copilot Notebooks give you a “walled garden” workspace that helps you move from scattered information to useful work product faster. Here’s what you can do with it.
\nThe post Organizing Legal Work with Copilot Notebooks appeared first on Articles, Tips and Tech for Law Firms and Lawyers.<\/p>\n

Microsoft 365 Copilot Notebooks are like matter binders with an AI assistant attached. They can help lawyers and legal teams organize materials, ask better questions, and move from scattered information to useful work product faster.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"organizing
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Legal work rarely suffers from too little information. The harder problem is finding the right information at the right time: the client email in Outlook, the draft in Word, the issue list in Excel, the meeting recap in Teams, and the background notes somewhere else entirely.<\/p>\n

Copilot Notebooks gives legal professionals a focused workspace for that scattered context. Instead of asking Copilot one-off questions, you can gather the materials that matter to a task, matter, client question, training program, or internal project\u2014and ask Copilot to work from that curated collection.<\/p>\n

What Is a Copilot Notebook?<\/h2>\n

A Copilot Notebook is an AI-powered workspace inside Microsoft 365 Copilot. You add references\u2014such as Word documents, PowerPoint decks, Excel workbooks, Copilot Pages, meeting notes, emails, sites, and other Microsoft 365 content \u2014 and Copilot uses that selected material as the basis for answers, summaries, and drafts.<\/p>\n

\"\"
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If you\u2019re familiar with Google\u2019s Notebook LM<\/a>, this is a similar idea but inside Microsoft 365.<\/p>\n

For lawyers, the key phrase is \u201cselected material.\u201d Copilot Notebooks are a practical way to define the pile of information Copilot should use.<\/p>\n

What Can You Do With It?<\/h2>\n

Once you\u2019ve added references to a Copilot Notebook, what can you do with it?<\/p>\n

Chat<\/h3>\n

The obvious one is that you can use Copilot Chat to ask questions, summarize, and discuss the content with the AI. Things like \u201cCreate a table of the dates and deadlines mentioned in these documents\u201d or \u201cCompare this incident report to the employee handbook and identify possible policy violations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Generate files<\/h3>\n

Copilot can use the references you\u2019ve provided to create Word documents, Excel workbooks, PowerPoint slide decks, or even infographics.<\/p>\n

Generate mind maps<\/h3>\n

Copilot can generate interactive mind maps<\/a> based on the themes in the references. You can then click to move through the map, see how things relate to each other, and select items to learn more about them.<\/p>\n

This feature is still evolving, but it\u2019s got a lot of potential.<\/p>\n

Create Audio overviews<\/h3>\n

One of the features of Notebooks that I\u2019ll admit I initially scoffed at was the ability to create audio overviews. Essentially, it creates a \u201cpodcast\u201d about your references with one or two AI-generated voices discussing them. You can choose voices, whether the overview is longer or shorter and if you want the style to be more professional or more casual.<\/p>\n

At first, I thought this was mostly a gimmick, but I have found some valuable uses for it. One attorney I work with said she has to review board of director meeting minutes, so she uploads the PDFs of the meeting minutes (and other relevant documents) into a Copilot Notebook, has it generate an audio overview, then she saves that audio file to OneDrive. She can then take her dog for a walk, open the audio file on her phone, and listen to it while they walk. Clever!<\/p>\n

1. Matter orientation<\/h3>\n

Collect key pleadings, correspondence, timelines, notes, and task lists so Copilot can draft a plain-English summary, flag open issues, or suggest questions for a new team member.<\/p>\n

2. Contract review and negotiation support<\/h3>\n

Add the draft agreement, comments, prior versions, negotiation notes, and playbooks. Copilot can help surface unresolved issues, summarize positions, or draft a negotiation update.<\/p>\n

3. Litigation chronology and issue development<\/h3>\n

Use selected pleadings, discovery correspondence, interview notes, and hearing summaries to help create a working chronology, identify factual themes, or generate follow-up questions.<\/p>\n

4. Client updates<\/h3>\n

With recent matter notes, draft correspondence, status reports, and deadlines in one place, Copilot can help draft updates tailored to a general counsel, business executive, or legal operations audience.<\/p>\n

5. Training and knowledge management<\/h3>\n

Use notebooks for onboarding, practice-group standards, AI policy training, or CLE preparation by collecting guides, samples, presentations, and FAQs in one workspace.<\/p>\n

How Copilot Notebooks Differ from Copilot Chat<\/h2>\n

Think of regular Copilot Chat as a conversation and Copilot Notebooks as a workbench. Chat is useful for quick questions. A notebook is better when you want a persistent body of context you can keep returning to as the work evolves.<\/p>\n

And, crucially, a Copilot Notebook is a walled garden. Unlike Copilot Chat, which may be grounded on a wide set of content across your Microsoft 365 and the public web, a Copilot Notebook is grounded only on the references you give it. No wandering off to Reddit to answer a legal question.<\/p>\n

\"\"
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Getting Started With Copilot Notebooks for Lawyers<\/h2>\n

Start small. Pick a defined task\u2014not an entire complex matter\u2014and build the notebook around that task. To create a Notebook, you can go to the Microsoft 365 Copilot app or Microsoft OneNote.<\/p>\n

\"creating
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Notebook Tips<\/h3>\n