Why Trust is Essential in AI-Powered Contract Management

Ken PrioreSenior Director & Deputy General Counsel - Product Engineering, IP and Partner, Docusign

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Summary•3 min read

Trust is the foundation for the development of AI technology, especially when it comes to the contract process. Building that trust begins with AI that leverages specialized contract domain expertise—the kind of deep knowledge that gives legal and business teams confidence in the decisions they make.

I recently attended the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) conference in Philadelphia for Andrew Ross Sorkin's session, sponsored by Docusign. His entire talk kept circling back to one thing: trust is the resource that matters most right now.

Not capital. Not talent. Trust

Sorkin discussed trust as a reservoir that organizations draw upon during normal times. "Get the trust quotient as high as you humanly can," he said, because "when everybody doesn't trust or questions about trust get raised, you have the reservoir to draw on." When companies try to make their case during a crisis without that history, it doesn't matter how good their story is. "It's all about history," he said.

This hit me because trust is exactly what AI governance runs on. When you're making decisions about AI systems in uncertain regulatory territory—deciding what data to use, how to handle model outputs, where to draw lines on automation—you're asking internal teams, users, and regulators to trust your judgment. If you haven't built that reservoir, those conversations don't work.

We saw this sentiment validated in a recent survey of 1200 professionals conducted in October 2025 by OnePulse about trust in AI for contract management. A few highlights:

Deep contract expertise drives trust: Over three-quarters (78%) say it’s important for AI to have specialized contract domain expertise when supporting legal and business decisions.
Risk outweighs cost: A majority (54%) prioritize reducing risk over lowering cost when choosing AI tools for contract management

The organizations getting AI governance right aren't the ones with the most sophisticated policies. They're the ones that have been showing up consistently, answering actual questions instead of pivoting to talking points, being direct about what they don't know yet. That history is what lets them move forward when others are stuck explaining themselves.

So if you're building AI systems, the question isn't just "Do we have the right controls in place?" It's "Have we earned the trust to make judgment calls when the rules aren't clear yet?"

Read more about our perspective on what to consider when evaluating AI technology for contract management.