Global Legal Post Launches Third Edition of AI Law Comparative Guide as Agentic AI Creates Gaps in Existing Legal Frameworks
The Global Legal Post has launched the third edition of its comparative guide to artificial intelligence law, covering AI regulation across 20 jurisdictions. The guide is edited by CMS London partner John Buyers and Dean Harvey of Ashurst Perkins Coie's Dallas office, and brings together specialists across issues including agentic AI, intellectual property, data protection, cybersecurity, competition law, product liability and emerging AI regulation. The editors identify agentic AI, defined as AI capable of taking autonomous actions rather than simply responding to user prompts, as one of the most significant legal developments since the previous edition was published in July 2024. Writing in their introduction, the editors note that while human agency law has developed over hundreds of years, no equivalent legal framework yet exists for the actions of AI agents. That gap creates material exposure for organisations deploying agentic systems, particularly where those systems take consequential decisions or enter into commitments on behalf of principals. The guide also charts diverging regulatory approaches between the EU, the US, and the UK, alongside growing concerns about sovereign AI capability and reliance on US-led technology platforms. Longstanding unresolved questions are highlighted, including the dispute between intellectual property rights holders and AI developers over the use of copyright-protected material in AI training datasets. An AI law roundtable involving the guide's authors is scheduled at Bird and Bird's Copenhagen office on 20 October.
Why this matters
The absence of any established legal framework for agentic AI is the guide's central finding, and it is a genuinely urgent commercial problem. As law firms, financial institutions, and corporate clients deploy AI agents to draft documents, execute transactions, and interact with third parties, the question of who bears legal responsibility for those actions, and under which framework, remains unanswered. The divergence between EU, US, and UK regulatory approaches means that cross-border deployments carry compounding uncertainty. For UK lawyers advising on AI contracts or governance, the guide signals that the field is evolving faster than any single jurisdiction's rulebook.
On the Ground
This story creates demand across technology transactions, data protection, intellectual property, and regulatory advisory practices. Firms advising technology companies, financial institutions, and large corporates on AI deployment will be advising on governance frameworks, liability allocation in AI contracts, and compliance with emerging regulatory requirements across multiple jurisdictions. At the trainee level, work would include AI governance policy drafting, data processing agreement markup, technology licence review, and regulatory impact assessment memos comparing EU AI Act obligations with UK frameworks.
Interview prep
Question you might get
“How does existing agency law apply to decisions made by agentic AI systems, and what are the key gaps that lawyers advising on AI deployment need to address?”
Sign up free to see the full answer
A model answer you can lift into an interview — how to frame this story for a partner.
Sign up freeMy notes
saved