<h1>Managing legal risks of AI applicant tracking systems: contracts, data transfers, bias mitigation, IP, SLAs, and governance</h1> Seven enterprises won industry awards for deploying an AI-powered applicant tracking system supplied by an unnamed vendor, evidencing a sector-wide shift to AI-first talent acquisition. Legally relevant issues include vendor contractual risk allocation, data protection and cross-border transfer compliance for candidate data, algorithmic bias and equal employment opportunity exposure, IP and licensing of AI models, and governance/recordkeeping for hiring decisions. Organizations should ensure clear SLAs, audit rights, model explainability, discrimination mitigation measures, and incident-response provisions to manage regulatory and litigation risks as AI becomes core to recruitment processes.