Magic Circle law firm Linklaters is racing to roll out artificial intelligence tools as professional services firms rush to adopt the new technology.
“We want to get there quickly,” said Linklaters partner Marc Harvey, who is co-chairing the firm’s AI steering group.
“What we’re very focused on is how do we get actual value through all the hype?” said Shilpa Bhandarkar, the firm’s co-head of client solutions and innovation and the AI group’s other co-chair.
Professional services firms are scrambling to adopt generative AI technology.
Accountancy firm PwC said it will invest $1bn in the technology over three years, KPMG has pledged a $2bn investment in AI and cloud technology over five years, and law firm Allen & Overy announced its AI chatbot in February.
Harvey and Bhandarkar said Linklaters has set up six workstreams, including compliance and ethics, risk, and experimentation, in its push to integrate AI technology into its lawyers’ lives.
The projects the firm is working on include a generative AI-powered search engine, a generative AI legal support programme and a generative AI chatbot.
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“Those are the use cases for AI that we think will impact on people,” Bhandarkar said.
The firm’s AI chatbot has been running since March, and is built using Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI service, Bhandarkar said.
The chatbot had received 2,600 queries in the 24 hours before Financial News visited Linklaters on 19 October, Bhandarkar said
Linklaters has also been experimenting with CoCounsel, an AI powered legal assistant for the firm’s lawyers to help them research and draft legal advice.
On the search front, it has been using Google Vertex to scour its own data and help its lawyers find contracts more easily.
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The firm ran a search pilot over the summer with “excellent results,” Bhandarkar said, and was hoping to roll it out across the firm early next year.
She said the firm was pushing forward its adoption of AI technology in a series of “sprints” led by its experimentation working group.
“Linklaters feels like a tech company,” Bhandarkar added, referring to the rush to test and roll out AI technology to the firm’s lawyers.
AI fears
Linklaters also has an AI risks and ethics group, examining the potential pitfalls of the technology and engaging with clients and staff.
Bhandarkar said that while junior lawyers are likely to be at home with the technology, for example, they may be less familiar with the risks around putting sensitive data into AI products.
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The group is also talking to its clients about the technology, pointing out that AI has been used by the firm for a long time on things like M&A due diligence and electronic discovery in litigation cases.
Another widespread fear is that AI technology could lead to job losses; a Goldman Sachs report in April estimated that 300 million jobs worldwide could be replaced by automation.
“I don’t necessarily buy that,” Harvey said, arguing instead that AI could empower lawyers.
“This is not the death knell of lawyers… this is supercharging lawyers,” he said.
To contact the author of this story with feedback or news, email James Booth
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