When Cleary Gottlieb acquired generative artificial intelligence firm Springbok AI in March, it joined the swelling ranks of law firms expanding their tech capabilities with a team of in-house data scientists.
Law firms have worked with data and legal tech for years, but the boom in generative AI has prompted several to build their own tech teams to improve and speed up day-to-day operations and services to clients.
Cleary’s acquisition of London-based Springbok AI, which included a team of 10 data scientists, is a rare example of a law firm buying an AI company. But practitioners and industry observers believe the legal sector will see further, similar deals in the years ahead.
At the same time, however, foundational legal skills learnt by lawyers are still valued more than backgrounds in data science, at least for the time being.
The American multinational firm is taking a multipronged approach to its adoption of AI, says Ilona Logvinova, the firm’s director of practice innovation. Cleary still relies on third-party vendors, such as the partnership announced in May with Stockholm-based platform Legora, but the firm’s leaders also decided it was important to “build our own AI internally to power our workflows”.
This strategy recognises that many legal functions are document-based and saturated with words — and “words are data points”. And with the Springbok team based in London, between the US and Europe, the acquisition is designed to have a global impact, she says.
But when it comes to recruiting lawyers, in Europe as well as globally, the firm is interested in hiring attorneys who are comfortable working at the intersection of legal and tech developments, says Donna Harris, global director of legal recruiting at Cleary.
“What we’re looking for are lawyers who understand and can harness the power of technology,” Harris says — although recruits must maintain foundational legal skills.
“We’ll still need to focus on people who have determination, people who exhibit leadership skills, but we also want people who are comfortable with change.”
In 2019, Simmons & Simmons became one of the first law firms to buy a legal tech company when it acquired legal engineering business Wavelength. Since then, the firm has used the data science team at Simmons Wavelength to “supercharge lawyers”, says Drew Winlaw, co-founder of Wavelength and now global large language model lead at the firm.
He argues that Wavelength’s acquisition allowed Simmons to respond quickly to events such as the launch of ChatGPT and to work out how to respond.
In 2019, most law firms were buying firmwide IT platforms from third-party suppliers. While Simmons relies on some third-party tools for specific practice areas, it has had no need to purchase a firmwide system because the Simmons Wavelength team has built its own tools in-house, says Winlaw.
For example, Simmons lawyers worked on litigation in the UK that involved dozens of witness statements. Data scientists were able to create a system that compared each witness statement in order to search for similarities or inconsistencies, a task that would have previously fallen on a paralegal, according to Alex Brown, head of the technology, media and telecommunications practice area at Simmons.
The Simmons Wavelength team detected a serious anomaly when it compared dozens of pages of witness statements during the litigation, which helped the lawyers.
This collaboration with data scientists armed with technology meant the lawyers were able to “achieve something that the humans may well not have achieved themselves”, he says. It also achieved a result for a client much more quickly, he adds.
Last month, several large firms in London had data science roles open for hire, including at Freshfields, Linklaters and Slaughter and May. Meanwhile, Brown predicts that there will be more acquisitions similar to the Wavelength and Springbok deals.
“Law firms will be out there looking to hire people with data science capability, with AI capability,” Brown says. “And that’s not easy, because lots of these people, if they’re any good, are really in demand. So it’s going to be a pretty febrile market”.
More on FT.com: Best practice case studies
Read the other FT Innovative Lawyers Europe ‘Best practice case studies’, which showcase the standout innovations made for and by people working in the legal sector:
Nevertheless, expanding data science capacity is a smart move for law firms, says Douwe Groenevelt, Dutch founder and chief executive of a new AI consultancy, Viridea.
Data science and the ability to embed AI is going to be critical in creating a competitive edge for law firms, says Groenevelt, who until April was the head of legal at ASML, the Netherlands-based chip manufacturing equipment maker.
Growing demand for data scientists at law firms may lead to fewer associate hires as law firms work to expand capacity for AI engineering, he predicts.
Young lawyers will still be needed, says Dan Hunter, executive dean of the Dickson Poon School of Law at King’s College London. However, their skill sets will need to evolve if they are to remain attractive to potential employers.
But this does not mean they should be taking courses in computer science. “You don’t need to be a programmer to be able to understand what large language models are doing, how they work, and to be able to use them effectively,” Hunter says. “The last thing the world needs is a whole lot more third-rate programmers, because people who are good lawyers aren’t necessarily good programmers.”
Contrary to some more “fatalistic” opinions predicting diminishing demand for lawyers, says Gareth Stokes, UK-based global co-chair of technology at DLA Piper, AI might even increase the need for them.
Legal tech often frees lawyers up to focus more on interesting and strategic elements of legal practice, which leads to more work, he says.
There will be an efficiency gain, Stokes says, but it “will be completely overwhelmed” by the increase in work that results from AI.
Source link
