A&O Shearman is ramping up the next phase of its AI programme by committing to an investment it says will be worth $1.1bn over the next five years.
The new strategy will focus on “systemising AI modules” across practices, with the majority of the investment accounted for thanks to a requirement for every practice to spend at least 3% of its time building specialist AI tools and services tailored to its area of law.
The firm claims it was the first global law firm to roll out generative AI tech back in 2022, allowing it to test different approaches to AI deployment over the past four years.
It says those tests have demonstrated that the technology “has the most meaningful impact when teams embed deep product expertise into AI systems that can then be systemised across a particular area of law” rather than when generic tools are being used uniformly across a firm.
Hervé Ekué, A&O Shearman’s global managing partner, said: “This significant investment signals where we intend to take the firm over the next decade. AI lets us bring an enhanced skillset to our clients’ work, however complex, on a global scale and in a way that wasn’t possible before.”
He added: “The firm that leads will combine exceptional legal judgement with the speed and scale to apply it consistently, anywhere in the world. We intend to be that firm and that is what this investment accelerates.”
Other investments the firm has made in AI include the 2023 launch of its AI-powered contract tool for in-house counsel – ContractMatrix – which was built in collaboration with Microsoft and legal AI giant Harvey.
David Wakeling, global head of AI at A&O Shearman, said: “AI changes what we can build for clients and how quickly we can do it. We design each solution with the client, embed it with incredibly detailed and specialist proprietary knowledge from our lawyers, adapt it for the client’s risk positions and let the results do the talking.”
Law firms on both sides of the Atlantic have been accelerating their AI investments over the past year. Last month Latham & Watkins said it was partnering with Harvey to build AI tools specifically for investment fund formation.
Also last month, Hogan Lovells Cadwalader announced the next phase of its AI strategy with the creation of a specialist AI board and agreements with legal AI companies Harvey and Legora, while Womble Bond Dickinson said it was launching a dedicated AI lab to develop proprietary AI tools.
Back in May, it was reported Kirkland & Ellis was planning to invest $500m in building its own AI platform, while in April Freshfields said it was partnering with Anthropic to co-build legal tools both for itself and potentially to sell to other law firms.
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