UK law firm Farrer & Co has appointed a head of innovation and AI to expand its use of artificial intelligence and act as a bridge between lawyers and technologists.
The London-headquartered firm, which has about 600 employees, has appointed Oliver Jeffcott as its head of innovation and AI counsel. The appointment is a sign of the growing importance of AI within law firms and their efforts to integrate the technology into daily operations.
Jeffcott joins Farrer & Co from leading London independent law firm Macfarlanes, where he focused on legal technology and innovation. Before that, he was a legal technology analyst at legacy Allen & Overy.
Currently, Farrer & Co uses AI software from suppliers including Microsoft’s Copilot, Westlaw and Orbital, for property legal matters, incorporating tasks such as drafting contracts and checking information.
Jeffcott, who says that generative AI has “huge” potential for the legal sector, will initially focus on helping lawyers at the firm to “understand the use cases” for AI – for example, by automating administrative tasks, enabling lawyers to spend more time thinking about client priorities and strategic thinking.
His role will also include the evaluation and implementation of legal technology, identifying uses for AI, piloting technologies within parts of the firm and rolling out the technologies across the firm if the pilots are successful.
Other priorities include using AI on larger data sets, such as hundreds of thousands of documents in a litigation case − helping to find “needles in a haystack”, says Jeffcott.
Sam Macdonald, a charity law partner and member of Farrer & Co’s management board, described Jeffcott as a lawyer by training who had become a tech expert. One possible measure of success for Jeffcott’s new role would be if AI is used more widely − and productively − at the firm by lawyers of all ages, Macdonald added.
Currently, AI use at the firm is “patchy”, said Macdonald. “There are generational differences. There are some senior people who are really, really getting into [AI] and using it in a quite sophisticated way. There are others who don’t touch it.”
Last month, Magic Circle UK firm Linklaters announced the creation of a team of 20 lawyers to help it deploy artificial intelligence technology across the firm. After the lawyers are trained in AI, they will advise Linklaters lawyers worldwide on how to use AI to improve “workflows” and the service for their clients.
- Farrer & Co has also appointed Rod Fripp as its new IT director. Fripp joins Farrer & Co from law firm Capsticks, where he was IT Director. Fripp replaces the previous IT director, Andy Beech, who will retire from the role next month and start a part-time role of “strategic initiatives advisor”.
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