Linklaters has established a team of lawyers and data scientists to build legal AI tools for clients of the top 10 UK law firm.
The three data scientists and three lawyers will “develop customised AI workflows and tools for clients that an off-the-shelf tool cannot deliver”, Linklaters said. They will develop AI tools for legal tasks requiring large amounts of data and analysis.
According to Linklaters, such tasks could include using AI to scan for gaps in a bank’s compliance with regulations and litigation support − for example, evaluating thousands of claim forms to find the strongest cases for a client.
The team is a sign that large law firms see artificial intelligence as a new source of revenue, as well as a way to work more efficiently by automating common legal tasks.
Tom Quoroll, partner and co-founder of the team, called ‘Applied Intelligence’, said he wanted it to work in partnership with practice groups within Linklaters to develop technology for clients.
It will build software tools for clients using various technologies, including from legal AI start-up Legora, Google, OpenAI and Claude by Anthropic, plus its own data platform.
It will charge clients mostly a fixed fee for developing the technology, rather than the traditional billable hour. Quoroll said: “We want to solve challenges that are otherwise intractable and deliver solutions [to clients] more rapidly and with more assurance than other approaches.”
The team is part of Linklaters’ strategy to use AI to improve client services and create new sources of revenue.
In December, Linklaters created a separate 20-person team of lawyers to help it deploy artificial intelligence technology across the firm. The AI team is working with data science colleagues to identify areas where the AI can be used in the firm and how the technology can be implemented.
Ryan O’Leary, research director and legaltech expert at research company IDC, said Linklaters’ latest AI team was a “relatively novel” concept for a law firm. “Combining legal expertise and engineering expertise to bring narrowly tailored [AI] tooling to clients will be very intriguing,” he said.
Last month, Freshfields and Anthropic unveiled an agreement to jointly develop legal AI tools that could in future be sold to other law firms.
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