Law firms: the AI challenge hinges on governance

According to the McKinsey Global Institute, ‘more than half of current working hours could be automated’ using technologies already available today. Attilio Abeille, country manager at Legora Italia — Europe’s leading legal AI platform — explains what is happening in the professional world. AI currently automates “in some cases 20–30 per cent, in others as much as 70 per cent, depending on the task, but the professional’s expertise will always be needed,” he says.

The areas best suited to this technology are the bulk review of documents, contract management and research. Where the machine falls short, however, is ‘in customer relations, judgement and strategy. Legora automates parts of a task, not the entire task’. The company continues to grow: it has just closed a $550 million funding round (Series E) led by Atreides, with a valuation of 8.8 billion; its annual recurring revenue (ARR) exceeds 200 million, with more than half of the AmLaw 50 already on board as clients. The funds will support expansion in the US, Europe and APAC, as well as the development of Legora aOS. The figures paint a picture of a sector that is accelerating: in a study commissioned by Legora and carried out by analyst Ari Kaplan, involving 31 international law firms, 94 per cent reported responding more quickly to clients and nearly three-quarters said they had expanded their capacity, allowing them to focus on higher-value activities. Technology does not take away jobs: it shifts the focus.

However, simply wanting to adopt a technology is not enough; ‘to implement it effectively, it is essential to involve senior staff, otherwise the firm operates at two different speeds’, continues Abeille. The practical example of the value of a top-down decision is illustrated by Monica Colombera, founding partner and chair of the Strategy and Innovation Committee at Legance. Colombera explains the challenge of introducing AI ‘firm-wide’: ‘After months of trialling, we opted for licences for all professionals and an external consultant who works alongside the teams, desk by desk’. For her, the most challenging aspect was the cultural one: “It was essential to make it clear to all partners that this is not a product intended solely for young people.” In her view, this is an approach to work that applies to everyone, from recent graduates to senior partners. The Legance case confirms a recurring pattern: where there is a partner at the top driving the change — the so-called ‘super user’ — adoption works; where this is lacking, the firm only goes halfway. This dispels a widespread fear: AI is not an excuse to hire fewer trainees, but rather allows time to train them more effectively.

But how, then, do different generations come together when implementing such a radically different technology? Through a method, explains Andrea Arosio, former managing partner at Linklaters and now at the helm of the consultancy firm Irnerius, which helps law firms and companies build their own library of prompts and agents – ‘that AI know-how which lawyers don’t have time to develop themselves’. And it is precisely in Arosio’s work that the most sensitive issue becomes apparent: if a firm’s knowledge is codified and ‘democratised’, as Abeille puts it, what will then distinguish one firm from another? Two things, argues Arosio: “The relationship of trust with the client and that little bit extra of critical and strategic insight, of being able to view the transaction as a whole.” Then there is an underestimated phenomenon: ‘shadow AI’. Banning the tool won’t stop it — the majority use it anyway, just as in the days of the BlackBerry, when people still carried an iPhone in their pockets. The question, then, is not whether to adopt AI, but how to train new recruits and how to organise knowledge so that it remains the firm’s asset, not the skill of an individual. It is a battle of governance rather than technology, one that is won by training people, not merely by providing them with tools.

But it is precisely on the subject of training that those interviewed are still debating. To the question ‘How do young people prepare themselves if the repetitive work that served as their training ground disappears?’, there is still no clear answer. One voice, however, helps us understand which factors to consider. Francesco Portolano, a founding partner of the Portolano Cavallo law firm – who was already named by the Financial Times in 2012 as an innovator in Europe – offers his perspective, starting with a prediction: ‘We will reach a point where the emperor has no clothes — many activities that today seem esoteric will become commodities; they can be carried out using a search engine or AI.’ What endures lies elsewhere: ‘Artificial intelligence will grasp concepts better than we do; this is already the case today. The only defence, if there is any room left, is reasoning, human interaction, empathy and creativity.”