Serious investment
US law firm Kirkland & Ellis has set aside an eye-watering $500 million (£370 million) to build its own AI platform.
Firm chair Jon Ballis said that while widely available AI tools are raising standards across the legal industry, that bar isn’t high enough for a firm like Kirkland. Its clients, including the world’s biggest companies and private equity funds, expect more than whatever any competitor armed with off-the-shelf tools can offer.
The firm — which recently became the first in history to break through the $10 billion (£7.4 billion) revenue barrier posting revenues of $10.6 billion (£7.9 billion) — expects to spend more than $100 million this year “developing custom AI services”, the Financial Times (£) reports, with hundreds of millions more planned over the next few years. This is in addition to money it already spends on tools developed by major AI companies.
Kirkland’s platform will draw on input from 250 of the firm’s own lawyers, including 100 partners, who have shared details of how they work. Outside technology firms are involved in building it, but will not be permitted to resell it.
Ballis also hinted that AI would accelerate a shift away from the traditional billable hour model towards value-based pricing, adding that the firm was “looking forward to leaning into it.”
News of the staggering investment comes as courts on both sides of the Atlantic grow increasingly impatient with AI-related errors.
As Legal Cheek reported, Pinsent Masons was criticised by a High Court judge after hallucinated legal authorities found their way into insolvency proceedings, while Sullivan & Cromwell recently had to apologise for AI errors it had included in a major US court filing.
