Project Apollo
Shoosmiths has built its own AI contract review tool, which it says will speed up the job while also helping to train up junior lawyers.
The tool, dubbed Project Apollo, was developed with Microsoft over a year of design and testing and is now being rolled out across the firm. It runs in Microsoft’s Azure environment, the company’s cloud computing platform, and marks up contracts against a set of standards based on the work of Shoosmiths’ own dealmakers.
What sets it apart, the firm says, is that it explains itself, rather than acting as a “black-box” model that gives answers without showing how it reached them. At each step it sets out the reasoning behind a change, in much the same way a senior associate would talk a partner through their edits, and it pulls in the firm’s own know-how and guidance as it goes. The idea is that junior lawyers see not just what has been changed, but why.
David Jackson, chief executive of Shoosmiths, said:
“With our platform, developing lawyers can learn more, faster. Our self-developed generative AI software enables the firm to deploy its collective dealmaking expertise at scale, allowing lawyers to not only see what amendments have been made, but most significantly, why.”
Jackson added that Shoosmiths has advised on more M&A deals in the City than any firm for four years running, experience that now sits behind the tool. A senior lawyer signs off everything it produces.
News of the tool follows Shoosmiths’ move to put £1 million into its bonus pot late last year, when staff hit a one-million Microsoft Copilot prompt target. At the time, the firm was keen to point out that Copilot wasn’t being used for anything needing legal expertise.
Shoosmiths isn’t the only one ramping up its AI efforts. Magic Circle firm Freshfields recently teamed up with Anthropic to build legal AI tools, while Kirkland & Ellis has set aside an eye-watering $500 million to build a platform of its own.
