Legal Cheek speaks to Simmons & Simmons partner Peter Lee about his varied career and the firm’s approach to legal tech
Over the last few years, artificial intelligence (AI) has moved rapidly from a buzzword to a daily reality in legal practice, and few firms have embraced that shift as deliberately as Simmons & Simmons. With the recent launch of a dedicated AI Internship, the firm has been building both the infrastructure and the mindset needed to integrate AI into legal work in a way that is practical and responsible. To explore how this works in practice, Legal Cheek Careers sat down with Peter Lee, partner and head of AI governance at the firm.
Lee began his working life as a marine biologist before serving as an infantry officer in the British Army, an experience that sparked his interest in the rule of law and ultimately led him to retrain as a solicitor. After happy stints at a couple of firms, he ended up in the start-up space, co-founding the legal engineering company Wavelength, which was acquired by Simmons & Simmons in 2019.
That non-traditional route into law, Lee admits, has given him a distinctive perspective on how technology could be used in legal practice and he brings this unique angle to his work with clients at Simmons & Simmons. Speaking about the firm’s approach, Lee explains that its engagement with AI did not begin with the recent explosion of generative tools. Through Wavelength, the firm has been working with AI technologies for a number of years, initially through machine learning. “In the last three years, generative AI has become prevalent, and agentic AI is now becoming impactful,” he says. “That rapid acceleration has brought growing demand from clients who feel pressure to adopt AI quickly, while also becoming increasingly concerned about the risks posed by such fast-moving technology”.
This tension between opportunity and responsibility underpins much of Simmons & Simmons’ AI strategy. A central pillar which Lee heads up is AI governance: “helping organisations ensure that their use of AI aligns with legal requirements, internal values and broader ethical principles,” he explains. Lee describes this as “analysing AI use cases through multiple lenses, including compliance with the law, the organisation’s purpose and responsible AI standards. That work can involve drafting policies, delivering AI literacy training and advising on global standards.”
Internally, the firm has focused on creating a controlled environment in which lawyers can experiment with AI tools while understanding their limitations. A flagship example is Percy, the firm’s enterprise-wide AI platform. Named after one of the founding twins of Simmons & Simmons, Percy is a closed and secure system configured specifically for the firm’s work and made available to everyone. The aim, Lee explains, is to “normalise the use of AI while also making people conscious of the risks”. One concern is the impact of generative AI on a lawyer’s ability to think critically if outputs are accepted unchallenged.
That emphasis on critical engagement rather than blind adoption also shapes how the firm is training the next generation of lawyers. The Simmons & Simmons AI law internship, set to welcome its inaugural cohort this April, is designed to give students hands-on exposure to how AI is actually used in legal practice, rather than treating it as a theoretical concept. Interns will rotate across three areas in the firm: the AI Law team (which deals with matters such AI regulation itself), the applied AI team (Wavelength) and the AI governance practice. Along the way, they’ll work directly with tools such as Percy and Microsoft Copilot, examine the types of legal and commercial challenges clients are facing, and complete a practical exercise focused on AI applications.
For aspiring trainees, this structure offers a window into the full lifecycle of AI in a law firm. It spans everything from technical deployment and product design to legal analysis and ethical oversight, reflecting the increasingly multidisciplinary nature of modern legal services. Lee emphasises that the goal of the internship is “not just to teach interns how to use tools, but to help them understand when, why and how those tools should be used”.
AI’s role within the firm is closely tied to the broader concept of legal engineering, which seeks to bridge the gap between technology, data and legal expertise. Rather than viewing AI as a replacement for lawyers, the focus is on augmentation: “using technology to enhance how legal work is delivered,” as Lee puts it. One practical illustration of how this works in a contentious setting came during a mediation where the litigation team was dealing with an enormous volume of witness evidence at very short notice.
“Each statement ran to more than 100 pages and there simply was not enough time for the lawyers to read them all in full before cross-examination the following day,” Lee says. “Instead, data scientists were brought in to support the lawyers, building an algorithm capable of scanning every sentence across the statements. By statistically comparing them, the tool was able to identify anomalies and differences between witnesses, flagging points that could be explored in cross-examination. The technology did not replace legal judgment, but augmented it, allowing the lawyers to focus their preparation on the most significant inconsistencies in a timeframe that would otherwise have made that impossible.”
Beyond supporting lawyers internally, Simmons & Simmons also works with clients to develop new ways of delivering legal services. This can include helping in-house legal and compliance teams use technology to triage work, automate documentation or improve access to information. In each case, AI is positioned as part of a wider toolkit aimed at improving efficiency and decision-making, rather than as a standalone fix.
Despite the enthusiasm surrounding AI, Lee is candid about the risks it poses to the profession. While issues such as hallucinations and ‘AI-Slop’ are well known, he highlights what he considers a deeper challenge. “The potential erosion of critical thinking. As the pace of work accelerates and AI-generated outputs become more common, there is a danger that lawyers struggle to retain and properly engage with the substance of their work,” he says.
These developments naturally raise broader questions about the fundamental ways in which law firms operate, such as the traditional reliance on billing for time spent. Adding to that, while concerns about job displacement are often raised, Lee suggests that technology is “much more likely to replace individual tasks than entire roles”. The lawyers who thrive will be those who “remain adaptable, inquisitive and capable of independent analysis,” according to Lee.
For students and future trainees navigating this changing landscape, the message is clear. AI is not something to ignore or fear, but neither is it something to defer thinking to. Lee’s advice is to “be critical and be curious”, and to continue practising the core skills that underpin legal work – “careful writing, structured argument and rigorous analysis”.
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