Big Law firms have been migrating more data to the cloud. Now they’re relying on Big Tech’s services to play a key role in their pivot to AI, allowing firms to connect legal tech platforms to each other and giving them the option to use multiple models based on clients’ needs, Weil, Gotshal & Manges chief innovation and AI officer Andrew Simon told me. Our conversation has been condensed and edited.
Q: How is your AI strategy impacting clients?
As we build on Google Cloud from top to bottom, as we evolve, we try to work with our clients to say, “How do you want to be served so we can show up in a way that you want us to show up?” versus force fitting them into a box. What I’m very concerned about is trying to say monolithically, “This is how law needs to be practiced in the future. This is how clients should be served,” because I think the reality of professional services is that every client is a little different, whether they’re purchasing legal services or another service. And you need to be flexible enough to meet them where they’re going with their business.
Q: Sounds like what you’re getting at is not being dependent on a single legal tool and having more bespoke solutions for different parts of the firm.
The point is flexibility. And so our strategy has three buckets to it, enablement, custom application development, and advanced capability. On the enablement side, you talk about the off-the-shelf tools, which are very advanced to themselves and teaching our people, both lawyers and non-lawyers to use them well.
We are a customer of Harvey and Legora. We have been in discussions with CoCounsel.
Why should I box my lawyers in? Why should I box my clients in? As I said at the beginning, everything’s from the principle of I want to meet the clients where they’re going. We have clients that prefer one or the other for their own reasons, and I need to be prepared to meet them there.
Q: What else drives prioritizing flexibility between AI tools?
There’s a technology perspective, and then there’s a human perspective to it. On the the intersection of that is the user interface. Right now, I think most professionals who are working in a flexible environment end up with this problem, “I have 15 different applications I could open to do this. Where do I go? I just need to get something done.” That’s just the reality.
So what Weil and I are trying to do is simplify that, and that’s where Gemini Enterprise for Legal is so helpful. As we can converge on a user interface that makes all of the services they love from all of those providers available, that allows us to be flexible without basically ruining the day-to-day experience of the professionals who have a job to do.
Q: What’s the upshot of all this for clients?
The way we store and organize information, the way we retrieve that information, the way we analyze that information — all of that needs to change so I can deliver results that clients want. We’re on a trust building journey. We don’t get to the changes in professional service provision that people talk about until we build trust in how we’re doing the work in a new way.
