Law firms are building AI around their most valuable asset: experience

Tyler Le/BI For generations, a law firm's most valuable asset walked out the door every night.

It was the attorney who remembered the clause that saved a deal years ago.

The trial lawyer who knew which arguments worked on a judge and which ones didn't.

The partner who told an associate, "We've seen this before." Now law firms are racing to turn that expertise into software.

After spending the past two years adopting tools from OpenAI , Harvey, Microsoft, Legora, and others , large law firms are building systems around something more valuable: what only they know.

The bet is that artificial intelligence steeped in their deal histories, trial strategies, and client preferences will be more useful than whatever the firm across the street can buy.

Law firms are spending big to bottle their secret sauce.

Earlier this year, Kirkland & Ellis agreed to pay Palantir $500 million to build technology for one of the firm's core businesses: advising private equity clients on raising money.

Latham & Watkins bought its own Nvidia servers to start customizing large language models.

Law firms like Kirkland & Ellis are investing heavily to customize their technology.

Bloomberg/Getty Images At Morgan & Morgan , America's largest personal injury law firm, lawyers have begun using an in-house artificial intelligence model trained to recognize patterns in their cases.

A younger lawyer might miss that a patient showing signs of a pinched nerve near the spine could later require surgery.

The firm says its software can flag that possibility.

"Our best and experienced people will spot it almost immediately," said Yath Ithayakumar, Morgan & Morgan's chief transformation officer.