A leading London law firm is using a chatbot for first-round interviews with potential recruits in a landmark advance of artificial intelligence in legal practice.

Partners at Mishcon de Reya have confirmed that graduates applying to the firm this year will face a virtual interview with an AI chatbot in the first instance.

The firm, which represented Princess Diana in her divorce, has maintained that the AI tool uses information from candidates’ applications to start a conversation and results in a “tailored interview” for all applicants.

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Instead of writing a long application form, candidates participate in a virtual interview during which they can expand on their experiences and motivations. The process produces a transcript of each interview that is reviewed by the firm’s early careers team.

Other British businesses are reported to have used various forms of artificial intelligence when recruiting staff, but the development at Mishcon de Reya is thought to be a first for a large law firm.

Tom Wicksteed, the early careers manager at the firm, which last year recorded £330 million in revenue and had about 650 lawyers on its books, told The Times that candidates “will be able to tell us more about themselves, instead of being limited to a certain number of characters on an application form”.

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He added: “Not only does this give candidates an opportunity to detail their achievements, experiences and motivations but also helps our recruiters to make more informed decisions at an early stage of the process.”

The AI tool being used at the firm was developed by Bright Network, a graduate careers platform. Kirsten Barnes, the company’s chief executive, said that AI was “transforming recruitment”.

Barnes added that her company had “designed a tool that improves the process for both applicants and recruiters, using advanced machine learning to identify authentic, high-potential candidates from a large pool in a fair, transparent, and data-driven way”.

She maintained that the technology did not remove the human element from the recruitment process for lawyers, arguing instead that it “enhances human judgment, rather than replacing it, making it easier to focus on potential and talent instead of getting lost in the volume of applications”.