Managing partners at the US offices of a City law firm are allowing their junior lawyers to devote 20 per cent of billable time to \u201chands-on AI exploration\u201d.<\/p>\n
Ropes & Gray, a firm founded in Boston 160 years ago, has unveiled a programme in which newly qualified and trainee solicitors will be \u201cactively testing cutting-edge tools, piloting new workflows for client matters and collaborating to develop best practices\u201d.<\/p>\n
It is the latest move connected to a new technology that is predicted to overhaul the structure of international law firms, as some predict AI could replace many junior lawyer roles. <\/p>\n
The firm said that all lawyers in the programme would be given specialist instruction and mentored by \u201cAI-savvy partners\u201d to train them in how \u201cto tackle real client challenges\u201d.<\/p>\n
The process, the firm added, would inform managers on how to integrate artificial intelligence \u201cinto client service and professional development \u2014 making associates and trainees co-architects of our strategy\u201d.<\/p>\n
Ropes & Gray is the eighth largest law firm in the world, according to last year\u2019s AmLaw Global 200 rankings, with most recent annual revenues of \u00a32.55 billion. Equity partners at the firm earned on average more than \u00a33.7 million each. <\/p>\n
According to The Lawyer website, the firm is also the 22nd highest earning of more than 100 US law firms with offices in the City, logging nearly \u00a3150 million in UK revenue last year. The practice opened in the Square Mile in 2010. <\/p>\n
Ropes & Gray said that under its new scheme it would formally recognise AI work \u201cas essential to professional development, tracking it as billable time and reporting progress in regular group sessions\u201d. <\/p>\n
In a statement, it said that \u201cjunior lawyers\u2019 innovations and use cases will also be showcased to the entire firm, accelerating adoption and continuous improvement\u201d.<\/p>\n
Jane Rogers, a Ropes & Gray partner in London who sits on the firm\u2019s policy committee, said that the AI programme was coming to the practice\u2019s European offices having been successfully piloted in the US.<\/p>\n
She said that it provided \u201cour early-stage lawyers with a strong foundation in the transformative potential of AI, and ensures they have dedicated time to develop proficiency with these critical technologies\u201d. <\/p>\n
It is not just junior lawyers who are being immersed in artificial intelligence in the legal profession. Last April it emerged that Copilot Chat<\/a>, an artificial intelligence tool from Microsoft, had been made available on all judicial devices.<\/p>\n Guidance for the judges included a glossary of terms and highlighted risks, including warnings about the dangers of misinformation, bias and errors or \u201challucinations\u201d that can be generated by the software. <\/p>\n Last October a barrister was scolded in court for relying on artificial intelligence that produced \u201centirely fictitious\u201d case citations in a claim involving two asylum seekers. Chowdhury Rahman, an immigration law specialist, was representing two Honduran sisters<\/a> in asylum claims when it emerged that he had used AI software to prepare his submissions to a tribunal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Managing partners at the US offices of a City law firm are allowing their junior lawyers to devote…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":361593,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-361592","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-technology","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/361593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}