Every AI move in the legal industry, as it happens

Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom joined Relativity's Advanced Access program for claiR, a new conversational AI experience for lawyers to work more directly with legal data, ahead of its planned general availability in early 2027. Skadden is among the first major law firms in the program.

White & Case made a strategic investment in Clauze.AI, a new Saudi Arabia-focused enterprise legal AI platform founded by Waad Alkurini (departing after leading the firm's Riyadh office for three years). Clauze.AI offers bilingual (Arabic/English), on-premises, Saudi-data-resident tools for contract review, governance, and due diligence. It is White & Case's first investment in a Middle East technology company.

Fox Mandal & Associates, a legacy Indian law firm, adopted Harvey following a months-long pilot evaluating multiple AI tools. The firm says Harvey will handle routine tasks to free lawyers for high-judgment work while maintaining human oversight, data security, and confidentiality guardrails.

Chilean legal AI startup Magnar closed an $8 million Series A round led by 6 Degrees Capital and Hi Ventures, with participation from Chilean law firm Carey and Argentinian law firm Beccar Varela alongside other VCs. Magnar offers legal research, drafting, and document management for Latin American markets and will use the funds to expand into Mexico and Brazil.

Cleary Gottlieb named Elizabeth Wilkinson as its first Chief Innovation Officer, based in Washington, D.C., to unify innovation and knowledge management efforts firmwide. Wilkinson previously led knowledge and innovation for another international firm's practices, where she built knowledge management, legal technology, and generative AI implementation capabilities.

Grupo Financiero Inbursa, one of Mexico's largest financial institutions, deployed Harvey's legal AI platform starting with its litigation team in Mexico City to manage court/regulatory notices and prepare for oral proceedings, with plans to expand into M&A due diligence, regulatory analysis, and contract review. Reflects Harvey's growing footprint in Latin America.

Patent attorneys Yuki Jono and Jun Aoyama launched Aoyama Jono Patent & Law Firm in Tokyo, positioning it as Japan's only law firm dedicated to AI-related patent prosecution, monetization, and corporate/regulatory advisory. About 80% of its six-person founding team are former patent examiners, citing a domestic shortage of AI-patent expertise.

Macpherson Kelley, a 121-year-old Australian commercial law firm, is deploying Harvey firmwide across all eight practice groups following a year-long pilot and evaluation against alternative platforms, extending use to litigation, drafting, and review work.

Australian firm Gilbert + Tobin expanded ChatGPT Enterprise beyond operations teams into marketing, business development, recruitment, finance, and parts of the legal practice (87% of enabled seats active as of June 2026), and is using Codex to automate multistep operational workflows including conflicts, AML/KYC, and audit checks under human sign-off. Legal-specific advisory work continues to run through separately approved platforms including Harvey.

GE Aerospace deployed Harvey across its Legal & Compliance organization following a successful pilot, aiming to accelerate work and free lawyers for higher-value strategic tasks. GE Aerospace also joined as a design partner for Harvey's Contract Intelligence product, helping shape contract review, negotiation, and portfolio-insight features.

Wilson Sonsini signed a paid commercial license for LexText, a litigation drafting and analysis platform, spanning the firm's litigation practice across 17 offices and 250+ litigators. Wilson Sonsini is the first Am Law firm LexText has announced as a customer (Stanford Law School licensed it earlier).

Cahill Gordon & Reindel created a new Chief AI Strategy & Innovation Officer role and appointed Kelly Graves, a nearly two-year associate and former federal prosecutor, simultaneously promoting her to partner. The move reflects a broader Big Law trend of investing in dedicated AI leadership, with some firms opting for lawyer-led (rather than technologist-led) innovation roles.

Virtual law firm Practus LLP and its back-office provider Auxana Administrative Services expanded their use of Intapp's governed AI platform, adding Intapp Intake and Intapp Time atop existing Conflicts/Walls usage, plus DealCloud with Celeste (the AI coworker) for business development and relationship intelligence.

BakerHostetler launched its proprietary Practice Intelligence Center, a firm-built platform combining institutional knowledge and enterprise data with AI-powered workflows. Its initial feature, Matter Research+, was co-developed with Clio and leverages Clio's Vincent AI assistant alongside the firm's own matter intelligence for AI-enabled legal research.

Greenberg Traurig deployed the next generation of Thomson Reuters' CoCounsel Legal firmwide across its global offices, capping a four-year collaboration that included beta testing and product co-development. The agentic tool plans, researches, and drafts with grounded Westlaw/Practical Law citations and integrates with DeepJudge.

Williams & Connolly, a leading litigation boutique, is a launch design partner for Google Cloud's Gemini Enterprise for Legal, focused on litigation-oriented AI research and workflow use cases.

Freshfields is a launch design partner for Google Cloud's newly announced Gemini Enterprise for Legal. Freshfields already has an active AI vendor relationship with Anthropic/Claude, reinforcing its multi-vendor AI strategy.

Weil Gotshal & Manges is a launch design partner for Google Cloud's newly announced Gemini Enterprise for Legal, a legal-specific AI product suite built on Gemini models. The partnership gives Weil early access to shape agentic legal workflows for research, drafting, and review.

Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton is a launch design partner for Google Cloud's newly announced Gemini Enterprise for Legal, a legal-specific AI product suite built on Gemini models, joining a small cohort of firms shaping the product ahead of general release.

Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough rolled out Harvey's generative AI platform firmwide, giving attorneys firm-wide access for legal research, drafting, and document review tasks.

Independent international firm Kinstellar (~400 lawyers, 15 offices across CEE/SEE/Central Asia) selected Laurel AI for AI-assisted timekeeping and work intelligence, rolling out in Autumn alongside an Aderant Sierra finance system upgrade. Aims to cut time-recording from hours to 10-20 minutes and improve billing, collections, and client reporting.

Foley & Lardner hired James McKenna, former CIO at Fenwick & West and 17-year Morrison & Foerster IT veteran, as Chief Information Officer. His mandate spans AI, cybersecurity, enterprise infrastructure, and information governance across the firm's technology platforms.

Microsoft posted a job listing for a Principal Legal Engineer within its Customer & Partner Solutions group to build AI agents, shape prompts, and train attorneys, ship real in-house legal AI tooling, and work directly with paralegals and attorneys to design workflows. The role requires a law degree, 7+ years as a practicing attorney, and hands-on experience with tools like Harvey or Copilot — signaling the 'legal engineer' role is now catching on inside corporate legal departments, not just at vendors.

Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe made a strategic investment in Twin1 AI's $20 million seed funding round, alongside lead investors Bessemer Venture Partners, Tribeca Venture Partners, and Aramco Ventures. Twin1 AI creates 'digital twins' of professionals containing their knowledge and judgment; Orrick is already a client alongside Linklaters and Dechert, and helped design the product.

Am Law 200 firm Hanson Bridgett appointed Martin Metz, formerly CIO at Pillsbury and IT director at O'Melveny, as its first Chief Technology and Innovation Officer. Metz will oversee both generative AI adoption (including possible Harvey/Legora evaluation) and the firm's broader IT infrastructure, following the firm's earlier firmwide deployment of Anthropic's Claude.

Gray Reed appointed partner and former litigator Skyler Stuckey as its first Chief Innovation Officer, a newly created role focused on AI adoption and technology integration across all practice groups, including bespoke training programs by practice group.

Davis Wright Tremaine announced firmwide access to Harvey and Microsoft Copilot, plus adoption of Microsoft's AI Frontier Suite (powered by Microsoft 365 E7) as a secure enterprise foundation for AI governance. The firm targets 90% adoption and top-quartile AI usage among law firms; Copilot Agents and Cowork are expected in early 2027.

Debevoise & Plimpton hired Mari Grace and Kendall Howell, both formerly of Davis Polk, as counsel in its Data Strategy & Security practice. The pair will help drive the continued evolution of STAAR, Debevoise's proprietary AI advisory platform, and support a forthcoming AI software product launch to guide clients through AI risks.

Cargill's legal department used AI-enabled tools with its patent database to file office actions faster, draft patents, and review inventions more efficiently — ultimately eliminating the team's need for outside counsel on that work entirely, freeing budget for internal investment. Part of a broader 'AI dividend' initiative across Cargill's legal function, described by CLO Rishi Varma at Priori's FlexFest conference.

ArentFox Schiff introduced FoxAI, a client-first AI framework combining proprietary tools with licensed third-party platforms including Harvey, Microsoft Copilot, and DeepJudge, plus firmwide training and a dedicated Innovation team, tailored to industry-specific workflows rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.