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Law firms are often eager to burnish their social responsibility credentials by leveraging their training and experience to help communities that don’t have the resources to pay BigLaw billing rates. See which firms are leading the pack in pro bono hours.
A continuing onslaught of legislation and litigation opposing corporate environmental, social and governance actions has created a fork in the road for law firms, with some choosing to scale back efforts and others pushing ahead with their internal ESG and diversity, equity and inclusion goals.
Law firms are being heavily scrutinized for their social responsibility efforts, with attorneys, clients and critics all pushing for accountability. Find out which firms made Law360 Pulse's list of firms that are taking the greatest strides on social responsibility.
To some, a recent report's finding that nearly 60% of legal department leaders expect a reduced reliance on outside legal service providers due to GenAI might be gloomy, but many lawyers view the innovations as a way for clients and counsel to strengthen their relationships.
Contract management software provider ContractPodAi, which launched an automated legal assistant earlier this year, announced Tuesday a new partnership with London's KPMG that will provide artificial intelligence to the Big Four accounting firm and its managed legal services.
The California Supreme Court has rejected a proposal that would have allowed bar applicants to submit a portfolio of work they did with real clients under supervision instead of taking the bar exam.
A contract software company gained new funding from a venture capital program this week.
Document Crunch, a contract software company servicing the construction industry, announced on Thursday the raising of $21.5 million in a Series B funding round, less than a year after its first capital raise.
Three outlier megadeals pushed funding for legal technology companies to $1.57 billion in the third quarter of 2024, up from $392.5 million in the same period last year, but the number of mergers and acquisitions fell by about 50%.
This was another action-packed week for the legal industry as BigLaw firms made a slew of hires and a state judge was admonished for lip synching "Jump" by Rihanna in a TikTok. Test your legal news savvy here with Law360 Pulse's weekly quiz.
Alternative dispute resolution provider JAMS has launched a suite of artificial intelligence-powered tools that attorneys, their clients and panelists can use in the dispute resolution process as part of its new initiative JAMS Next.
Gunster has struck a settlement agreement in one of the two proposed class actions it faces in Florida federal court over a 2022 data breach, while the plaintiffs in the second case urged the court the same day to reject the law firm's dismissal bid in their suit.
The corporate deals software platform Noetica AI embarked on a new chapter of its journey on Thursday with a $22 million Series A funding round.
UnitedLex Chief Executive Officer James Schellhase has left the role after just one year and is being replaced by general counsel Renee Meisel, the law firm-focused data and professional services company announced Thursday.
Thomson Reuters on Tuesday filed a pair of renewed motions for partial summary judgment seeking to block ROSS Intelligence Inc. from claiming fair use, and hold it liable for copyright infringement, in a suit alleging ROSS ripped off the Westlaw research platform for its artificial intelligence product.
Legal client engagement startup Case Status has secured $19.7 million in Series B funding to further develop its artificial intelligence-powered tools, expand into new law practice areas and add leadership positions.
The general counsel for litigation platform Fileread has announced that he's left the company to "build something new," having just joined from AstraZeneca earlier this year.
Several law firms this year, including Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP and McDermott Will & Emery LLP, have filled artificial intelligence-focused chief and director roles to keep up with technological advances and client demands, according to legal recruiters.
As ransomware attackers like to hit companies on holidays and other sensitive times, in-house attorneys should role-play the holiday attack scenario in advance as they prepare to respond, members of an Association of Corporate Counsel conference panel said Tuesday.
The traditional hourly billing model in the legal industry is facing increasing scrutiny as in-house legal teams leverage technology to enhance efficiency, the co-founder of a leading AI service told Law360.
In-house lawyers should craft a single artificial intelligence governance policy for their organizations, build cross-functional teams to assess AI needs and risks and audit and update their AI policy frequently to keep pace with the technology's rapid evolution, according to experts on an Association of Corporate Counsel conference panel.
White & Case LLP announced Monday the appointment of both a chief innovation officer and a chief marketing officer as the firm continues to expand through hiring and office openings.
The legal technology sector has a new unicorn after artificial intelligence provider EvenUp secured a $135 million Series D funding round and reached a $1 billion valuation on Tuesday.
Labor and employment firm Littler Mendelson PC has added the former executive vice president and chief information officer at photonics and light technology company Excelitas Technologies as its chief digital innovation officer.
Billing rates for the top 100 law firms in the United States surged by 10% from 2023 to 2024, the largest rate hike in the past three years, according to a new research report on Tuesday.
A new ChatGPT feature that can remember user information across different conversations has broad implications for attorneys, whose most pressing questions for the AI tool are usually based on specific, and large, datasets, says legal tech adviser Eric Wall.
Legal organizations struggling to work out the right technology investment strategy may benefit from using a matrix for legal department efficiency that is based on an understanding of where workloads belong, according to the basic functions and priorities of a corporate legal team, says Sylvain Magdinier at Integreon.
Mateusz Kulesza at McDonnell Boehnen looks at potential applications of personality testing based on machine learning techniques for law firms, and the implications this shift could have for lawyers, firms and judges, including how it could make the work of judges and other legal decision-makers much more difficult.
The future of lawyering is not about the wholesale replacement of attorneys by artificial intelligence, but as AI handles more of the routine legal work, the role of lawyers will evolve to be more strategic, requiring the development of competencies beyond traditional legal skills, says Colin Levy at Malbek.
Although artificial intelligence-powered legal research is ushering in a new era of legal practice that augments human expertise with data-driven insights, it is not without challenges involving privacy, ethics and more, so legal professionals should take steps to ensure AI becomes a reliable partner rather than a source of disruption, says Marly Broudie at SocialEyes Communications.
With the increased usage of collaboration apps and generative artificial intelligence solutions, it's not only important for e-discovery teams to be able to account for hundreds of existing data types today, but they should also be able to add support for new data types quickly — even on the fly if needed, says Oliver Silva at Casepoint.
With many legal professionals starting to explore practical uses of generative artificial intelligence in areas such as research, discovery and legal document development, the fundamental principle of human oversight cannot be underscored enough for it to be successful, say Ty Dedmon at Bradley Arant and Paige Hunt at Lighthouse.
The legal profession is among the most hesitant to adopt ChatGPT because of its proclivity to provide false information as if it were true, but in a wide variety of situations, lawyers can still be aided by information that is only in the right ballpark, says Robert Plotkin at Blueshift IP.
Alternative legal service providers can marry the best attributes of artificial and human intelligence to expedite turnarounds and deliveries for contract review, e-discovery and legal research, says Tariq Hafeez at LegalEase Solutions.
In order to achieve a robust client data protection posture, law firms should focus on adopting a risk-based approach to security, which can be done by assessing gaps, using that data to gain leadership buy-in for the needed changes, and adopting a dynamic and layered approach, says John Smith at Conversant Group.
To make their first 90 days on the job a success, new legal operations managers should focus on several key objectives, including aligning priorities with leadership and getting to know their team, says Ashlyn Donohue at LinkSquares.
Female attorneys and others who pause their careers for a few years will find that gaps in work history are increasingly acceptable among legal employers, meaning with some networking, retraining and a few other strategies, lawyers can successfully reenter the workforce, says Jill Backer at Ave Maria School of Law.
ChatGPT and other generative artificial intelligence tools pose significant risks to the integrity of legal work, but the key for law firms is not to ban these tools, but to implement them responsibly and with appropriate safeguards, say Natalie Pierce and Stephanie Goutos at Gunderson Dettmer.
To safeguard against the many risks posed by generative artificial intelligence legal tools, in-house counsel should work with their information security teams to develop new data security questions for prospective vendors, vet existing applications and review who can utilize machine guidance, says Diane Homolak at Integreon.
Opinion
We Must Continue DEI Efforts Despite High Court HeadwindsThough the U.S. Supreme Court recently struck down affirmative action in higher education, law firms and their clients must keep up the legal industry’s recent momentum advancing diversity, equity and inclusion in the profession in order to help achieve a just and prosperous society for all, says Angela Winfield at the Law School Admission Council.