Big Law’s AI Jobs Lay Foundation for Tech’s Wider Use at Firms

Generative AI is coming to Big Law’s back office, judging by job listings posted over the last few months from Latham & Watkins, Linklaters, and several other leading firms.

At least nine US and UK firms are actively seeking more than two dozen software developers, analysts, programmers, and data engineers to build out their AI capabilities, according to postings found on law firm and job aggregator websites.

Since the unveiling of the telephone, a Big Law axiom is that lawyers and their firms are wary of technology and slow to adopt it, despite occasional public rhetoric to the contrary. The new job ads—posted on LinkedIn, Indeed.com, and elsewhere by well-established firms—show firms are feeling the competitive heat to incorporate the technology into their operations.

Within a few years, “I can’t imagine that every top 100 firm won’t have a few positions that involve the transformative power of generative AI,” said Davis Wright Tremaine partner Vidhya Prabhakaran, a member of the firm’s AI steering committee. “There are so many potential uses for it. We’re just trying to unlock it.”

Firms are focusing on practical applications, from using AI to help lawyers do research and draft briefs to streamlining marketing and business development functions.

“The team has a new player,” said Ralph Baxter, a former chairman of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe who advises firms and legal tech companies. “And it’s not a human being.”

Fuzzy Job Descriptions

Some of the back-office IT jobs that ask for AI experience are vague—by design.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT and similar technologies are evolving rapidly. Their ultimate uses in the legal industry, and the levels of disruption they may cause, are still not clear.

Linklaters, a nearly 200-year-old London firm, is looking to hire an AI analyst. The role is to support the firm’s AI program, which “has several workstreams in various stages of development,” according to the job listing.

Allen & Overy, Goodwin Procter, Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, Husch Blackwell, and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett are also among the firms hiring for non-lawyer AI positions. Each stress the importance of AI experience—one requires previous work on “cutting edge” AI issues—in their job listings.

Allen & Overy has hired seven developers, data scientists, and others to its innovation team since February, said David Wakeling, head of the firm’s markets innovation group. A&O, which is set to combine with Shearman & Sterling to create a massive new firm, is also seeking to fill four additional positions.

“We realized this was incredibly disruptive tech early,” said Wakeling, whose firm in February announced that it is integrating “Harvey,” an AI platform that’s been enhanced for legal work. “Law is words, and we have a new way of mastering words.”

Goodwin Procter hasn’t launched its own AI platform, said Rachel Dooley, the firm’s chief innovation officer.

The firm’s focus is on assisting clients with their own crash courses in how to gain the most from the technology. That means avoiding pitfalls like “hallucinations"—during which programs spit out falsehoods or nonsensical “facts” with seeming confidence—that still can be found in programs like GPT-4, Google’s Bard, and Microsoft’s Bing.

Dooley said her team has led four video round-table discussions at the firm, which are now held monthly. The first talk attracted about 600 people. “People are hungry to learn about it,” she said.

The firm is planning to hire for several more positions also focused on AI, including data scientists, Dooley said.

Goodwin’s new research analyst “will play a critical role in the adoption and education of the use GenAI in legal and business research,” according to the job listing. The job pays between about $85,000 and $143,000 a year, depending on experience and location.

The pay is in line with the other firms’ back office AI jobs. An opening at Wall Street’s Simpson Thacher for a data scientist position is at the top of the salary range, paying between $145,000-$165,000.

The salaries firms have listed for their AI-focused back office positions may be on the low side, said John Mann, managing director of the executive search firm Alex & Red. Firms will need to be “flexible and responsive” to candidates who negotiate for higher salaries.

Fifteen of the 26 jobs listed, including Dentons’, are listed as “hybrid” positions that require an in-office presence but also allow some work from home. The other posts do not specify whether the staffer will need to work from the office full-time.

Firms are “still building out market intelligence from a salary standpoint,” said Jenny Schwope, a senior executive search associate with the law firm consultancy Calibrate.

Davis Wright Tremaine may be looking to hire between three and seven new AI-focused back office jobs at the firm in the coming year, in part because it’s becoming a “client imperative,” said Prabhakaran. The firm laid off 21 staff employees in February, joining others that trimmed headcount in response to slowing demand across the legal industry.

Davis Wright Tremaine has launched its own version of ChatGPT, according to Prabhakaran. Its generative AI platform is not being used for legal work and doesn’t have access to client data, he said. Instead, it’s being used for business development and administrative tasks.

Other firms hiring for new AI workers are doing so in part to promote the use of their own proprietary new AI tools. Dentons in August unveiled “fleetAI,” a chatbot based on GPT-4, which enables the firm’s lawyers in UK, Ireland, and Middle East offices to conduct legal research and generate legal content.

The firm is planning to release fleetAI to its offices worldwide, and has at two other chatbots in the works, including one that will focus on legal services. Job responsibilities for Dentons’ new legal AI adoption manager in London will include developing working relationships with legal teams to encourage “the widespread use of our AI tools.”

A Replacement for People?

Some law firm leaders have said that like any broad-based tech disruption, it’s likely AI will cause workers to be replaced over the next several years.

Others AI will spur more new jobs than it destroys. The tools are likely to improve employees’ jobs rather than threaten them, according to Dooley, the Goodwin innovation chief.

“I don’t think it’s a replacement tool,” she said. “It’s an elevation tool.”