Google is making a deeper push into the legal profession with a version of its Gemini artificial-intelligence platform built for lawyers, betting that attorneys will increasingly rely on AI to handle research, drafting and other time-intensive parts of legal work.
The company introduced Gemini Enterprise for Legal, a platform designed to help lawyers automate legal and administrative tasks while addressing the confidentiality requirements of law firms, according to Reuters.
The move puts lawyers at the center of a growing contest among AI companies seeking to reshape professional work. Law firms are increasing their use of generative AI for activities including legal research, document preparation and case management, Reuters reported, as firms look for ways to reduce the amount of time attorneys spend on repetitive work.
For lawyers, the significance goes beyond having another chatbot available at work. AI systems are increasingly being designed to operate within the specialized software, databases and workflows attorneys already use, potentially changing how lawyers move from research to drafting and ultimately to advising clients.
Google’s new legal platform is designed to connect with services from legal-information and technology providers including Thomson Reuters, LexisNexis and Harvey, according to Reuters. Those integrations could allow attorneys to use AI while working with established legal research and professional tools rather than moving information between separate systems.
Google also plans to give law firms access to different AI models through the platform, Amrita Mehrok, a Google Cloud product director, told Reuters. That could give firms more control over which models their attorneys use for particular legal assignments.
Several prominent law firms are already working with Google on the technology. Weil Gotshal, Cleary Gottlieb, Freshfields and Williams & Connolly are collaborating with the company on Gemini Enterprise for Legal, according to Reuters.
Related: EU Orders Google to Open Android and Search Data to Rival AI Services
We’d love to be your preferred source for news.
Please add us to your preferred sources list so our news, data and interviews show up in your feed. Thanks!
The involvement of major firms highlights how quickly AI is moving from experimentation into lawyers’ everyday professional environment. Jonathon Soler, co-managing partner at Weil Gotshal, told Reuters that clients increasingly expect their law firms to use AI and capture the efficiencies the technology can provide.
That client pressure could prove particularly consequential for the legal business. Law firms have traditionally billed much of their work according to attorney time. If AI allows a lawyer to complete research, review or drafting substantially faster, firms may have to determine how those productivity gains affect staffing, pricing and the way legal services are delivered.
Cleary Gottlieb Managing Partner Jeffrey Karpf told Reuters that the firm’s collaboration with Google gives it an opportunity to help shape technology intended for lawyers as firms adopt AI.
Google isn’t alone in targeting the profession. AI developers and established legal-information companies are competing to become part of lawyers’ daily workflows. Thomson Reuters, which owns Westlaw as well as Reuters, unveiled its Thomson 1.0 large language model for professional applications this week, according to Reuters. Anthropic and other AI companies have also expanded enterprise offerings aimed at professional and legal work.
The growing competition suggests that lawyers could become an important test case for enterprise AI. Legal work involves large amounts of reading, research and drafting — areas where generative AI can potentially save significant amounts of time — but it also requires accuracy, confidentiality and professional judgment.
Those constraints mean the technology is more likely to alter what lawyers do than simply eliminate the need for them. Attorneys may spend less time on some research and first-draft tasks while taking greater responsibility for checking AI-generated material, making strategic decisions and providing advice that depends on legal judgment.
For law firms, that shift creates both an opportunity and a challenge. Firms that can use AI to perform routine work faster may become more productive, but they will also have to decide how lawyers supervise the technology and how the resulting efficiencies are passed on to clients.
Google’s expansion into legal services shows how the AI race is increasingly moving into individual professions. For lawyers, the question is no longer simply whether generative AI will enter the workplace. It is becoming how deeply the technology will be embedded in the practice of law — and which parts of an attorney’s job will change as a result.
Source: Reuters
Add as Preferred Source