A O Shearman to dedicate billable time to AI tool development in 1.1 billion dollar investment

A O Shearman is set to divert a portion of lawyers’ billable hours towards building specialist artificial intelligence tools as part of a 1.1 billion dollar investment over the next five years.

The firm said it plans to channel more than 5 per cent of annual revenue into its AI strategy, with lawyers across every practice required to devote at least 3 per cent of their billable time to helping develop the technology. The approach is intended to place lawyers at the centre of AI development, using their subject matter expertise to create tools tailored to specific practice areas and to change how legal services are delivered to clients.

The firm said the strategy builds on several years of experimentation with AI, with a focus on developing systems around the expertise of its lawyers rather than relying solely on off the shelf products. It said the investment is designed to support tools that can handle tasks within individual practice areas and improve the speed and scale at which legal work can be delivered globally.

Hervé Ekué, the firm’s global managing partner, said the investment signals where the firm intends to go over the next decade. He said AI would allow the firm to bring an enhanced skillset to client work, however complex, on a global scale and in a way that was not previously possible. He added that the firm that leads will combine legal judgement with the speed and scale to apply it consistently anywhere in the world, and said A O Shearman intends to be that firm.

The firm is already familiar with legal AI. It began testing Harvey in 2022 and later became one of the platform’s earliest major law firm customers, before developing its own AI powered products.

The announcement comes amid intensifying competition among major law firms to secure an advantage in AI. Freshfields, another Magic Circle firm, partnered with Anthropic earlier this year to give nearly 6,000 staff across its global offices access to Claude AI models. A O Shearman’s latest move suggests the race is now about not only access to AI tools, but also how much lawyer time firms are prepared to commit to building their own systems.