The news of Anthropic’s plug-in for legal work caused major upset in the legal technology world recently, with behemoths such as RELX, Thomson Reuters and Wolters Kluwer losing millions off their share prices, and doomsday commentators widely predicting the demise of domain-specific legal AI tools. Opinions ranged from the ones who felt vindicated, the ‘I-Predicted-This’ brigade to the more cautious, ‘Let’s-Wait and-See’.
Both Harvey and Legora posted on LinkedIn how users could choose to use Anthropic’s model in their tools anyway and must have been pleased that they are still private companies.
Last week was also the annual CLOC Europe summit, for which RSGI designs the content. It seemed an apt moment to informally canvas the 200+ heads of legal operations assembled for their views on this development.
Many welcomed the Anthropic move as encouraging more competition into the market. Reflecting their closer proximity to the corporate world and business-savvy, they were unsurprised at the announcement. Amir Mehdi, who headed legal operations at Barclays, and is now the CIO for strategic data at Deutsche Bank says, “I am not so sure what all the fuss is about to be honest. It wasn’t an ‘if’ but a when, and overall, it’s better for consumers.” He thinks that for corporate legal teams who use Anthropic already, utilising the plug-in could be just common sense. “Lots of in-house legal teams have not bought a legal specific tool so this might reduce the amount of business the domain specific companies can win,” he says.
However, the moment for legal AI companies to be really concerned about losing market share is not now. Zach Posner, founder of the Legal Tech Fund believes, “No law firm is going to just rely on Anthropic for at least a decade. We think all the interesting action is in the practice-specific products being developed.”
Eric Dodson Greenberg, EVP and general counsel at Cox Media Group has no intention of using the Anthropic plug in. “The value that the legal-only platforms provide—in terms of security, accuracy, and domain-specific training—is much more relevant to our role and the nature of our work,” he says. “I’m not looking for convenience; I’m looking for reliability. Those are different value propositions.”
Two voices from the law firm and consulting world, Hilary Goodier and Tara Waters, also lean more towards the sustained relevance of domain specific legal AI tools. Goodier, who heads up Ashurst Advance globally makes the point that “the future isn’t one model. It’s many models, working together.” Certainly, the research RSGI does for the FT Innovative Lawyers programme, investigating over 500+ unique law firms a year, does show that advanced law firms have “model gardens”, that they use for different purposes.
Tara Waters, who was previously chief digital officer at Ashurst, and is now running her own consulting firm posted a walk-through on LinkedIn of the Anthropic plug-in. It looks easy to use and effective, but clearly not “the one tool to rule them all,” to use Goodier’s Lord of the Rings metaphor.
Eleanor Lightbody, the CEO of Luminance also does not see the Anthropic release as the end of legal AI. She sees longevity in systems that can learn and retain institutional knowledge while operating in real legal workflows. But does feel “tools built as thin layers on top of general AI” will be exposed.
For the innovative law firms and in-house legal teams, it has never been about what technology you use, but what you use it for. The early productization of legal workflows being developed by law firms and start-up tech companies – such as Contract Matrix from A&O Shearman or Navys.AI from a group of funds lawyers – are beginning to show where business model transformation will be found.
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