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Dentons, the world’s largest law firm by headcount, has announced a collaboration with OpenAI, the world’s most valuable AI start-up.
The deal gives Dentons in the UK, Ireland and Middle East early access to OpenAI’s latest large language models, plus technical assistance with creating new digital tools using the tech giant’s application programming interfaces. It also gives all UKIME employees access to ChatGPT Enterprise, a more secure, customisable version of the free-to-use chatbot.
Billed by Dentons as one of the first direct collaborations between a global law firm and OpenAI, the deal bolsters the arguments of legal tech experts who favour in-house product development over platforms from third-party vendors such as Harvey or Legora.
“Our view is that having direct engineering access to the latest large language models and secure firmwide access to the latest version of ChatGPT Enterprise is now the most effective and direct strategy for delivering high-accuracy, high-impact legal work,” says Paul Jarvis, CEO of Dentons UKIME.
The firm’s announcement follows a pilot phase that began in March, when Dentons tested legal and non-legal-specific generative AI tools in 25 possible use cases, with the roll-out of ChatGPT Enterprise to all UKIME employees following in October. Benchmarking continues, Dentons says, noting that the OpenAI deal is non-exclusive and open-ended.
Bugra Ozer, the firm’s data science and AI governance lead, says it chose OpenAI not only because of its performance in the benchmarking exercise but also because of the scope to build products as desired, and immediate access to new models – by contrast with some third-party providers, he added, which could take up to two months to feed them through to customers. “In our case, it is available the next day,” Ozer says, pointing out that access is sometimes weeks ahead of models’ public roll-out.
Another advantage, he says, was employees’ familiarity with ChatGPT outside work, adding that the firm had seen “a huge spike in usage” compared with previous solutions. “It’s the platform they already knew. . . everyone got to know generative AI through using ChatGPT.”
Tools are developed internally by Dentons’ innovation team, which organises workshops to identify issues in particular practice areas, and collaborates with lawyers to build custom GPTs – chat spaces pre-prompted with specific instructions, knowledge and capabilities – that it can share firm-wide.
Ozer argues that Dentons’ international reach, which generates copious data, will help it benefit from the OpenAI deal. “We have access to lots more clients,” he says. “We can understand different jurisdictions better. . . and we can translate what works in one region to another region as well.”
Use cases so far include a horizon scanner, which draws on multiple sources to keep clients abreast of regulatory change, and integration with Dentons’ Helix model for in-house legal teams, to help analyse the increasing volume of employment tribunal claims enabled by AI. The firm stresses, however, that it always retains a “lawyer in the loop”, and that OpenAI has no access to client data.
Ozer says the next focus for Dentons UKIME is a UK data residency, which will allow it to serve clients who require their data to be stored within the UK’s borders. “We’ll be able to respect every client’s data sovereignty and residency requirements,” he says.
For Jarvis, the ability to deliver services faster is the key appeal of the OpenAI collaboration. “What’s changed is the speed we can move at,” he says. “We can more rapidly design, test and deploy bespoke AI workflows that reflect client requirements and standards. . . and maintain transparency around how data is used.”
