At Freshfields for the last 6 years I’ve been directly involved in testing, piloting and training with AI tools to reshape legal work. What’s been a surprise is the biggest challenge hasn’t been the technology. It’s how you spread it across a firm in a way people will trust. Also critical is how you train leaders, so that adoption becomes natural not forced.
NEW APPROACH TO DUE DILIGENCE
I’ve learned this clearly in Due Diligence. Our first approach was ‘throw everyone at it’. The result? Inconsistent quality and constant retraining. Now I believe it’s more about creating the right systems. We developed specialist teams, with project-lead checklists and structured training. This allowed knowledge to spread almost virally. Feedback from clients improved greatly — not because of more rules, but because systems empower people to deliver consistently.
SUCCESSFUL APPLICATION OF AI
That lesson carries into AI. It’s where leaders with a broader view of the business can add unexpected value — by helping technology to spread effectively across teams and systems. To make adoption part of daily work rather than an exception.
Also, I’ve been testing, piloting and training with AI tools since late 2022, but AI has never yet replaced human judgment. So the real value for leaders in firms is not finding the right prompt or tool, but teaching others how to use them and building recurring feedback loops so that each project improves the next.
LEADERSHIP AS THE DIFFERENTIATOR
Beyond what we do as legal specialists, how we do it is the differentiator. Leadership, from my experience, is less about directing then – more about enabling. A mentor told me, ‘Do whatever’s necessary until someone says you can’t’. I think of this as ‘outcome-led leadership’, not rules-led. I try to give people the tools and confidence to take ownership. Watching project leads I’d trained run kick-off calls better than I could was a reminder that the point of leadership is to make yourself less necessary.
LOOKING AHEAD
What I’ve learned is simple: legal services are changing fast, but people and process will always matter. The firms that thrive won’t just adopt AI; they’ll redesign how teams work, share knowledge, and deliver value. Make no mistake, AI still has a long way to go. There are big questions around accuracy, client expectations, and how firms can deliver value. But I believe that with the right leadership approach, firms can take advantage of every stage of this evolution. Because technology can only ever be the tool. The actual craft is in how it’s used, how knowledge is shared, and how people are led.