Freshfields and Anthropic partner to build AI legal tools
Global law firm Freshfields and AI startup Anthropic signed an agreement Thursday to jointly develop AI applications for legal services. The partnership marks Anthropic's largest law firm collaboration to date.
London-based Freshfields, which employs more than 2,800 attorneys, will gain early access to future Anthropic models and products. The firm plans to build tools for legal research, contract review, document drafting, and internal workflow automation. Financial terms were not disclosed.
From testing to production
Freshfields has already deployed Anthropic's Claude chatbot internally. The firm now plans to expand to Anthropic's Cowork platform, an autonomous AI system that Anthropic equipped with a legal plug-in in January.
The move reflects a broader shift in how law firms approach AI. Large firms increasingly embed generative AI into daily workflows rather than treating it as an experimental tool. Thomson Reuters, which sells the legal-focused CoCounsel product built partly on Anthropic technology, described this transition in recent comments.
Market pressure and competition
Law firms face growing pressure to adopt AI for legal work. Two startups focused on legal AI-Legora and Harvey-have reached multibillion-dollar valuations in recent months.
The technology can accelerate legal research and automate contract and court document drafting, tasks that traditionally consume significant attorney time.
Reliability remains a concern
AI systems in legal work have produced errors. Last week, law firm Sullivan & Cromwell apologized to a federal bankruptcy judge after submitting a filing containing inaccurate legal citations generated by an unidentified AI program. The technology's tendency to fabricate sources-known as hallucination-poses risks in legal contexts where accuracy is essential.
Freshfields' partnership with Anthropic suggests the firm is betting that closer collaboration with AI developers will help address these reliability gaps as the technology matures.
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