The race to develop the most advanced ideas in technology and AI needn’t be hard. Some law firms are turning to arch-rivals within their firms to innovate.
Seyfarth Shaw, No. 59 in the Am Law 200, held a virtual brainstorming session among the firm’s employees in 2024 to solicit ideas, invest in a winning project that it saw as worthwhile, and ultimately “drive new thinking” to across the firm, its leader said.
There are already many factories creating new AI technology in with the hope of widespread use in the near future. Others have done so “updated” aspects of certain cultures that have internal resources that foster greater growth.
Seyfarth itself has renewal of the push for innovationbased on its history of project management and recruitment process improvement and resource allocation in AI that generates and other tools that can streamline the work for lawyers and their clients.
The initiative, known at the firm as the “SEYence Fair,” was inspired by partners whose children actually participated in school science fairs, firm chairwoman Lorie Almon said. It quickly became an open call for projects that gave about 59 proposals from 84 employees, from partners to colleagues and professional employees, aimed at identifying the challenge that the firm and/or its customers facing it, and design an effective solution.
Those partners and the firm’s leaders “thought this would be a really interesting way to drive new thinking throughout the law firm,” Almon said in an interview this fall.
Participants have about two months to present their ideas. As a school-sponsored sport, they were not allowed to get outside professional help. There were several rounds of judging, in part because there were so many projects to consider. And some projects were so similar that they were combined into joint proposals. Prizes included tech-related items such as solar-powered speakers and Apple air tags, as well as gift certificates, ribbons and a grand prize trophy.
Plans didn’t have to be fully functional to be submitted, just written proposals, Almon said, but which had a lot of detail.
“We asked them not only to come up with an idea, but how do you do it? How much will it cost to do it? What kind of technology or skills would it require, to the extent that you can answer? he remembered. “So they were well-baked ideas when they came to us.”
Some of the projects Almon oversaw included an AI-assisted pre-payment audit tool, designed to ensure compliance with external advisory guidelines, an AI-enhanced playbook for client groups /agreements and guidance and training required by the people who are friends.
He said there was no requirement for the apps to use AI, although the “solid majority” of them did, including all the finalists and the final winner: a “clearing” tool that could target and delete gather information from multiple sources and integrate it. consistent and easily understood method.
Bots and other tools used to deface websites or documents have been around for a while. But they often take a lot of time to organize or otherwise create, and often the data sources are very specific, they need to be constantly studied and cleaned for reuse.
“So this is where AI, when it’s really well trained, combined with bots, can do something very different,” Almon said. “It can read 100 websites, all of which may be different, structured differently, and pull information in a way that a human would.” He said the device was being developed by Seyfarth Labs, its internal team of technology lawyers and engineers, and that it would be ready for use in early 2025.
But Almon said the fair is as much about the process as the end product.
“As ‘SEYence Fair’ sounds to some extent, ideas like this are very important to the Seyfarth culture,” Almon said, adding: “Your customers want you to look around the corner, help them solve problems And to get that, you have to have a culture that encourages collaboration, that encourages thinking outside the box, and understanding that you can drive and try things, and sometimes they won’t. work, sometimes ling will work. I think we’ve done a good job of promoting that culture. But you have to take care of it every day.”
The Seyfarth program is notable for its extensive competition among lawyers and professional staff to develop new ideas.
But the law firm isn’t the only one using internal competition to support innovation. Organizations like the Diversity Lab have adopted it events like hackathons and law firm partners and business consulting leaders to solve many people’s problems.
Law firms also hold competitions among summer partners to generate ideas.
For example, in recent years. Hunton Andrews Kurth set aside its regular summer membership program for a serious “hackathon,” aimed at solving a young lawyer’s problem. Ropes & Gray organized a summer-related hackathon to think about the future of corporate compliance. Yes Dechert edited a three-stage competition that involved summer partners using natural AI to answer real-world law school questions.
“We got a lot of knowledge from people trying things in a competitive setting,” said Thor Alden earlier this year, then deputy director of innovation at Dechert.
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