“AI Boom Forces Law Firm Tech Leaders To Rethink Training Practices,” at Law.com (Dec. 4, 2025) by Ryan Harroff and Jon Campisi.

It has long been a staple of career advising in law schools that legal employers will shoulder responsibility for transforming new law graduates into functioning practitioners. With AI deployments, how is that story changing? Law.com summarizes the current landscape of legal education in law firms:

Firms of all sizes are exploring AI, whether it be Big Law firms like Latham & Watkins, who last year launched its “AI Academy” two-day training event for first-through-fourth year associates, or midsize firms like Robinson & Cole, who this month announced a partnership with Newcode.ai to deploy agentic AI tools for its attorneys.

Many firms are making use of third-party AI tools like Lexis+ AI, Harvey and Microsoft’s Copilot bot. Some are also partnering with vendors to develop their own proprietary tools, such as Barnes & Thornburg’s internal version of ChatGPT, which it calls ChatBT.

As these new tools hit the industry, law firm leaders in the tech space said in interviews that they have had to rethink the way they train their professionals. AI does not lend itself to the typical “transactional exchange of information” that worked for prior tech rollouts going as far back as in the introduction of email, according to Sheppard Mullin’s chief knowledge and innovation officer Kate Cain.