News You Can Use

Edition 14 · 15th - 31st March 2025

News You Can Use

Deep Dives

Three stories worth sitting with

The State of AI: How Organizations Are Rewiring to Capture Value

The State of AI: How Organizations Are Rewiring to Capture Value

What
McKinsey's State of AI report covers an overview of how artificial intelligence is being deployed across industries. The report highlights that 65% of organisations are now using GenAI, nearly doubling from last year. Adoption is highest in sectors like technology and finance, but legal and professional services are catching up. Despite this growth, 42% of companies cite legal and compliance risks as a major concern. The survey also highlights that CEO oversight of AI initiatives correlates with significant bottom-line impact, emphasising the importance of leadership in AI adoption.
So what
This shows that the wider market is catching up, with more and more clients starting AI journeys, giving us leverage to drive our lawyers forwards in the importance of this tech. Our team should be prepared to discuss how our tools can help elevate the efficiency and accuracy of work, both internally and in client conversations. Additionally, the rise in AI-related compliance concerns presents an opportunity for us to work closely with OGC to develop further guidelines and compliance materials to assist lawyers in using tools.

Cleary Gottlieb + Springbok AI: BigLaw Finally Gets It

Cleary Gottlieb + Springbok AI: BigLaw Finally Gets It

What
Cleary Gottlieb has acquired Springbok AI, an AI platform start up tailored for legal research, document review, and contract analysis. The plan is to integrate the tech seamlessly with Cleary's workflows, offering firm-specific insights and legal reasoning capabilities. It also comes with acquiring their data science and development team.
So what
This move signals a shift in how top-tier law firms approach AI: moving from off-the-shelf solutions to proprietary, firm-specific platforms. This reinforces the importance of tailoring AGPT and other AI-powered solutions to fit our firm's workflows. It also signals that clients may soon expect similar AI-enhanced services, making it essential for us to proactively communicate our AI capabilities and explore how we can integrate AI into client-facing offerings.

Agentic Document Review – White Paper

Agentic Document Review – White Paper

What
Syllo's white paper discusses the application of agentic AI systems in complex litigation document reviews. These systems coordinate multiple LLMs to autonomously manage document review tasks, addressing challenges such as context limitations and accuracy. The paper reports that this approach has achieved high recall and precision rates in real-world litigations, suggesting a significant reduction in discovery costs and time.
So what
This approach could significantly enhance efficiency in areas like M&A due diligence, contract analysis, and regulatory reviews. Given our work on Deal Clarity, we can explore how agentic AI review improves accuracy, automates repetitive tasks, and to integrate seamlessly with our existing workflows.

Worth Reading

Everything else worth a click

McKinsey - The State of AI 2025

Latest State of AI survey. GenAI use has jumped to 65% of organisations (nearly doubling year-on-year), 42% flag legal and compliance risk, and CEO-level AI oversight correlates with bottom-line impact.

Mistral - Small 3.1

New Small-class model with 128k context, multimodal input, and ~150 tokens/sec. Apache 2.0 licence, on-device deployment, and tuned for fast conversational and low-latency tool-calling use cases.

Legal Tech in Leeds Report (PDF)

[Internal AG resource] Snapshot of the Leeds legal tech ecosystem - vendors, firms, and public sector activity in the region. Useful context for anyone working on UK regional tech strategy.

Mindmaps for Notebook LM

Google added mindmap generation to NotebookLM, so any uploaded corpus can be visualised as a connected knowledge map. Handy for rapidly orienting in a new practice area or deal room.

Legalweek: Legal Tech AI Main Takeaways (PDF)

[Internal AG resource] AG internal synthesis of the key AI themes from Legalweek New York. Saves you reading the full conference coverage.

OpenAI - ChatGPT Team

ChatGPT Team plan for small-to-mid enterprises - shared workspaces, admin console, data privacy guarantees. Relevant if you're advising clients on AI rollouts without a full Enterprise contract.

Law Insider - GPT Integrations

Law Insider's contract database exposed via GPT integrations - search clauses, compare precedents, build drafts with contract-aware context. Useful for any team experimenting with contract intelligence workflows.

SSRN - Generative AI and the End of Law Schools

Provocative paper arguing that GenAI will force US law schools into structural redesign, not just curriculum tweaks. Worth reading for the pipeline and training implications even if you think "end of" is too strong.

Ethan Mollick - The Cybernetic Teammate

RCT-backed finding that individuals using AI match the performance of human teams on knowledge-work tasks. Mollick's argument: treat AI as a teammate rather than a tool.

NOS Legal

Non-profit building open standards and shared infrastructure for legal technology interoperability. Early but worth tracking for anyone frustrated by vendor lock-in and siloed data.