Roy Strom, Bloomberg Law; Reed Smith Names AI Chief, Plans for Faster Deals and IP Work
"Richard Robbins is about a week into his role as Reed Smith’s first director of applied artificial intelligence, but—in a sign of how quickly the area is developing—there’s already a lot on his plate.
The law firm is working on at least eight generative artificial intelligence projects, ranging from testing new products to developing AI-fueled workflows for entire practice areas. Robbins, who joined the firm from legal tech company Epiq, will help usher those projects from the test phase to broader rollouts.
“It has been everybody’s part-time work, but we knew that this is so serious,” David Cunningham, Reed Smith’s chief innovation officer, said in an interview. “Just like we have heads of our data insights, our product design team, and our lab, we really needed to have an equal if not greater focus on how we apply AI and data science to the firm."
Law firms have been trying to develop strategies for how to invest in AI and where to deploy it to make their work more efficient."
