Regan Lemke, chief of practice strategy and chief of staff at Polsinelli, recently told Law360 Pulse that before Polsinelli procures an AI tool, the firm pilots the product for four to six weeks to get feedback from attorneys.
Lemke, who became practice strategy chief in 2024, said the firm requires that any AI tool it procures have a clearly defined use case and an internal sponsor, like a practicing attorney, who wants to use the product.
"For something to move forward, we have to make sure that there's early alignment with our overall firm and practice priorities," she said.
Polsinelli launched its innovation department in January 2024 to be in charge of evaluating technology solutions and implementing them throughout the firm, according to Lemke. The department includes its chair, Jonathan Henderson; Larissa Marshall, director of practice innovation; and Lemke, who is in charge of the firm's AI enterprise program.
Six months ago, the innovation department rolled out Thomson Reuters CoCounsel to all the firm's 1,200 attorneys across 50 practices, the first stand-alone generative AI tool to be introduced firmwide, according to Lemke. Prior to this, tools already in use, like Westlaw and Zoom, that got AI upgrades were adopted.
She said the firm wanted to adopt an AI tool from a company it was already working with, and Thomson Reuters has been a longtime partner of the firm.
"They have effectively adapted to our AI approach and matched our internal efforts. They understand our desire to quickly experiment with and implement technologies while managing the risks associated with AI. They help us balance and achieve both," she said.
Before Polsinelli's attorneys can use CoCounsel, they must sign the firm's AI use policy and complete two training sessions, Lemke said. Polsinelli attorneys use CoCounsel for data analysis, summarization, document review and more, according to Lemke.
The firm has more than 700 CoCounsel users who have sent more than 53,000 messages and more than 60,000 files through the tool, Lemke said.
Lemke noted that communication and training have been crucial in getting attorneys to use CoCounsel. She said that through every step of implementation, from the pilot to firmwide rollout, the firm's innovation department has communicated with attorneys about CoCounsel.
In addition, the innovation department has provided more than 40 practice group-specific training sessions on how to use CoCounsel, and Thomson Reuters has led more than 25 training sessions, according to Lemke. The department has also offered training sessions on specific skills like prompt engineering.
Lemke added that the innovation department takes attorneys' feedback about what they are struggling with and incorporates that into their training sessions.
"We are meeting our attorneys where they are in their AI journey," she said. "Our attorneys are all in a different place, and you don't want to leave any one attorney or one practice … in the dust."
Other AI tools the firm uses include Equall for cross-referencing legal documents in cap tables, Jigsaw for creating organizational charts, and Project Fortress for transactions management, Lemke said. The firm is also piloting an AI tool for real estate surveying data.
Lemke said the biggest challenges for the firm when it comes to leveraging AI are getting attorneys to use the tools and deploying the tools in a timely fashion while ensuring security requirements are met.
"If our attorneys were not as invested in our AI program, we could easily stall or hide behind risk mitigation to not move forward, but that is not our firm's culture," she said. "It's in our DNA to find practical business-oriented solutions to challenges, and we have applied that same ethos in how we service clients to how we evaluate AI programs."
Lemke noted that the innovation department is also helping Polsinelli clients with adoption of AI tools.
She said that some of the firm's clients and their legal teams are short on resources, or don't know where to start when it comes to deploying AI tools. The innovation department walks clients through how it is gathering use cases, evaluating AI tools and implementing them, Lemke said.
The department showed one client how to use CoCounsel to analyze 10,000 service agreements after an acquisition, she said.
"Just like our attorneys are in a different place, our clients are also just in a different place in their AI journey," Lemke said.
Lemke said the firm's short-term goal for AI is to move from experimentation to full integration into legal practice workflows. To help with this goal, Polsinelli has created an AI lead program composed of attorneys from its practice groups to help AI adoption, according to Lemke.
The firm's long-term goal for AI is to keep pushing attorneys and professional staff to use the technology, Lemke said.
"The landscape is going to be shifting and changing, but I want to make sure that our attorneys have the AI skills that they need to be able to keep up with whatever is put in front of them," she said.
--Editing by Robert Rudinger.
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