33 Asian Legal Business | January-February 2025 able across individual practices. Our objective is to enable everyone in our firm, including our professional staff, to utilize generative AI tools effectively and responsibly. To achieve this, we must select the appropriate tools and promote their effective use throughout the firm. Westcott: Generative AI is fundamentally transforming how legal work is delivered, especially by streamlining the administrative tasks that support high-value advisory work. At Akin, we see its potential in all practice areas, as demonstrated by the long list of potential innovative use cases identified by our lawyers. In corporate transactions, AI is revolutionizing processes like due diligence and automating administrative tasks – drafting, organizing, and analysing documents – so lawyers can focus on providing strategic advice to clients. The technology enables our teams to handle complex matters with greater efficiency. Within litigation and dispute resolution, AI-driven tools sharpen case strategies, automate document review, and provide data-driven insights, helping lawyers prepare and execute more effectively. Across all practices, our focus is to ensure lawyers spend their time on higher-value work by augmenting their skills with AI, not replacing them. We focus on impact, not hype - deploying AI where it enhances efficiency, empowers our teams, and drives better outcomes. Through client collaboration, smart tool selection, and ongoing training, we’re ensuring AI is a force multiplier for both quality and value. ALB: How are you addressing ethical use considerations, data security and privacy concerns, and the potential impact on billable hours as you lead the integration of AI tools into your firm’s operations? Cyrus: We start from the conviction that client service is paramount. Ethical use, data security, and privacy safeguards are at the centre of our AI strategy as a firm. We treat AI outputs as informed suggestions, not immutable answers, so our lawyers remain critical to the process and are ultimately responsible for every piece of client-facing work. We also pay meticulous attention to the security of dataflows and ensure that no vendor can “model train” on our data. And although generative AI can automate or accelerate tasks that once consumed lawyers’ billable hours, we foresee no shortage of higher-value work; if anything, quite the opposite. Our view is that current breakthroughs in AI will increase throughput in all knowledge-based endeavours. And by thoughtfully incorporating the most capable of those models and systems, as well as instilling thorough oversight, we will ensure that advanced AI amplifies our core mission of client-centred legal excellence. Robbins: We promote ethical use of generative AI through our training programs. We address data security and privacy concerns by reviewing AI tools before introduction and enforcing relevant policies. Training on these policies is required for attorneys to use AI tools, and we uphold these standards in all other AI-related training. We believe that an undue focus on the billable hour impact of the use of AI tools (or any other tool the promotes efficiency) is short-sighted. We expect that attorneys and law firms that make effective use of generative AI will be at a competitive advantage relative to those that do not. We believe that this class of technology will be an important component in delivering the highest value to our clients, which is our ultimate goal. Westcott: We’ve cultivated a close partnership between our lawyers and technology professionals - data scientists, engineers, and developers - ensuring our AI tools are scalable, secure, and responsive to the needs of both clients and firm. This collaboration allows us to draw on insights from our AI practice, where our lawyers work at the cutting edge of regulation, privacy, trade, and policy, to guide how we implement AI technologies internally. Our AI Governance Principles ensure responsible and secure AI integration through three key commitments. First, ethical use means AI supports, not replaces, our lawyers’ expertise, with human oversight safeguarding quality. Second, we maintain strict data security and privacy standards, with every tool undergoing rigorous vetting at Akin to protect sensitive information and meet compliance standards. Third, we maintain transparency by ensuring our clients are informed about when and how AI is used to enhance outcomes. AI is a tool to enhance value, not reduce it to speed alone. By automating administrative tasks, we enable lawyers to focus on high-value advisory work and solving complex challenges. This ensures that efficiency gains directly benefit clients while delivering smarter, faster, and more impactful solutions. AI is about working better - with precision and purpose - so every moment spent serves our clients’ best interests. Roundtable “AI is a tool to enhance value, not reduce it to speed alone. By automating administrative tasks, we enable lawyers to focus on high-value advisory work and solving complex challenges. This ensures that efficiency gains directly benefit clients while delivering smarter, faster, and more impactful solutions.” — Jeff Westcott, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld
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