Kirkland & Ellis Commits $500 Million to Build Proprietary AI Platform

Kirkland & Ellis will invest $500 million to create a proprietary AI platform, reports the Financial Times. The firm expects to spend more than $100 million this year and the remainder over the next three to four years, funding the project entirely from its revenues.

The platform is being built with input from 250 of the firm’s lawyers, including 100 partners, and will embed their expertise into the system. Around 180 technology professionals are working on the project. The AI will support entire mandates rather than individual tasks, allowing lawyers to use a single integrated system instead of multiple tools.

Outside technology companies are collaborating on the build but will not be permitted to sell the resulting software to other firms. Kirkland will retain ownership or rights to all of the technology developed. The firm reported $10.6 billion in revenue last year.

As noted by Legal Technology, this marks Kirkland’s largest technology investment to date and continues its strategy of building proprietary systems to manage and analyze legal data internally.