Anthropic and Freshfields strike first-of-its-kind deal to build specialized legal AI tools

Anthropic and Freshfields Forge Groundbreaking Partnership

Anthropic and Freshfields have announced a first-of-its-kind agreement to develop specialized legal AI tools, marking a significant milestone in AI in legal sector adoption. The partnership between Anthropic and Freshfields will see the magic circle law firm contribute legal expertise to help build AI applications for legal services that could eventually be sold to competing firms 1

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. London-based Freshfields, which employs more than 2,800 attorneys, becomes the first law firm to strike such a comprehensive deal with the maker of Claude AI 2

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Under the arrangement, Freshfields will roll out Claude across its global offices while gaining early access to future Anthropic models and tools, though notably not the Mythos model whose ability to find vulnerabilities in cyber defences has raised concerns across global business 1

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. The integration of generative AI in law firms represents a strategic shift as attorneys face mounting pressure to deliver more value with fewer resources.

Building AI Applications for Legal Services at Scale

The collaboration will focus on creating legal AI tools for document drafting and contract review, along with AI for legal and market research, due diligence on companies, and automation of internal business workflows 1

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. Freshfields had already deployed Anthropic's chatbot models internally before this announcement and plans to expand to Anthropic's autonomous platform called Cowork, which received a legal plug-in in January 2

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"As we're all discovering the true potential of these tools, it's about combining our legal expertise with the technical expertise of Anthropic to try to come up with better products for ourselves and our clients," Freshfields' global managing partner Alan Mason told the Financial Times 1

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. The firm is running a "huge engagement programme" to encourage lawyers to adopt AI tools as part of modern legal practice.

Strategic Implications for the Law Firm Model

Mark Pike, Anthropic's associate general counsel, described the Freshfields tie-up as "a signal to every other law firm that moving slowly with AI deployment is not an option right now" 1

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. The legal tech partnership comes as Anthropic, launched in 2021, raised $30 billion from investors in February at a $350 billion valuation and prepares for a potential IPO as soon as this year 1

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. While financial terms remain undisclosed, Freshfields will pay Anthropic an undisclosed sum, and Anthropic will not use Freshfields' data to train its models 1

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Pike noted that in-house lawyers expect law firms to "do more with less" and that AI appears poised to lead this transformation 1

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. Mason acknowledged that AI will "change the traditional law firm model, be it the delivery model, the pricing model, the cost model," though he added that "nobody yet has the full answer to what the future's going to look like" 1

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Navigating AI Hallucinations and Quality Control

The deal comes amid growing concerns about AI hallucinations in legal work. Sullivan & Cromwell recently apologized to a US federal judge after an important filing contained multiple AI-generated errors, including misquoting the US bankruptcy code 1

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. Addressing these risks, Mason emphasized that Freshfields maintains a process where "nothing goes out without being checked by individual lawyers" 1

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Freshfields is also "an early adopter and tester" of Thomson Reuters' CoCounsel newest version, which has been rebuilt to provide enhanced reasoning and reliability 2

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. Thomson Reuters Chief Technology Officer Joel Hron noted that "the focus is now shifting from experimenting with AI to embedding it into day-to-day workflows at scale" 2

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. This partnership follows Freshfields' separate deal with Google last year to roll out AI tools and create bespoke AI agents for legal work 1

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