Linklaters teams up with KCL to deliver AI training for lawyers

Classroom lessons, practical exercises and hackathon

Linklaters has teamed up with King’s College London to deliver training on generative AI (GenAI) to its lawyers.

The programme, dubbed the ‘GenAI Expert Training course’, has been put together by Linklaters’ GenAI programme team in collaboration with The Dickson Poon School of Law at KCL.

The new scheme follows the previous training run by the Magic Circle firm which saw over 80% of the firm’s staff complete an introductory course. “The new GenAI Expert Training course aims to take proficiency to the next level as the sophistication of these tools continues to develop”, the firm said.

The goal of the new programme is to provide an “in-depth understanding of GenAI and prompt engineering” in the legal space, with lawyers receiving classroom sessions and undertaking practical learning exercises, including a hackathon.

Legal Cheek understands that the new training is not yet available to trainees, although recruits will be required to complete the foundation training.

Earlier in the summer the firm rolled out Microsoft 365’s Copilot, a GenAI tool, to offices across the globe.

Shilpa Bhandarkar, partner at Linklaters and head of the firm’s client tech and AI offering, commented:

“Offering a global cohort of our people the opportunity to learn from leading academics and each other will help embed GenAI expertise across our business. We’ve already built the foundation on which this cohort can now bring their knowledge and creativity, identifying use cases and designing solutions that will help them transform the way they work and deliver client service.”

Professor Dan Hunter, executive dean at The Dickson Poon School of Law at KCL added: “We live and work in a rapidly changing legal and technical landscape, and equipping legal professionals with the tools to be able to utilise GenAI in their practice is vital to ensure we can keep up with these developments. I look forward to seeing how participants navigate the risks, mitigations, benefits and ethical issues they are presented with when considering how they use GenAI in legal practice.”

News of the training follows research which found more than 40% of lawyers now use AI in their daily work, with the ability to complete tasks faster seen as the top benefit. The findings, collected by LexisNexis, highlighted additional benefits such as enhanced client service and gaining a competitive edge over rival firms.