AI has already transformed how we work, solve complex challenges and deliver value for clients – and few people have played a bigger role in that journey than director of AI delivery and co-founder of Applied Intelligence, Sarah Barnard.
With more than 14 years' experience in legal practice advising on risk, regulation and governance, Sarah was uniquely placed to shape how the firm adopts new technology to tackle time-intensive tasks so our senior lawyers can focus on what they do best: judgement, strategy, creativity and understanding what their clients are trying to achieve.
Here, she explains how she’s executed the Linklaters AI strategy across the firm – and what she’s doing to ensure future talent have the skills they need to capitalise on it.
Sarah Barnard: “AI adoption is a change management exercise nested in an ever-looping technology rollout – the two elements are inextricable. To lead that charge, I recruited the most persuasive people I could find – lawyers from within Linklaters who inherently understand our ways of working, because prior to becoming part of the first AI lawyer team in the city, they practiced in the groups they now support. Because the pace of change in AI is so rapid, I took the view that building knowledge of AI as we went along was easier than establishing credibility within the practice. That approach has delivered real momentum. Our global community of AI lawyers has grown by nearly 50% since its inception, and we are now using matter-level data to understand how AI is embedded in people’s working habits – and where we need to intervene.”
SB: “It challenges us to answer the question of what a lawyer is uniquely able to do. AI can now undertake the first pass of mark-ups, manage standard processes, research and conduct document review. That allows lawyers to spend more time on judgement, strategy, creativity and understanding what the client is actually trying to achieve – at a much earlier stage than historically would have been the case. We are also exploring different ways to distil and convey knowledge, not just written knowhow and guidance, but tacit knowledge acquired through experience. For me, that isn’t about making lawyers less important. It is an opportunity to make legal careers more interesting and our advice more consistent, accessible and valuable.”
SB: “In great detail. AI represents a fundamental challenge to one of the core mechanisms through which legal knowledge was previously conveyed – the learning-by-doing that historically occurred when juniors worked through document review, first-pass research, cite-checking, and more. That work was never just billable units. It was the substrate on which judgement, taste and pattern recognition formed. There are a range of routes through that Linklaters is implementing to substitute explicit senior-to-junior transmission for what used to happen tacitly via the work itself. This aspect of training is not about becoming an expert in AI. It is about ensuring our future lawyers have the judgement, creativity, stamina and flair to maintain Linklaters’ calibre.”
SB: “Logins and average use statistics are useful, but they are not the same as transformation. We need to know whether people are using AI consistently, whether it is changing how matters are staffed and delivered, and whether the result is better for the client. That is why we have pushed for increasingly granular data from our vendors – not to produce attractive dashboards, but so that we can identify what works, intervene where necessary and connect adoption to pricing and resourcing decisions. For me, successful adoption is when AI stops being an additional activity and simply becomes part of how excellent legal work gets done.”
