Salim Feghali: ‘We build the solution with the client’

Salim Feghali started his career at Bloomberg, where he translated complex financial markets for international audiences, explaining how data drives the decisions that shape businesses and economies.  

From there, he put his knowledge into practice, developing technological solutions to give leading organisations the competitive edge through improved operational efficiency.  

Now, he’s the head of data science for Linklaters’ Applied Intelligence practice group, where he leads the data scientists focused on designing bespoke AI solutions for clients that are as trustworthy as they are powerful.  

In this interview, he describes his unique position – and what makes the Linklaters approach to AI so valuable for clients. 

Q: Can you tell us about your role at Linklaters? 

Salim Feghali: “I lead the data science side of Applied Intelligence, working alongside senior lawyers to turn their legal judgement into engineered systems from prompt and context design through to scaled architecture and algorithmic quality control. What I enjoy most is that it's genuinely joint problem-solving: lawyers and data scientists shape the solution together, from the first validated output right through to running at scale.” 

Q: What makes Linklaters' R&D function different? 

SF: “Our R&D happens in parallel to live client problems, not in a lab. Data scientists iterate directly with senior lawyers, so every solution is grounded in real legal and commercial context from day one. We also hold ourselves to an exceptionally high standard of rigour. We know the importance of ensuring the accuracy of the output and ensuring human oversight.  

For example, on a recent matter, reviewing our agent logs revealed the AI wasn't accurately reporting the sources it had actually used. That discovery drove an immediate pivot to a more deterministic, lawyer-led design with an algorithmic quality-control layer that catches hallucinations before any output reaches a lawyer. And the work compounds. That same exercise produced an internal tool we can now redeploy across similar matters.” 

Q: When do bespoke AI solutions add the most value for clients? 

SF: “Bespoke AI adds the most value on high-value, high-volume problems, where the insight a client needs is buried in vast volumes of data, or where the challenge presents a unique set of demands that can't readily be resolved with off-the-shelf solutions. In those situations, we build the solution around the client's specific business activities, with our lawyers' judgement engineered into our solutions at every stage of the process. The result is that clients get the speed and scale of automation without sacrificing legal rigor."