Clifford Chance reaches 90% AI adoption across global workforce

Before 2025, only about two-thirds of Clifford Chance employees actively used AI tools, limiting the firm's ability to scale AI across legal and support work. Traditional back-office functions in finance, HR, and IT remained labor-intensive even as generative AI became available firm-wide. The firm needed a structured way to surface, govern, and prioritize AI use cases against clear principles of fairness, transparency, accountability, and privacy.

Clifford Chance was among the first organizations globally to deploy Microsoft Copilot for 365 and Viva Suite at scale across its entire workforce, and later built a private firm tool—Clifford Chance Assist—on Microsoft's Azure OpenAI platform. Lawyers formed grassroots innovation groups and prototype agents, including a Regulatory Compliance Agent that tracks changing laws and generates impact assessments, contract analysis tools for document review, and research assistants for legal research. AI Steering Groups identified over 400 use cases in FY24, reviewed them against the firm's AI Principles, and prioritized firm-wide delivery; the firm is also exploring Microsoft Copilot Studio and participating in Microsoft's Frontier Firm AI Initiative.

Active AI adoption rose to 90% of employees, up from roughly 66% before 2025, with CTO Paul Greenwood noting that pretty much everyone now uses AI. By April 2024 the firm was already seeing over 60% daily Copilot adoption. The transformation has also reshaped support functions: London business services headcount is being cut by 10%, with about 50 roles made redundant and up to 35 others facing changes in finance, HR, and IT.

• • Firm-wide Copilot deployment plus a private Azure OpenAI assistant can drive near-universal active AI use in a Magic Circle firm
• • Grassroots innovation groups and AI Steering Groups help surface hundreds of use cases while keeping delivery aligned to governance principles
• • High adoption can coincide with structural change in back-office roles as AI absorbs traditional support work