DLA Piper cuts due diligence workload by 80% with C3 Generative AI

Due diligence is one of the most document-intensive workflows in corporate law, requiring attorneys to review hundreds or thousands of contracts, filings, and disclosure documents under tight deal timelines. At DLA Piper — a global firm operating across dozens of jurisdictions — this meant senior lawyers routinely absorbed hours of administrative review work that displaced capacity for substantive legal analysis and client advisory. The status quo created a bottleneck: deal velocity was constrained not by legal complexity, but by the volume of documents that had to be manually read and summarized before meaningful legal judgment could be applied.

DLA Piper partnered with C3 Generative AI to deploy a large language model-based due diligence solution integrated into existing legal workflows. The system uses generative AI to ingest, analyze, and summarize contract and disclosure documents, automatically surfacing key clauses, risk flags, and material findings that attorneys previously had to extract manually. Rather than replacing attorney judgment, the tool front-loads document processing so lawyers receive structured summaries ready for legal review. DLA Piper is also part of a broader Microsoft partnership providing AI services across the firm, situating this deployment within an enterprise-wide AI adoption strategy rather than a one-off experiment.

The due diligence workflow reduction reached up to 80% in time spent on document review tasks — a significant throughput gain on a workflow that previously consumed substantial attorney hours per transaction. Qualitative outcomes include reallocation of lawyer capacity toward higher-value client-facing work and more complex legal analysis. The firm joins peers including Clifford Chance and Allen & Overy in operationalizing AI on administrative workflows:

• 80% reduction in due diligence exercise time
• Attorney capacity redirected from document processing to substantive legal work
• Deployment positions DLA Piper as an early mover among global firms integrating generative AI into transactional practice

• Start with high-volume, repeatable tasks: Due diligence is an ideal AI entry point because it involves structured, repetitive document review with clear outputs — making gains measurable and rollout defensible.
• AI augments rather than replaces legal judgment: The 80% efficiency gain came from automating extraction, not decision-making — attorneys still apply judgment to AI-surfaced findings.
• Hallucination risk requires process design: Deploying generative AI in legal contexts demands review protocols to catch inaccuracies before they affect client advice.
• Firm-wide AI partnerships accelerate adoption: DLA Piper's Microsoft relationship provided infrastructure that made targeted deployments like C3 easier to justify and scale.