gunnercooke

gunnercooke, a UK-based law firm operating on a trusted advisor model with value-based pricing, faced the challenge common to mid-market firms in 2025: how to absorb AI into legal service delivery without undermining the strategic counsel and client relationships that define its practice. The firm's lean overhead structure and absence of billing targets created both an opportunity and an obligation — efficiency gains from AI should flow to clients, not pad margins. Without a structured approach to AI adoption, routine tasks like document review, legal research, and drafting would continue consuming lawyer time that could otherwise be spent on higher-value client work.

Following an evaluation process led by a group of internal Innovation Partners, gunnercooke selected Legora as its firmwide AI platform after conducting side-by-side trials of multiple AI solutions over the summer of 2025. Legora is purpose-built for the legal sector and leverages large language models and generative AI to support document review and drafting, bulk document analysis, automated workflows for multi-step legal tasks, legal research, and collaborative workspaces. Critically, the platform operates with law firm-grade security, keeping confidentiality front-and-centre — a non-negotiable requirement for any firmwide deployment. Legora, which recently won Technology Product or Service of the Year at the Legal Technology Awards and is used by hundreds of leading law firms globally, was made available to all gunnercooke lawyers following the successful trials.

The firmwide rollout proceeded following trials, with internal feedback described by Chief of Staff Hayden Cooke as "electric." While specific productivity metrics have not been disclosed, the qualitative signal is strong:

• Firmwide availability achieved following a structured summer trial process
• Lawyer sentiment reported as highly positive across career stages
• Strategic positioning: the firm expects to pass AI efficiency gains directly to clients, reinforcing its value-pricing model

gunnercooke is continuing to invest in its Tech and Innovation functions, with new hires planned. The focus now shifts to change management — supporting lawyers at every career stage through the workflow transition.

• A structured side-by-side vendor trial led by internal Innovation Partners — rather than top-down selection — builds practitioner buy-in before rollout begins.
• Law firm-grade security must be a baseline requirement, not a differentiator, when evaluating legal AI platforms.
• Firms with lean overhead and value-based pricing models are structurally better positioned to pass AI efficiency gains to clients rather than absorb them internally.
• Firmwide rollout requires active change management at every career level; technology adoption in legal services is as much a people problem as a systems problem.
• GenAI in legal work is most effective when applied to routine task automation, freeing senior lawyers to concentrate expertise where it creates client value.