Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer

Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer — formed in June 2025 through the combination of Herbert Smith Freehills and Kramer Levin — operates with 2,700 lawyers across 26 offices globally. At that scale, the firm faced a familiar enterprise legal challenge: fragmented AI adoption across pilots and specialist tools without a unifying general-purpose layer. Drafting, document analysis, summarisation, and client collaboration workflows lacked a common platform. Without firmwide governance and consistent tooling, productivity gains remained siloed, upskilling efforts were inconsistent, and delivering AI-powered value directly to clients was not yet possible.

The firm selected Legora — positioned as an 'intelligent legal colleague' — as its firmwide general-purpose AI platform, built on large language models and generative AI. Legora is being rolled out in phases across the business, covering drafting, document analysis, insight generation, data analysis, summarisation, and translation. The firm also plans to adopt Legora's client portal for secure collaboration, file sharing, and AI-powered client delivery. Legora integrates into an existing legal technology stack that includes Harvey (specialist legal AI), Relativity (eDiscovery), Wexler.ai, and Cicero — extending the firm's AI coverage without replacing specialist tools. Global CEO Justin D'Agostino linked the deployment explicitly to a parallel programme of lawyer training and internal standards for AI use.

The firmwide deployment establishes a general-purpose AI layer that complements the firm's existing specialist tools, advancing what the firm calls its Digital Legal Delivery practice across global regions. Key outcomes from the rollout include:

• Unified AI access across 2,700 lawyers in 26 offices through a single platform
• Client-facing AI delivery enabled via the planned Legora client portal for secure collaboration and document exchange
• Portfolio coherence: Legora fills the general-purpose gap alongside Harvey, Relativity, Wexler.ai, and Cicero
• Chief AI Officer alignment: Ilona Logvinova, appointed as the firm's first Chief AI Officer, identified Legora as central to the firm's AI strategy

• A portfolio approach — pairing specialist tools for eDiscovery and document review with a general-purpose AI assistant for drafting and knowledge work — is emerging as the standard architecture for large law firms.
• Client-facing AI portals are becoming a competitive differentiator, extending AI value beyond internal efficiency to direct, AI-powered client delivery.
• Phased rollout with governance matters: the firm tied technology investment to lawyer upskilling and internal usage standards from day one, not as an afterthought.
• Appointing dedicated AI leadership (e.g. a Chief AI Officer) helps ensure AI strategy is coherent, not a collection of disconnected vendor pilots.