Troutman Pepper

With more than 1,100 attorneys operating across 22 offices nationwide, Troutman Pepper faced a familiar but acute challenge for large law firms: attorneys were spending substantial time on high-volume, repeatable tasks — document summarization, content drafting, legal analysis, and research synthesis — that consumed billable hours without proportionate strategic value. As client expectations for faster turnaround times and transparent pricing intensified, the firm needed a way to reclaim attorney capacity for complex, judgment-intensive work. Without a structured AI solution, these inefficiencies would continue to compound across every practice group and matter type.

Rather than licensing a third-party tool, Troutman Pepper built Athena, a proprietary generative AI assistant powered by large language models, deployed firmwide after a deliberate governance process. The firm formed a dedicated Generative AI Task Force to establish ethics guardrails, usage policies, and mandatory training programs before rollout — ensuring adoption would not outpace risk management. Athena's initial capabilities spanned document summarization, legal drafting, brainstorming, timeline visualization, and image generation. A subsequent module, AthenaIQ, added retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) for document retrieval against internal matter files. The platform was later extended to mobile via MobileOne, broadening access for attorneys working outside the office. Athena was integrated alongside the firm's existing legal technology stack, including its eDiscovery subsidiary, Troutman Pepper eMerge.

Within the first year of firmwide launch, Athena reached 1,000+ active users — more than 40% of all attorneys and professional staff. Depth of engagement matched breadth: over 60% of users engaged with Athena at least five times, indicating habitual adoption rather than one-time curiosity. Qualitative outcomes reinforced the metrics:

• Attorneys reported meaningful reductions in time spent on routine tasks
• Clients cited improved turnaround times and enhanced service quality
• The firm received external validation when the Financial Times ranked Troutman Pepper among the top 25 most innovative law firms

The tool also strengthened the firm's position when advising clients navigating their own AI adoption decisions.

• Governance before deployment: Forming a task force to define ethics guardrails and training requirements before launch was central to building firm-wide trust and achieving high adoption rates.
• Breadth drives depth: Designing Athena to address multiple task types across diverse practice groups — rather than a single workflow — produced both wider reach and more frequent repeat usage.
• Build vs. buy carries reputational value: Proprietary tooling gave the firm credibility when counseling clients on AI strategy, turning an internal investment into a client-facing differentiator.
• Governance frameworks scale: The task force model created reusable infrastructure for evaluating and extending AI capabilities, reducing friction for future additions like AthenaIQ and MobileOne.