Law firms vie for tech talent in AI race
By Sara Merken
Sept 24 (Reuters) - (Billable Hours is Reuters' weekly report on lawyers and money. Please send tips or suggestions to D.Thomas@thomsonreuters.com)
As major companies and startups compete to hire engineers and data scientists to fuel the AI boom, David Wang is hoping to lure technologists to his law firm instead.
Cooley, where Wang serves as chief innovation officer, is hiring for more than a dozen high-tech positions amid an escalating AI push at big law firms. The Palo Alto-based firm this month unveiled a new subsidiary it describes as a “firm-owned artificial intelligence company,” Cooley AI, to build internal tools for its lawyers and reshape how it delivers legal services.
Wang said Cooley AI will be managed like a startup but integrated with the law firm's decision-making, a mix he said could appeal to AI and other experts who want a job that lets them apply their work directly to legal challenges.
"You want people that want to work on really frontier difficult problems, and that is something that is hard for a law firm to promise," he said.
The pitch to technical and legal talent is that Cooley AI is the "best of both worlds," Wang said, connecting hires with the law firm's business while offering meaningful work on cutting-edge AI issues.
The launch of Cooley AI coincided with the firm's September 17 announcement of a product developed with OpenAI to help companies go public, for use by the firm’s attorneys in client work.
It was timed with OpenAI's release of a legal industry-focused version of its latest AI technology, GPT-6 Astra, that it said is designed to help law firms and legal software providers conduct research, draft advice and build custom applications for lawyers. OpenAI said it has also been working with other big law firms on new tools, including Ropes & Gray and Sullivan & Cromwell.
Law firms across the board are hiring technologists and strategists to staff AI and technology teams. Covington & Burling; Cravath, Swaine & Moore; Latham & Watkins; Kirkland & Ellis; McGuireWoods; Mayer Brown and White & Case are among those that are currently advertising AI-related job roles on LinkedIn. Salaries range per position, with one firm offering up to $438,000 for a director of applied AI.
Cooley, known for its work advising technology and life sciences companies, is currently hiring for 14 roles within Cooley AI, including for senior engineers. At least four hires have already joined, including from other law firms, according to LinkedIn posts.
Wang said Cooley AI just hired an engineer from Adobe and that other hires are in the works from large technology companies and startups.
He declined to comment on compensation for new hires but said that "the market price is the market price. We're planning to be competitive."
The firm's advertised salary ranges on LinkedIn included $220,000 to $250,000 for a senior AI data engineer. That pay would be roughly commensurate to a first-year lawyer's salary at Cooley and other large firms.
The race among law firms to incorporate AI has led some firms to publicize their spending on the technology. Kirkland & Ellis in May said it plans to devote $500 million of its revenue to developing a custom AI platform over the next three to four years. Personal injury firm Morgan & Morgan has committed at least $1 billion over the next decade, the firm said this month.
Cooley declined to comment about the scale of its investment in Cooley AI.
Some law firms, meanwhile, are losing lawyers to AI companies. Forty-six lawyers from the top 200 highest-grossing firms in the United States in the first half of 2026 moved to companies including Harvey, Anthropic and OpenAI, according to a report published on Thursday by legal analytics company Firm Prospects.
SEYFARTH SUED AFTER DISCLOSING DATA SECURITY BREACH
Law firm Seyfarth Shaw was sued on Thursday by a former employee of one of the law firm's clients who said a recently disclosed cybersecurity incident exposed sensitive personal information belonging to more than 56,000 people.
The proposed class action was filed in federal court in Chicago shortly after the firm reported the breach to state regulators. The plaintiff is a former employee of AAA Mountain West Group, according to the lawsuit.
The Chicago-founded firm in a statement on Thursday said "there was no malware and our network and systems were not breached." The firm said "someone impersonating our IT help desk targeted a single employee, and a limited number of documents were sent to an unauthorized email account."
3M ORDERED TO PAY $296,000 TO ILLINOIS' LAWYERS AT DICELLO LEVITT
A federal judge in Illinois has ordered 3M to pay nearly $296,000 in legal fees to plaintiffs firm DiCello Levitt, which is representing the state on a contingency basis in a lawsuit alleging contamination from "forever chemicals." US District Judge Sara Darrow in the federal court in Rock Island, Illinois, ruled that the contingency-fee lawyers could recover fees for work related to 3M's unsuccessful effort to move the case from state to federal court.
The judge awarded DiCello Levitt $295,933 for about 285 hours of work on the removal dispute. Darrow said courts within the 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals have allowed such awards, even though the appeals court has not directly addressed the issue.
Illinois sued 3M in 2022 over alleged contamination of drinking water, soil and air. 3M has denied wrongdoing and has appealed the ruling sending the case back to Illinois state court. The company opposed the state's recovery of fees. 3M and the Illinois attorney general’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
On Billable Hour’s radar this week…
-- In the era of AI, law firms are placing a greater emphasis on relationship-building as a key competitive advantage, our columnist Sara Randazzo writes.
-- Private equity-backed national accounting firm Sorren said it has launched an affiliated law firm, the latest example of accounting firms expanding into legal services.
-- Former star Supreme Court lawyer Tom Goldstein will remain in jail while he appeals his conviction in federal court for tax crimes and other fraud.
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