Source: KCL
In a significant move that signals the growing importance of AI literacy in legal practice, Linklaters has partnered with The Dickson Poon School of Law at King’s College London to launch an innovative GenAI Expert Training Programme. This collaboration comes at a crucial time, as LexisNexis research reveals that 40% of lawyers are already extensively using artificial intelligence in their work.
The weekend-long intensive program, led by Professor Dan Hunter, Executive Dean of The Dickson Poon School of Law, takes a unique approach to AI training. Rather than requiring prior computing experience, the program focuses on practical application and real-world problem-solving through workshops and a culminating hackathon.
“It was fantastic to run this innovative training programme alongside Linklaters,” says Professor Hunter. “We live and work in a rapidly changing legal and technical landscape, and equipping legal professionals with the tools to utilize GenAI in their practice is vital to ensure we can keep up with these developments.”
What sets this program apart is its emphasis on immediate practical application. Participants, representing diverse roles within Linklaters, work on authentic business challenges with the aim of implementing solutions at an organizational level. The training covers technical basics of machine learning, generative AI architecture, and methods for understanding large language model usage in legal practice.
Laura Hodgson, Generative AI Lead at Linklaters, highlights the program’s impact: “The training and hackathon provided by the King’s College London team was incredible – we took a mixed group of lawyers and business team members and trained them in how to use GenAI effectively over the weekend. The Linklaters team was blown away by the quality of the training.”
The program’s accessibility to non-technical professionals is particularly noteworthy. As Daniel Bhalla, a Banking Lawyer and Managing Associate at Linklaters, notes, “As somebody who doesn’t come from a coding background, it was really eye-opening that you can use plain English to generate prompts and get LLMs to do what you want them to do.”
Looking ahead, Shilpa Bhandarkar, Partner for Client Tech and AI at Linklaters, sees this as part of a broader strategic initiative: “This unique collaboration underlines the firm’s continued commitment to investing in GenAI. Offering a global cohort of our people the opportunity to learn from leading academics and each other will help embed GenAI expertise across our business.”
The success of this program demonstrates how law firms can effectively bridge the gap between academic expertise and practical implementation of AI technologies. By focusing on real-world applications and making AI accessible to legal professionals regardless of their technical background, this collaboration sets a new standard for legal technology training in the industry.
Read more: KCL
