Willkie Farr & Gallagher and OpenAI are collaborating to develop and deploy artificial intelligence tools across the firm in a landmark legal industry partnership.
The deal marks OpenAI’s first major legal sector announcement since the company hired Jason Boehmig, the founder of contract management platform Ironclad, to build products specifically for lawyers.
Willkie will roll out ChatGPT Enterprise across the firm and use OpenAI models to further develop its existing Wendell Intelligence AI platform, where attorneys conduct their daily legal work.
Wendell Intelligence is part of the firm’s Willkie Works suite of programs, helping lawyers find information, analyse legal issues, and draft documents at speed.
The firm also operates the Wendell Class Action Claimant Platform, and plans to build AI systems that connect across multiple tools for clients.
Boehmig described the collaboration as sitting at the “cutting edge” of OpenAI’s work with the legal industry, saying: “This is as high as you go in terms of the access and partnership and pathfinding.”
John Elbasan, chief digital and information officer at Willkie, said the firm had built the foundations necessary to turn frontier AI into genuine business tools for attorneys and clients alike.
Elbasan said: “Through Willkie Works, we have invested in the people, governance frameworks and engineering capabilities necessary to transform frontier AI technologies into proprietary platforms that support legal and business workflows across the firm.”
Kaylin Voss, vice president of Americas enterprise and industries at OpenAI, said Willkie had demonstrated “a thoughtful and ambitious approach” to bringing AI into law practice.
The firm had already rolled out both the legal tech system Harvey and LexisNexis’s AI platform Protégé within the last year, and attorneys remain heavy users of Harvey going forward.
Willkie says it will continue to buy third-party AI tools where it makes sense, but intends to differentiate itself through custom-built platforms sitting on the firm’s own proprietary data.
Elbasan signalled that the long-term payoff lies beyond basic efficiency improvements, saying: “Efficiency will come, but the real appetite is we have a treasure trove of data that we want to make actionable.”
The AI platform’s name carries an pointed historical irony, given the platform is named after Wendell Willkie, the firm’s namesake and the 1940 Republican presidential nominee defeated by Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Wendell Willkie was historically known as a fierce opponent of political accommodation and authoritarian tendencies, and was only at the firm for three years before his political career took hold.
Sources familiar with the matter previously told the Los Angeles Times that Doug Emhoff had told the firm’s leadership he disagreed with their decision to make a deal with the Trump administration.