Legal AI Lab Special: Inside the Freshfields Lab in Berlin

Most law firms buy their legal AI. Freshfields builds its own, in a lab in Berlin.

In this Legal AI Lab Special we went to Berlin for a tour of the Freshfields Lab. Lawyers, developers and data scientists work side by side there to build the AI tools the firm uses worldwide. It started with a hard problem. During the German diesel mass claims, paper arrived in every office and every conference room was filled with people typing it into Excel sheets. Today that runs through one secure platform that connects ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, and adds the firm’s own knowledge, templates and skills on top.

Freshfields is the only law firm working directly with Anthropic, after starting with Google Cloud. That gives the lab access to engineers and to models that are not yet released. In return, the AI companies learn what a law firm needs: very long context, heavy document uploads and data separated per client.

The team also explains why they built instead of buying Harvey or Legora, why leaderboards for skills and usage work, and why they see the real value in better work rather than faster work. Juniors use AI as a tutor, and the people who build the tools see lawyers lining up with ideas.

You’ll learn

• why one platform with every major model beats committing to a single vendor
• what makes a general LLM useful for lawyers: firm knowledge, templates and skills
• what Freshfields gets from working with Anthropic and Google, and what they learn in return
• why AI changes the scope of a due diligence, not only its speed
• how juniors use AI as a sparring partner instead of calling a colleague

Chapters

00:00 Welcome to the Freshfields Lab in Berlin

00:51 From paper rooms to AI: the diesel mass claims

01:52 One secure platform for every model

02:31 Why the lawyer’s knowledge makes the difference

03:00 Leaderboards for skills and usage

03:19 Partnering with Google and Anthropic

04:40 What a law firm asks of an AI lab

05:10 Building instead of buying Harvey or Legora

06:08 Better work, not just faster work

06:51 What lawyers get out of it

07:26 AI as a tutor for juniors

08:12 More technologists inside law firms

08:40 Universities that still ban AI

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