Business of law: case studies

Read the other FT Innovative Lawyers Asia-Pacific ‘Best practice case studies’, which showcase the standout innovations made for and by people working in the legal sector:

Practice of law
In-house

STANDOUT

Latham & Watkins: Winner
Originality: 7; Leadership: 9; Impact: 9; Total: 25
In 2024, the US firm’s strong revenues vindicated its initiative to co-ordinate resources in line with clients seeking cross-border advice. The OneAsia strategy has over five years increased collaboration between its Asian offices, which formerly operated independently with only informal co-operation in areas such as recruitment. The firm now has a centralised management structure in the region, in which legal, professional and support staff are shared. The strategy is credited by the firm with allowing it to buck the trend of US firms cutting Asia-Pacific headcount.

MinterEllison
O: 8; L: 8; I: 8; Total: 24
The Australian firm set up its Applied Innovation division within its consulting business, launched in October 2024. The venture aims to combine expertise across AI research, legal practice, behavioural science, software engineering, and ergonomic design to improve tools available both in-house and to clients. Innovations include proprietary e-discovery software and a tool for drafting visa eligibility assessments.

HIGHLY COMMENDED

Eversheds Sutherland and King & Wood Mallesons
O: 7; L: 8; I: 8; Total: 23
The firms have a formal reciprocal referral scheme, where King & Wood Mallesons refers outbound China work to Eversheds, which in turn refers inbound China work to KWM. Agreed in July 2023, Eversheds reports nearly 700 referrals since launch.

Mori Hamada
O: 8; L: 8; I: 6; Total: 22
The Japanese firm has introduced a service that analyses and clarifies legal regulations in Indonesia. As well as cross-checking rules issued by different ministries, it monitors upcoming policy changes to assess potential impact on investors.

JunHe
O: 6; L: 8; I: 8; Total: 22
The Chinese firm has created a “prospecting team” of partners to use their experience and networks to identify areas where the firm can bring in new work from outside the country. The team enabled the firm to expand its presence in regions including the Middle East, and to attract new clients in specialist practice areas such as electric vehicles and fintech.

COMMENDED

Pinsent Masons
O: 8; L: 7; I: 6; Total: 21
The firm’s flexible resourcing arm Vario expanded its service to include offering clients in Australia access to freelance construction staff, including quantity surveyors and project managers.

Tilleke & Gibbens
O: 5; L: 7; I: 7 Total: 19
The Thai firm reconfigured its technology, media and telecoms practice for an initiative to advise several global tech groups on multibillion-dollar investments in data centres. It assembled specialists in data privacy, employment, licensing, foreign investment, and land ownership.

STANDOUT

King & Wood Mallesons: Winner
Originality: 8; Leadership: 9; Impact: 8; Total: 25
The Chinese-Australian firm developed a tool to extract and compare commercial terms from its clients’ financial agreements, giving its banking and finance practice better access to information that can inform its position in deals and negotiations.

The system, integrated with the firm’s proprietary AI chat service, significantly cuts the time it takes a junior lawyer to review and analyse pertinent data and gives a clearer view of trends in relevant areas of dealmaking.

Corrs Chambers Westgarth
O: 7; L: 8; I: 9; Total: 24
The firm created a new mergers and acquisitions database for analysing public deal data assembled by its lawyers. The process is faster and more flexible than previous iterations of the research, and the information can be presented visually and categorised by industry, geography, time period and other factors.

The new resource, developed in-house by the corporate team and the head of data and automation, was used to produce the firm’s 2025 M&A Outlook report, in the 14th annual edition published November 2024. This task now takes one-tenth of the more than 1,000 hours of data input and analysis work it previously demanded, says the firm.

HIGHLY COMMENDED

Ashurst
O: 8; L: 7; I: 7; Total: 22
The firm’s Obligation Management Solution is a regularly updated digital register that helps clients manage compliance demands by translating complex legal requirements into plain English.

Development started two-and-a-half years ago. By 2024, it had gathered momentum and had consolidated more than 5,000 relevant compliance obligations from more than 500 sources and attracted 16 corporate users. Built in-house, the OMS offers regulatory updates and help desk advice, helping to free up internal teams and streamlining compliance.

COMMENDED

Anderson Mori
O: 7; L: 7; I: 6; Total: 20
The firm worked with a technology company on the development of Legal Brain, an AI-powered research platform launched in Japan in 2024. The firm advised on design, regulatory compliance, and user interface, and says feedback suggests a potential 50 per cent to 60 per cent time saving for some research tasks.

Gilbert + Tobin
O: 6; L: 7; I: 7; Total: 20
G+T piloted a new proprietary software system for e-discovery in live client matters. Where conventional tech-assisted review relies on coding documents for algorithms to “learn” from, a new generation of tech is using generative AI to predict coding decisions, enabling greater speed and lower costs.

King & Wood Mallesons
O: 7; L: 6; I: 7; Total: 20
The firm developed a dashboard to track and visualise internal adoption of generative AI, measuring real-time usage, prompt types, training completed, and team-level trends.

Pinsent Masons
O: 5; L: 8; I: 7; Total: 20
Pinsent Masons worked with the Asian Development Bank to develop a system to automate document preparation when dealing with commercial rather than sovereign counterparties. The integrated application, rolled out in 2024, has cut time spent on preparing documents.

A&O Shearman
O: 6; L: 7; I: 6; Total: 19
To reassure clients over worries about Hong Kong’s appeal as an independent forum for dispute resolution and a source of governing law for contracts, the firm carried out research that: drew on judgment data from Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal; compared arbitration centres in Hong Kong and Singapore; and ran a partner survey.

STANDOUT

Corrs Chambers Westgarth: Winner
Originality: 8; Leadership: 8;
Impact: 8; Total: 24
The Australian firm created a client management programme for 40 high-performing senior associates and special counsel. Its launch, in 2024, involved the creation of two new roles: client relationship special counsel and client relationship senior associates.

Lawyers in these positions are assigned to relationship teams and commit to training that aims to disseminate senior partners’ expertise in dealing with their most valued clients in a structured way across the firm.

Partners lead regular training that includes role-play sessions to help junior lawyers to develop negotiation and pitching skills, along with guidance on managing client relationships.

The objective is to help develop broader business acumen and understanding of clients’ needs, to build business, and also help staff on the path to partnership.

HIGHLY COMMENDED

MinterEllison
O: 8; L: 7; I: 8; Total: 23
From January to March 2024, the firm offered 12 hours of fee-credited time to encourage lawyers to explore the use of generative artificial intelligence. The programme included modules on prompting basics, AI’s use in business operations, the safe use of AI and the science of legal prompt engineering.

Nearly 1,400 people completed at least one of these modules, and about 3,800 hours were spent in total, says the firm.

About two-thirds of its staff are now using generative AI at least once a week, compared with MinterEllison’s ultimate target of 80 per cent.

Gilbert + Tobin
O: 6; L: 8; I: 8; Total: 22
Last year the firm launched a programme to boost the use of generative AI, with extensive training offered to all employees.

Supervised by an AI steering committee, it included sessions in using off-the-shelf tools and Gilbert + Tobin’s own proprietary GilBot service, as well as external masterclasses for clients’ in-house lawyers, and structured pilots for other AI legal technologies.

Pinsent Masons
O: 6; L: 8; I: 8; Total: 22
As part of the firm’s drive to expand in Asia-Pacific, its business development team last year launched a 12-month programme to help externally-hired partners and their teams to integrate quickly into the firm and meet revenue targets.

The scheme provides support in areas such as professional development and market knowledge, and involves regular check-ins with the region’s heads of human resources and business development, the chief operations officer and the global partner coach.

Following feedback from participants, the firm has rolled the scheme out globally.

COMMENDED

Atsumi & Sakai
O: 8; L: 7; I: 5; Total: 20
In partnership with Japan’s Kyoto University and consultancy Deloitte Tohmatsu, the firm helped develop a conversational AI system that aims to reproduce the expertise, personality and teaching style of Tatsuhiko Inatani, a professor at the university’s graduate law school.

Trained on unpublished lectures and personal notes, the tool offers law students interactive access to expert guidance while preserving institutional knowledge.

Ashurst
O: 6; L: 7; I: 6; Total: 19
The firm’s global development team created Propel, a training programme to improve lawyers’ sales skills.

Launched in Australia last year and now rolled out globally across 26 offices, the initiative aims to teach lawyers how to identify and develop sales opportunities and build relationships with the most valued clients.

STANDOUT

Nishimura & Asahi: Winner
Originality: 8; Leadership: 9; Impact: 8; Total: 25
The firm has overhauled the way in which its lawyers and other staff work to improve the management of its people across the whole business.

A new structure introduced in 2022 broke with the tradition of one lawyer directly instructing another staff member, long the norm in Japanese law firms. Instead, support staff now report to a greater number of managers, allowing them more movement, flexibility, and opportunity to be promoted. The impact at the firm, one of Japan’s Big Four, became clear in 2024, with greater staff mobility and increased promotions for junior employees. Staff turnover has fallen, with attrition rates dropping from more than 8 per cent in 2022 to just over 6 per cent in 2024, the firm says.

Linklaters
O: 8; L: 9; I: 7; Total: 24
Last year the firm introduced its programme to attract late-stage law students at Asian universities from deprived and minority backgrounds. The scheme, launched in 2024 after opening for applications in 2023, builds on similar initiatives in the US and Europe.

It aims to prepare participants to apply for the Linklaters graduate recruitment scheme through coaching, work experience and financial support. The initiative, which had 16 participants last year, now covers 11 Asia-Pacific and Middle East offices.

HIGHLY COMMENDED

Khaitan & Co
O: 7; L: 8; I: 7; Total: 22
The Indian firm introduced its Arise workplace diversity and inclusion scheme in 2019, which continues to develop, led by a 25-member voluntary committee. Over the past year, the initiative has conducted a range of events and activities aimed at challenging disadvantages caused by gender, sexual orientation, disability and mental health.

Arise has also helped to drive the expansion of the Mental Health Advocacy Network for Legal Environments, an alliance of Indian law firms advocating for better mental wellbeing policies at work. Commended individual: Sukanya Hazarika

COMMENDED

Gilbert + Tobin
O: 6; L: 7; I: 7; Total: 20
Over the past decade, the Australian law firm has organised networking events to encourage Indigenous students to pursue successful careers in the profession.

Its annual First Nations Law Students Networking Event — the latest was held in April 2025 — aims to connect potential candidates in the New South Wales and Canberra regions with legal professionals in order to help them secure careers. The initiative is supported by Ngalaya, a charity that was founded by Indigenous lawyers to encourage better access to legal jobs.

Since the initiative was started in 2015, more than 20 participants have secured internships at the firm, with some also going on to work there.

Mori Hamada
O: 7; L: 7; I: 6; Total: 20
The firm’s inclusion task force, first formed in 2019, continues to expand its work. In 2024, the firm promoted the rollout of mandatory training in unconscious bias among senior lawyers and management, and it continues to promote a range of networking schemes aimed at women, and people of different cultural backgrounds, sexual orientation and disabilities.

Nishimura & Asahi
O: 6; L: 7; I: 6; Total: 19
In 2024, the firm’s professional assistance department adopted a legal-matter based assignment structure to replace its lawyer-secretary system.

STANDOUT

Khaitan & Co: Winner
Originality: 8; Leadership: 9; Impact: 8; Total: 25
The Indian firm is following a “build not buy” strategy, preferring to develop its own suite of artificial intelligence tools, known collectively as KAI, based on broader cloud computing and proprietary AI services that are designed to fully protect clients’ confidentiality.

A suite of services, launched across the firm in March 2024, includes a secure conversational platform with an innovative “prompt library” for intelligent drafting; document analysis and data extraction; multilingual processing; and data categorisation. The services offered through KAI are regularly used by more than 70 per cent of Khaitan’s lawyers.

Gilbert + Tobin
O: 7; L: 9; I: 8; Total: 24
The Australian firm’s wide-ranging AI strategy covers training, support for lawyers using the technology, and for staff who are piloting and rolling out an extensive array of third-party products.

It also introduced its own GilBot proprietary generative AI tool in July 2024, which can be used for queries, document summaries and other functions such as reviewing commercial leases for Gilbert + Tobin’s property team. The firm says GilBot has been used by around 80 per cent of its people.

Trilegal
O: 8; L: 8; I: 8; Total: 24
Through its digital innovation group, the Indian firm has been working directly with domestic tech start-up Lucio to develop a suite of AI tools trained on legal data.

Among services developed collaboratively by the partnership, announced in November, are systems to track consents, provide chronological listing and enhanced search facilities for documents, and revision-tracking of amendments to work.

HIGHLY COMMENDED

Allen & Gledhill
O: 8; L: 9; I: 5; Total: 22
In collaboration with locally-based technology start-up Pand.ai, the Singaporean law firm is developing a large language model that is being trained exclusively on its own internal data in order to ensure that confidential information is retained in-house.

Ashurst
O: 6; L: 9; I: 7; Total: 22
Ashurst’s AI strategy aims to put the technology into the hands of everyone at the firm. In June 2024, tech company Harvey’s legal AI tool was released to all offices across the world simultaneously, with more than 4,500 people currently having access.

Some 60 per cent of the firm’s people use it regularly, for tasks such as summarising, creating first drafts, and translation.

COMMENDED

Mori Hamada
O: 6; L: 8; I: 6; Total: 20
The Japanese firm’s approach to AI includes using its own multilingual chatbot, MHM Chat, and working with legal technology company LegalOn to create a template library incorporating AI review for in-house teams.

WongPartnership
O: 6; L: 8; I: 6; Total: 20
The firm is the first headquartered in south-east Asia to introduce tech company Harvey’s generative AI system. It is encouraging all lawyers and staff to explore how it can be integrated into their daily work.

Rajah & Tann Singapore
O: 6; L: 7; I: 6; Total: 19
As well as collaborating with proprietary providers of legal generative AI services, the law firm is creating a searchable and comprehensive repository of court pleadings and documents, which it believes to be a first in Singapore.

STANDOUT

Yulchon: Winner
Originality: 8; Leadership: 9; Impact: 8; Total: 25
The firm has created a service that uses artificial intelligence to incorporate evolving financial regulations into clients’ corporate rule books. This makes clear precisely which executives are responsible for compliance with any given requirement.

Mapping out South Korea’s governance rules for financial institutions is an onerous task, with more than 80 laws entailing thousands of distinct responsibilities, and lends itself to an approach using AI on codifying clients’ standard operating procedures. By delivering accurate and readily updated compliance advice, this AI-driven subscription-based service helps Yulchon strengthen its relationship with clients while generating income.

Anand and Anand
O: 8; L: 8; I: 8; Total: 24
The Indian firm helps software company Bentley Systems tackle piracy and enforce its intellectual property rights in the country. Using “phoning home” technology — which detects unauthorised use of a client’s infrastructure engineering software — Anand and Anand’s lawyers secured favourable outcomes in more than 120 mediated and litigated cases in 2024, helping to secure $1.64mn in revenue for the client.

Inkling Legal Design
O: 9; L: 8; I: 7; Total: 24
The Australian law firm and design practice launched its Inkd service in late 2024, an AI-powered contract drafting tool designed to avoid the complex, US-style drafts that are usual in such systems. Inkling worked with Australia’s Grampians Health, a healthcare provider in Victoria state, to develop a chatbot that helps staff to assemble and negotiate contracts within set rules automatically. The system has significantly cut reading time and contract-drafting workloads, reports Inkling.

HIGHLY COMMENDED

GLS Law Firm
O: 8; L: 8; I: 6; Total: 22
GLS improved and expanded access to its Legal Operations Centre, a platform providing digital tools and legal templates covering 15 in-house legal tasks. Aimed at improving efficiency and reducing reliance on external counsel, the platform provides in-house lawyers with resources, training materials, and guidance. Clients report reduced legal spending and contract turnaround times.

PwC Asia-Pacific
O: 8; L: 7; I: 7; Total: 22
An in-house team at the firm developed a generative AI system for carrying out high-volume contract reviews for financial institutions, launched in November 2024. The system uses a series of AI prompts with human supervision to significantly cut time spent assessing regulatory compliance and transfer pricing requirements, and enabled comprehensive contract reviews.

COMMENDED

Johnson Stokes & Master
O: 8; L: 8; I: 5; Total: 21
The Hong Kong firm created a tool to make it easier to submit deals to industry awards competitions and directories. The revised platform uses document generation and data visualisation to improve submissions and collaboration between legal, marketing and business development staff.

Pinsent Masons
O: 6; L: 7; I: 6; Total: 19
The firm adapted a tool it developed in the UK to help clients report on gender pay gaps in the Australian market, aligning it with new reporting standards at the government’s Workplace Gender Equality Agency. The firm plans to adapt the tool for use across the Asia-Pacific region.