August Wins Big Law Firm Hughes Hubbard

August, the broad legal AI platform mostly focused on medium- to small-scale law firms, has surprised the market and won AmLaw 200 firm Hughes Hubbard & Reed (HHR) as a key customer.

The firm, which has over $270m in revenue and is ranked around 150, has ‘selected August as its firmwide AI platform, deploying the technology across legal practice areas and core business functions, including finance, billing, marketing, operations and administration’.

Not all client wins are as important as others, but this one matters for two reasons. Harvey and Legora have been absorbing AmLaw 200 law firms as customers at an incredible rate. Meanwhile, August has founded its strategy on helping firms that are on a smaller scale, offering an affordable, but still very wide platform, packed with legal AI skills. So, for them to win HHR is an important step and shows they can attract the Big Law contingent as well as MidLaw and Small Law.

The move follows a four‑month evaluation and the firm, which has bases on four continents, said it had ‘sought a single, secure AI platform capable of supporting lawyers and business professionals across the firm, rather than a collection of narrow, task‑specific tools’.

Robb Patryk, Managing Partner of Hughes Hubbard, commented: ‘This is a strategic investment in the future of the firm and in our partnerships with clients. Scale alone is no longer a differentiator. What matters is how intelligently a firm deploys its talent and collaborates with clients to solve complex problems. August gives us a meaningful competitive advantage by enabling our lawyers and business teams to work faster, smarter and more cohesively, without sacrificing the judgment our clients rely on.’

Neeraj Rajpal, Chief Information Officer at Hughes Hubbard, added: ‘We have lawyers spread around the world working across transactional, litigation and regulatory matters. The bar for any new technology here is whether it can handle that range without creating more work for the people using it. August mirrors how our attorneys work while also delivering real value to our finance, marketing and operations teams. That made this a firmwide decision, not just a legal one.’

And Rutvik Rau, Co-Founder and CEO of August, concluded: ‘They didn’t just test whether August could draft a contract. They tested whether it could work across every part of the firm. That’s the bar we think more firms should be setting.’

Is this a big deal?

For August, absolutely this is a big deal and shows that they can win Big Law firms as well as smaller ones.

It also points to something AL heard a lot about at Legal Week: the ongoing price war between the big legal AI providers. This site heard several stories of major platforms low-balling each other, right down to $0 for a whole year in some cases, just to lock in that law firm or inhouse team.

AL has not seen the exact numbers, but given August’s usual focus on smaller firms, it’s quite possible what they offered in terms of pricing was also a factor for HHR.

One swift does not make the summer, as they say, but it shows that the AmLaw 200 is not totally sewn up.

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More about August here.

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A Legal Tech Conference For All of Europe

Legal Innovators Europe – Paris – June 24 and 25.

There will be more news about the conference and key speakers as we get closer to June.

Look forward to seeing you there!

Richard Tromans, Founder, Artificial Lawyer and Legal Innovators conference Chair.

Note: the conferences are organised by Cosmonauts – please contact them with any queries. 

If you would like to be a speaker at Legal Innovators Europe, especially if you are at a law firm or inhouse legal team in Europe – whether based in France, Belgium, Spain or Germany, or beyond…..then please contact Phoebe at Cosmonauts:  phoebe@cosmonauts.biz

Note: if you are a legal tech company, please contact Robins: robins@cosmonauts.biz or Anjana anjana@cosmonauts.biz

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And if you’re in the US and looking for the next major event to join after Legal Week, then see you in California this June!

Legal Innovators California, the landmark West Coast legal tech event, will take place on June 10 and 11, in the heart of the Bay Area, the home to many of the world’s leading AI businesses – and plenty of legal tech pioneers as well! More information and tickets here.