AmLaw 200 Firm Hanson Bridgett Goes All-In with Claude

San Francisco-based AmLaw 200 firm, Hanson Bridgett, has announced it has gone all-in with Claude, with the general model – plus legal add-ons – adopted ‘firm-wide for attorneys and professional staff’.

They also made sure to point out that ‘the rollout comes weeks after Anthropic launched Claude for Legal’.

So, that’s two law firms now that have ‘publicly declared’ for Claude, the other is the Magic Circle firm Freshfields; although many firms – and inhouse teams – are of course already using Claude for a range of needs, such as vibe coding special projects, including tapping Claude for Legal – in addition to their usual tech stack third party legal tech tools.

The platform is being used to support day-to-day work covering: ‘document review and drafting to research, organization, and internal operations, to assist with tasks including summarizing deposition testimony and lengthy records, drafting routine correspondence and memos, comparing document versions, and supporting due diligence review in corporate transactions. Professional staff teams across operations, marketing, HR, finance, knowledge management’ are also using it, they added.

In short, if it appears on their computer screens they’re aiming Claude at it.

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Interestingly, the approximately 200-lawyer firm, which is full service, publicly noted that they have a ‘written AI use policy, with restrictions around what information may be used within AI systems, and enterprise-grade data protections, plus an ongoing internal review of workflows and outputs’.

They clearly have added this additional message to reassure the clients.

Laura Long, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer at Hanson Bridgett, commented: ‘This is about building long-term capability across the firm, helping our attorneys and professional staff adapt thoughtfully as these tools evolve, and creating a foundation for how we continue learning and innovating over time.

‘Part of our culture is challenging what’s expected and making thoughtful investments that help our people better serve clients. We see AI as an opportunity to lead responsibly, support our attorneys and professional staff, and continue building a more thoughtful and forward-looking firm.’

Is this a big deal?

Well, if you run legal tech at this firm then yes, it’s a huge deal. It is also the second Big Law firm to go all-in with Claude, although being realistic they will of course still be using the major legal data fortresses as well, along with a bunch of other legal tech tools – because that’s just the practical reality of running a law firm.

The fact they are in San Francisco should not be ignored – the home of the AI world – and next week where Legal Innovators California will be taking place on June 10 and 11…!

The question now is: which is the next law firm to declare an all in move?

P.S. Of course, OpenAI’s Codex for Legal hasn’t launched officially yet, so we don’t know how that may change things.

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Photo: SF a couple of years ago for one of the Legal Innovators California conferences, down by Embarcadero.