When Bradford Newman began advocating for more artificial intelligence expertise in the C-suite in 2015, "people were laughing at me," he said. Newman, who leads global law firm Baker McKenzie's machine learning and AI practice in its Palo Alto office, added that when he mentioned the need for companies to appoint a chief AI officer, people typically responded, "What's that?" But as the use of artificial intelligence proliferates across the enterprise, and as issues around AI ethics, bias, risk, regulation and legislation currently swirl throughout the business landscape, the importance of appointing a chief AI officer is clearer than ever, he said. This recognition led to a new Baker McKenzie report, released in March, called "Risky Business: Identifying Blind Spots in Corporate Oversight of Artificial Intelligence." The report surveyed 500 US-based, C-level executives who self-identified as part of the decision-making team responsible for their organization's adoption, use and management of AI-enabled tools. In a press release upon the survey's release, Newman said: "Given the increase in state legislation and regulatory enforcement, companies need to step up their game when it comes to AI oversight and governance to ensure their AI is ethical and protect themselves from liability by managing their exposure to risk accordingly."

Companies in the US may be bullish on using artificial intelligence (AI), but many executives are ambivalent about its associated risks – especially when it comes to AI-enabled hiring and people management tools. According to a new survey by the global law firm Baker McKenzie, though 100 percent of senior executives agree there are risks associated with using AI, just 4 percent of respondents consider these risks to be "significant." Three fourths of those surveyed indicate their organization uses AI for key human resources (HR) management and employment functions – for example, recruiting and hiring, performance and promotion, and analyzing employee attendance or productivity trends. The Baker McKenzie survey, Risky Business: Identifying Blind Spots in Corporate Oversight of Artificial Intelligence queried 500 US based C-level executives who self-identified as part of the decision-making team responsible for their organization's adoption, use and management of AI-enabled tools. The telephone- and email-based survey was conducted during the months of December 2021 and January 2022, with executives at companies with at least $10.3 billion in annual revenues on average, across a range of industries.

The Covid-19 pandemic has revealed to us a very inconvenient truth: Regardless of all the technological advances of the last century and a half, our lives can be stopped and destroyed suddenly and unexpectedly by an invisible plague. The excitement over the most recent technological breakthrough--artificial intelligence or deep learning--has met the grim reality of our inability to adequately prepare for, manage, and overcome society's most important and consequential challenges. While Google's DeepMind set itself up to "solve intelligence," i.e., to advance the state of AI and then use the hoped-for "superior intelligence" to solve humanity's challenges, Sagie Davidovich and Ron Karidi co-founded SparkBeyond 7 years ago "to harness the world's collective intelligence in order to solve the world's toughest challenges." They aimed to use existing AI, algorithms, and knowledge to advance humanity's problem-solving capabilities. Most important, SparkBeyond wanted to go beyond the typical use of AI which is basically an extension and an upgrade of what has been called "predictive analytics" before the 2010s.

Building on a pilot partnership with an artificial intelligence company it launched last year, Baker McKenzie is upping its bet that machine learning and data-driven analytics will benefit the firm and its clients. Baker McKenzie, which first teamed up with AI-powered platform SparkBeyond in October, is now entering into a three-year exclusive contract with the company and building a new 11-person team within the firm to leverage the technology for internal and client-facing projects, the global firm said Monday. The firm plans to hire two co-founders to build out and lead the new team alongside London-based partner Ben Allgrove, who is Baker McKenzie's global head of research and development. The firm said candidates for the roles - which are now open for applications - should be "steeped in legal innovation." "Five years ago our industry was flooded with hype about AI disruption," Allgrove said in a statement.

SparkBeyond, an AI-powered problem-solving platform that augments and accelerates the generation of novel insights out of data and knowledge, alongside Baker McKenzie, a leading multinational law firm, announced a market-first collaboration that will apply SparkBeyond's technology to reimagine legal client services in the future. Baker McKenzie will launch its new global innovation arm, Reinvent, and apply SparkBeyond's AI to predict which services clients will require from law firms, explore unforeseen drivers of client demand and learn how to evolve its business to accommodate those needs. The partnership also aims to reimagine traditional law practices and pave new paths for tens of thousands of firms across the globe. "The legal sector is on a new path for disruption and innovation and our partnership with SparkBeyond will turbo-charge the evolution in our business," said Ben Allgrove, Partner at Baker McKenzie. "Understanding the drivers and root causes driving future client demand will allow us unparalleled insights and the ability to shape the future of our business to create additional value across the legal, tax, and compliance functions in the future."

For any client-facing business, the front-runners of the future will be those who can adapt to the changing needs of clients. This fact is now starting to sink in for the legal sector, who have been slow in embracing transformative technologies up until now. Indeed, some have commented that the working practices of many in the industry have changed little since the time of Charles Dickens. In their 2017 report on the sector, PwC claim that clients have long been frustrated with the rising cost and speed of legal service delivery and many have responded by taking more work in-house, by bringing individual lawyers in through'lawyer on demand' providers. Many believe that the time is ripe and that the "2020s will be the decade of disruption" as law firms increase investment in technology to automate tasks and improve decision making.

Global law firm Baker McKenzie has today announced the selection of eBrevia as its main AI tool of choice to be used on M&A and other transactional work for its global clients. The deal is a major coup for eBrevia as Baker McKenzie offices in Hong Kong, Singapore, Frankfurt, Munich, Berlin, Dusseldorf, Vienna, Toronto and Chicago will be tailoring eBrevia's machine learning capabilities to several practice groups and jurisdictions, and plans are already underway to extend the reach of the AI programme. Paul Rawlinson, global chair of Baker McKenzie said: 'Digitisation, Artificial intelligence and Machine Learning are all very real and the legal industry is right in the middle of the changes they will bring. Being truly innovative means listening to clients and understanding the challenges they face – so we can adapt and make sure the service we provide fits not just for today's technological challenges but also for the future.' Baker McKenzie's Erik Scheer, who chairs the Innovation Committee added: 'We are applying a broad range of Artificial Intelligence tools for due diligence, contracts, and e-discovery where these technologies can ensure market-leading efficiency.