AltaClaro, an innovative provider of interactive, experiential legal training (about which I have written before), recently announced the launch of a new course, Guiding Effective Use of GenAI: A Supervisory Course for Law Firm Partners.
The launch is noteworthy for several reasons. The course is unique in that it focuses not on summer associates or even associates but on partners and senior legal professionals. It’s specifically designed to equip partners and managers in law firms and in-house legal departments with the skills and knowledge needed to effectively oversee the use of Generative AI (GenAI) by everyone on their teams. AltaClaro developed the supervisory course in collaboration with K&L Gates law firm and its AI Solutions group. (Interestingly, according to Abdi Shayesteh, AltaClaro CEO, K&L was AltaClaro’s first client some five years ago).
According to AltaClaro, the course focuses on higher-level leadership and management training. Like all AltaClaro training programs, it combines foundational knowledge of GenAI with practical, simulation-based learning. It offers supervisors tools for quality assurance, error correction, and team training.
Alta Claro had previously implemented a prompt engineering course to train K&L Gates attorneys and allied legal professionals how to use GenAI tools. As an outgrowth, K&L Gates requested a program to help its partners and managers keep pace with the adoption and use of GenAI across the firm. According to Shayesteh, “This supervisory course is not just about learning AI; it’s about understanding how to lead teams effectively in this new era of technology.”
Why It’s Cool
What’s cool about this is the recognition by K&L Gates that GenAI tools will be used by its lawyers, particularly younger ones and those with an interest. Instead of letting other partners and legal professionals who might not otherwise have an interest in the tools and their impact, K&L wanted to ensure that everyone understands the risks and benefits of the technology and how to ensure best practices. According to Shayesteh, “Some are going to be Ninja users. And then some are going to be supervising those users. Maybe they don’t need to learn Ninja level, but they need to understand what these things are, be able to supervise effectively and run teams and collaborate.”
Most firms, to the extent they offer training to more senior partners, offer only the minimum.
I don’t know of any other firm that has recognized the need for supervising partners to get training like this. Most firms, to the extent they offer training to more senior partners, offer only the minimum. This is because most partners will either push back or just not participate. But this kind of training, especially for GenAI, is critical in so many respects. GenAI is going to be used; it can make firms more efficient, it can be used for training, and more and more clients are demanding it. But its use needs to be adequately supervised. So, what K&L Gates is doing is pretty far-sighted.
According to Brendan McDonnell, K&L Gates partner, “Culturally, the way to implement a new technology is through education and training…Implementation is a cultural issue. Getting people to do things differently is difficult, but fundamentally, partners and supervisors must adapt.” McDonnell says the firm understood, “We’ve got to embrace this. But our people are not going to embrace this unless they feel educated, unless they feel they know what they’re doing, and they know what these tools can do.”
The Training
Carolyn Austin, K&L Gates Director of Practice Innovation, echoes this philosophy. “GenAI is increasingly prevalent in legal work for the efficiencies it unlocks across research, document review, and contract analysis. As such, there is a risk for firms not adopting it as the legal industry modernizes. To stay competitive while ensuring ethically and legally sound practices, firms must know how to oversee GenAI from the top down.”
What they need is a practical approach that tells them how they can confidently embed generative AI into their practice
Austin told me that the program is designed for partners who don’t really get into what training. “They are the partners who they don’t necessarily see themselves as being hands-on users of generative AI. They don’t need to sit through a training session that’s going to tell them what the neural network is. What they need is a practical approach that tells them how they can confidently embed generative AI into their practice, and what they need to know to be able to do that.”
According to Austin, “And that covers us going to teams, it covers the model participation rules and their obligations in terms of supervision, communication, reasonable competency. It covers things like having conversations with clients about starting to use generative AI within matters that we do for that client, giving them some support and service systems through that process as well.”
Perceptive and well said.
Clients Perspectives
And there’s another reason for K&L Gates’ approach. Says McDonnell, “It’s also the expectations of the client. The client wants you to use these tools. And while some law firms want to hesitate, what we’re seeing is more and more clients are demanding it.”
The Obligation to Properly Supervise
K&L Gates affirmative decided that hiding its head in the sand about GenAI would not work. Nor will it satisfy the firm’s supervisory obligations toward its lawyers. In July, the ABA Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility issued its formal statement on the ethical use of GenAI in legal practice. The opinion specifically recognized that the duty to supervise professional conduct standards is expected in AI supervision.
K&L Gates faced reality and decided to do something
McDonnell told me the decision to create this program with AltaClaro was in part driven by this ethical obligation. “Basically [this means} you better know what the system is capable of. Is it a closed system or an open system? Does it protect the confidential information of your clients?” Instead of doing what a lot of firms do, which is either nothing or merely and unrealistically banning the use of GenAI, K&L Gates faced reality and decided to do something.
Substantive Training
And K&L Gates didn’t just stop with training about the tools. It also focuses on making sure the tool is used to train lawyers to be better lawyers. Says Shayesteh, K&L Gates has “always been an advocate of making sure it’s tech neutral, that we’re focusing in addition to teaching folks how to use the tools, we want them to build the critical thinking skills behind how to prompt.”
The key is the work product needs to be vetted by a supervising attorney
McDonnell described the training function: “A fundamental part of our training program is that an associate must tell his supervisor that he or she has used AI/GenAI to develop the work product. We also tell each supervisor that such work product must be vetted as if it were prepared by a junior associate without the assistance of any AI tool. The key is the work product needs to be vetted by a supervising attorney who understands what good work product is and what bad work product is.
As a result, says McDonnell, “nothing has changed in the supervisor’s role except for the understanding that a GenAI tool assisted in developing the work product and that the supervisor must take that into consideration as the one responsible to the client for the work product of a law firm.” Without a basic understanding of the GenAI tools and how best to supervise their use, it’s hard to see how the K&L Gates’ more experienced lawyers could do this well. Hence, the advantage of the AltaClaro course is that it addresses these kinds of scenarios and offers guidance on how to best approach it between partner and associate.
It Makes So Much Sense
What K&L Gates is doing with AltaClaro just makes sense for so many reasons. GenAI is not going away; it’s going to get more pervasive. Law firms need to recognize, as did K&L Gates, that no one- from senior partners to the least experienced associates—can afford to be unprepared.