It was fantastic to run this innovative training programme alongside Linklaters. We live and work in a rapidly changing legal and technical landscape and equipping legal professionals with the tools to be able to utilise GenAI in their practice is vital to ensure we can keep up with these developments. It was fascinating to see how participants navigated the risks, mitigations, benefits and ethical issues they were presented with when considering how to use GenAI in legal practice.
Dan Hunter, Executive Dean, The Dickson Poon School of Law
16 October 2024
King's partners with Linklaters to launch GenAI Expert Training Programme
The GenAI Expert Training programme has been developed in collaboration with The Dickson Poon School of Law and the Linklaters GenAI programme.
Recent findings from LexisNexis reveals that 40% of lawyers extensively use artificial intelligence (AI) in their work. This number is expected to significantly increase over the coming years.
Linklaters’ GenAI Expert Training programme, designed in collaboration with The Dickson Poon School of Law, was designed to enhance the technical and practical expertise of its lawyers in generative AI (GenAI).
Taking place over the course of a weekend, participants took part in workshops which aimed to provide them with a detailed understanding of generative AI and its application in legal practice. The weekend culminated in a hackathon with groups pitching in front of a judging panel of representatives from both Linklaters and King’s.
Participants were not expected to have prior computing experience and at the end of the hackathon, they were able to identify use cases for their practice groups and functions, as well as work with data science and development teams to bring those use cases to life.
The training and hackathon provided by the King’s College London team led by Professor Dan Hunter was incredible – we took a mixed group of lawyers and business team members and trained them in how to use GenAI effectively over the weekend. The Linklaters team was blown away by the quality of the training and the impact that the hackathon has had on our GenAI adoption programme.
Laura Hodgson, Generative AI Lead, Linklaters
The final session of the weekend established which of the ideas presented over the weekend had feasibility for further development. As well as having a theoretical element, the hackathon also provided an opportunity for participants to apply skills they had learned into real life outcomes. Authentic business challenges within Linklaters and the wider legal sector were used as a basis for the hackathon, with an aim to implement these solutions at an organisational level.
This unique collaboration underlines the firm’s continued commitment to investing in GenAI. Offering a global cohort of our people the opportunity to learn from leading academics and each other will help embed GenAI expertise across our business. We’ve already built the foundation on which this cohort can now bring their knowledge and creativity, identifying use cases and designing solutions that will help them transform the way they work and deliver client service.
Shilpa Bhandarkar, Partner for Client Tech and AI, Linklaters
Over the course of the weekend, participants gained a solid understanding of the technical basics of machine learning, generative AI architecture and the methods to understand large language model usage in legal practice. Twenty-five participants representing a diverse range of roles within the organisation including non-lawyers, were guided through the process of developing working applications using large language models.
As somebody who doesn't come from a coding background, it was really eye opening that you can use plain English to generate prompts and get LLMs to do what you want them to do. I was quite surprised by the level of accuracy and the quality of the solution that you can build just using the language skills that you already have.
Daniel Bhalla, Banking Lawyer, Managing Associate at Linklaters
The GenAI Expert Training programme highlights the collaborative and innovative nature of our Executive Education programmes. If you want to find out more about executive education at The Dickson Poon School of Law or have any ideas for collaboration or development, please email ExecEd-law@kcl.ac.uk.
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Executive Dean, The Dickson Poon School of Law