- As AI increasingly takes over legal research and other legal tasks, law firms are training lawyers to focus more on relationship-building, trust, and business development.
- Gunderson Dettmer, a firm with around 400 lawyers serving technology companies, life sciences businesses, and investors, held a boot camp for nine new partners focused on sales and personal branding.
- The key message was that lawyers can no longer rely solely on their expertise as they once did. They must create value that AI is harder to replace: personal relationships and trust.
- Clients are increasingly sending AI-generated documents to lawyers simply for review, while AT&T has built internal legal teams that use AI for research and other legal work.
- As a result, partners are being trained to take a more proactive role, from handling client situations to identifying new business opportunities.
- The training lasted several hours and included role-play, personal branding, and lessons on the economics of legal billing.
- Gunderson also has an AI tool that automatically alerts partners when a new executive joins a client company, along with a suggested introductory email.
- Partners are encouraged to make phone calls instead of relying solely on email and to identify “super connectors” who can bring in new clients.
- One partner once directly assisted a client’s new general counsel during a meeting through real-time messages, helping maintain the relationship for roughly another six years.
- AI is therefore not only changing lawyers’ work but also making human skills a central focus of professional training.
📌 As AI takes on more legal work, law firms are shifting their focus toward relationships and business development. Gunderson, with around 400 lawyers, trained nine new partners in sales, branding, and communication skills. An AI tool also helps strengthen client connections, showing that technology and human skills are increasingly being combined rather than simply positioned against each other.
