Nathaniel Whittemore

Today on the AI Daily Brief, Anthropic drops Claude Opus 4.8 and here are everyone's first impressions.

Before that in the headlines, one of the biggest law firms in the world is heading in a very different direction with their AI strategy.

The AI Daily Brief is a daily podcast and video about the most important news and discussions in AI.

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With that, though, let's talk about some surprisingly relevant news from the world of legal AI.

We kick off today with a story that honestly is a little surprising with how much traction it's getting.

And I think that the resonance of it actually says a lot about where we are in this AI cycle.

The short of it is that the Financial Times reported this week that mega law firm Kirkland & Ellis, which is the world's biggest law firm, is planning to spend a half billion dollars building their own AI platform.

The company will spend $100 million this year and plans to continue to pour money into the project over the coming three to four years.

Now, to be clear, that spend is in addition to licensing costs for third-party tools.

This isn't just a bunch of lawyers getting a huge Claude Code budget.

Chairman John Bayliss told the FT, I'm sure you now feel like you know exactly what he's talking about with that incredibly clear and not big at all.

Bayless said that the wide distribution of third-party tools like Harvey, Legora, and Thomson Reuters Co-Counsel have raised the floor for everyone, but added, we don't get hired for the floor.

Now, among the elite white shoe law firms in the U.S., Kirkland Ellis is right at the top of the heap.

They have almost 4,000 attorneys spread across 11 regional offices and consistently bring in the most revenue among their peers with $10.6 billion last year.

They specialize in corporate and transactional law, advising on large IPOs, mergers and acquisitions, and private equity deals.

Now, to be clear, Kirkland's new platform will be purely internally facing.