Freshfields partners with Anthropic

Freshfields has signed a multi-year deal with Anthropic to build legal AI workflows and deploy Claude across the firm’s global business. (morningstar.com) Freshfields said on April 23 that 5,700 employees already use Claude through its internal AI platform, and usage rose about 500% in the first six weeks after rollout. The firm said the deployment will extend across 33 offices, practice groups, and business services teams. (morningstar.com) The two companies said they will spend the next 12 months designing legal workflows for document drafting, contract review, due diligence, market research, and other multi-step tasks. Freshfields also said it plans to expand to Claude Cowork, Anthropic’s agent-style platform, subject to the firm’s security, compliance, and training rules. (morningstar.com) The move pushes AI in law beyond a general chatbot that answers prompts and toward software that handles specific steps in legal work under firm controls. Anthropic said Claude products are built for enterprise use, and Freshfields said its lawyers reach them through a single internal entry point tied to the firm’s own knowledge systems. (morningstar.com) (anthropic.com) Freshfields had already been building a multi-model AI strategy before this deal. In April 2025, the firm announced a separate partnership with Google Cloud to roll out Gemini in Google Workspace and build legal agents on Vertex AI for due diligence and other internal processes. (freshfields.com) That earlier Google deal was still active this month. On April 15, Freshfields said more than 5,000 professionals were using AI tools built with Gemini models, including its Dynamic Due Diligence product, one year after that collaboration began. (freshfields.com) Anthropic has been moving deeper into legal work this year. In February, it launched a legal plugin for Claude Cowork aimed at contract review, nondisclosure agreement triage, and compliance workflows for in-house legal teams. (claude.com) Financial Times reported that Anthropic plans to use Freshfields’ legal expertise to help build products that could be sold to other law firms, not just used inside Freshfields itself. That would put a major law firm directly inside the product-development loop for legal AI tools. (ft.com) (techmeme.com) Freshfields’ opening bet is not on replacing lawyers with a public chatbot. It is on turning drafting, review, and due diligence into controlled workflows that can run inside the firm’s own systems. (morningstar.com)