Freshfields and Anthropic enter multi year AI partnership to develop legal workflows
updated on 27 April 2026
Dimitar Dimitrov is a content and engagement coordinator at LawCareers.Net
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Magic circle law firm Freshfields has entered a multi‑year collaboration with leading AI company Anthropic to accelerate the development and firm‑wide deployment of AI‑powered legal workflows, with the Claude family of AI models now available globally across the firm.
As part of the agreement, Claude has been deployed to 5,700 Freshfields employees through the firm’s proprietary general AI platform, covering 33 offices and all practice areas and business services. Freshfields said adoption and usage rose by around 500% in the first six weeks following rollout, with thousands of staff using the tools on client matters.
The law firm will receive early access to future Anthropic models and products, while the two organisations’ in‑house legal teams will collaborate over the next 12 months to define new AI workflows. In addition, the firms have also established a co‑development programme focused on building legal‑specific AI applications and designing agentic workflows, which enable faster, more efficient delivery of legal advice to clients. Areas of focus include legal and market research, contract review and drafting, due diligence, automation of business services processes and complex multi‑stage legal analysis.
Chief innovation officer at Freshfields Gil Perez said: “For us, innovation is about practical impact – helping our teams deliver the very best outcomes for clients, while holding ourselves to the highest standards of responsibility and governance.
“Partnering with Anthropic strengthens our ability to co-innovate at pace and to bring new capabilities into our work in a way that is secure, compliant and focused on client needs.”
Meanwhile, head of Americas at Anthropic Kate Jensen said: “Freshfields operates at the highest levels of global law. Their decision to go wall-to-wall with Claude – across legal work, business services, and now agentic workflows – is the clearest signal yet that the enterprise AI moment in professional services has arrived.”
