'It's a mindset': Inside Winston Taylor’s AI strategy

Three years ago, while many firms were still debating whether lawyers should use artificial intelligence at all, Taylor Wessing - now Winston Taylor - began treating the technology as a core strategic priority. Since then, the firm has built governance structures, rolled out AI tools across the business and developed a range of client-facing products.

Among them are an employment advice portal for HR and legal teams, an employment disputes intelligence platform that automates onboarding steps and generates first drafts of documents, and a horizon-scanning platform designed to help in-house legal and compliance teams monitor legal and regulatory developments across jurisdictions.

‘A mindset’

Attitudes towards AI have evolved rapidly, with the conversation moving from whether lawyers should use the technology to how they can use it most effectively.

Emma Danks, a corporate partner at Winston Taylor, who oversees AI strategy, said: “AI is not just a tool that's okay to be used, but actually it's a tool we're expecting you to use.”

She says the lawyers getting the most value from AI are typically those who see it as a way of extending their capabilities rather than simply automating individual tasks. The other common factor is a willingness to rethink existing ways of working.

"It's a mindset," said Danks. “The top users have seen the opportunity for AI to leverage themselves so they can get more out of their day," she said.

A ‘natural’ part of a lawyer’s day

For Olivia Wyld, who oversees AI delivery and operations and serves as COO for the UK, Ireland and the Middle East, successful AI deployment depends as much on implementation as technology.

“A critical area is change management - how you embed the ways of working into a lawyer's day so that it becomes totally natural," she said.

The firm has introduced AI ambassadors across practice groups responsible for funnelling feedback to the operations team on what is successful and what needs further development.

Wyld said the goal is for AI to become embedded in the way lawyers approach their work and seen as an ordinary part of legal practice.

“Leaders are very open here. They might send a message to their team or communicate in a meeting that they used a specific AI tool,” she said.

The firm is consistently embedding the message that, while you need to use your judgment to review the output, it’s entirely acceptable to use AI.”

Legal AI still matters

One assumption currently hanging over the legal AI market is that specialist platforms could eventually be overtaken by the technology giants developing the underlying models.

And this assumption is not unfounded - the likes of Anthropic and Microsoft have been increasingly moving into legal territory with new capabilities aimed squarely at lawyers.

While acknowledging that tools such as Claude and ChatGPT continue to improve rapidly, Dank believes specialist legal platforms still offer more than simply access to a large language model.

‍Taylor Wessing was an early adopter of Legora, which the firm said is now used by more than 80% of the firm's lawyers, and it has also developed its own internal AI platform, LitiumTW.

Dank recalls suggesting a new use case during an early demonstration of Legora and seeing it reflected in the platform shortly afterwards.

"That's just a really simple example of the way in which they responded to our needs and were very quickly able to get to know our business.”

The relationship and support provided by specialist legal AI platforms can be just as valuable as the underlying technology. Legora and Harvey have been investing heavily in legal engineering talent - often ex-lawyers - for exactly this purpose.

Rather than seeing the rise of increasingly capable general-purpose models as a threat, Danks believes the competition is forcing legal AI providers to improve faster and that increasing competition is ultimately good for law firms.

"You've got Anthropic and OpenAI snapping at your heels. What are you going to do to keep demonstrating your relevance for lawyers?”