“The AI literacy piece is really fundamental to everything,” says Evette Pastoriza, chief information officer of Mayer Brown, in a deep dive conversation with Legal IT Insider about the firm’s recent GenAI training curriculum launch, and its broader technology strategy.
“AI is different from other technologies where you could almost drop and run if it was intuitive enough,” she says. “You would think, ‘how hard is it to have a conversation with AI? It’s a chatbot. How hard is that?’ But to leverage AI in a meaningful way as a thought partner, you have to learn.”
Of course, Pastoriza observes, there are a lot of other considerations, including ethical use, security policies, client policies, “all those things are vital.” But the program is fundamental and it’s the gate to gaining access to the application.
The training is compulsory before you can access Copilot or Harvey, for example. Pastoriza says: “The first part of it is the fundamentals, which are all of the risk-related items, ethical items, things like that. We do a really good job of explaining the differences between the AI, its capabilities, and the importance of the human in the loop. And then we get into how to utilise each of those platforms. We’re building on that and spending a lot of time really thinking about how to further build that out.”
Interestingly, Mayer Brown is driving towards individually tailored learning experiences. Pastoriza says: “Our objective and the direction we’re driving in is persona-based training so that you can create your own learning path based on what you do at the firm and what is of interest to you, what practice you’re in. So we’re working on that now and what that looks like, in collaboration with other members of the firm who will contribute to that.”
Everyone learns in a different way and by making room for that, it is hoped that training will be easier. Pastoriza says: “So if you are a person who comes to life at 8pm, we’ve got the program in digital format for you. Maybe you’re more relaxed at that time and the kids are in bed, you know how that goes. But if you’re a person who feels ‘I like to be present with an instructor, I want to ask questions, I want to see them live,’ we’ve got the same curriculum live. For those people, the digital piece is a backup. But for those individuals who want to be self-paced on their own time, we have the full rich curriculum digitally.”
The training doesn’t end there, and Pastoriza says: “What we’re hoping for is people to do follow-up training that is optional. For example, ‘I want help with my narratives and I want to use Copilot for that purpose, how do I do it?’ We have coursework for that that you can consume. Or, you can tell us, ‘my practice does X or Y, we would like help with this.’ So we would construct something very specifically for that.”
Pastoriza is careful to note that “this is not a going back to university type thing,” commenting, “What you have to do in my view is get people to really engage with the technology in a very meaningful way and see the art of the possible. And then they’re off to the races. It’s their own creativity that will enrich what they do, what they might do that we can scale across the organization. But we just have to get them to that point of being confident, being comfortable, knowing what those rails are for the safe use of AI and things of that nature. And then it gets obviously more sophisticated and complex as we get into more specific legal work.”
The term ‘human in the loop’ is bandied around in the sector, but Pastoriza says it’s important to be thoughtful about what it really means. “People in the industry understand that AI is something you can use to research and learn but can’t lose sight of the fact that they are the human in that interaction. We emphasise this constantly. When you’re training groups of incoming new lawyers, you would never take their work and just send it off. You’re going to check everything and you’re going to double check. The same rules apply here.”
One area of focus now is practice-specific training. “We’re evolving those curriculums because those, as you can imagine, take some time and effort, some lawyer time, to really understand what are we doing within practises with these particular technologies, and then what components of that we want to build our training around,” Pastoriza says. “So that really is our next level. And that’s evolving now, but that is our ultimate goal.”
Harvey was the first closed platform approved by Mayer Brown and Pastoriza says that the firm has “really good adoption across the board”, even across its business services people. “Not in the same way that Copilot would be utilized, but we do have really meaningful adoption and we’re tracking that now really carefully to see exactly how people are utilising it,” she says, adding: “With our lawyers, we’re going through that process of demonstrating where it can be used, how it can be used, and where the value is of using it. But I would say we’re seeing a steady trend upwards that we find really meaningful.”
Copilot is Mayer Brown’s general purpose AI productivity tool, and Pastoriza observes: “We’re pushing it very hard on the business side, but there are really meaningful things you can do with it in Teams and Outlook that for every single person at the firm brings efficiencies that we’re really interested in. So we’re seeing a really good uptake there.”
There’s a lot of noise in the press about whether firms ought to be buying or building tech to best leverage and protect their knowledge and IP. US competitor Kirkland & Ellis this year created waves by announcing a $500m tech build project, eschewing traditional legal AI route. What’s Mayer Brown’s stance on the buy v build debate?
Pastoriza, who joined from Fried Frank in September 2024 with a digital transformation agenda, says: “We’re building some things on our own and we’re progressing into a very hybrid time, where maybe at one point you were leaning very hard towards ‘We’re not going to build anything, we’re a law firm, we buy’ and I think now it requires a review. What is it that we’re trying to achieve? Is it strategically significant? Is it worth the investment? What will be the ROI on the investment? How much time will it take? Is there anything in the market that resembles what we want, or that is partially what we want? Maybe we can build on something in the market. All those things really matter.”
She adds: “From our perspective, we have those horizontal layers, which give us engagement across the board with tools across the board that do a variety of great things. And then now, as we mature through that, we’re also looking at our data, looking at our use cases, and diving deeper, doing deeper analysis on where can we leverage further and in what way? And I think that will dictate a lot of what happens in the future, including investments.”
For now, possibly forever more, tech strategy is top of everyone’s agenda. “It’s incredible,” says Pastoriza. “But you know, the way it changes the dynamic is that everybody’s in the conversation. It’s no longer your technology professionals trying to push the conversation. The conversation is coming to us for the first time in our careers, right? Our lawyers are coming in and saying, ‘Hey, what about this thing I saw? It looked really interesting. Can I do this with it?’ So it’s really, really helpful. It can also be challenging.
“When you wake up every day and you’re reading news about a variety of things, we really have to be thoughtful about staying focused. We have to listen, and keep our finger on the pulse, and there may be times where we need to pause and review and see if something really makes sense for us strategically. And if it does, it may be that we incorporate that into the existing plan. But I would say it’s challenging for everyone in these respective roles or supporting roles to listen to that noise and guide and assure that we’re going in the right direction – and why we’re moving in a certain direction.”
