Freshfields expands AI partnership with Anthropic across global offices

Thursday 23 April 2026 - 17:00

By: Dakir Madiha

Freshfields expands AI partnership with Anthropic across global offices

Freshfields has entered a multi-year agreement with Anthropic to deploy its Claude artificial intelligence models across all 33 of the firm’s offices, marking one of the most extensive AI integrations in the legal sector. The rollout will give up to 5,700 employees access to AI-powered legal tools, while both organizations collaborate on developing advanced workflows designed to handle complex legal tasks from start to finish.

The deployment builds on Freshfields’ proprietary AI platform, which serves as a secure and unified interface for lawyers and business services teams. Within six weeks of the initial rollout, usage of Claude increased by about 500 percent, with thousands of professionals using the system daily in client work. The firm said the rapid adoption reflects growing reliance on AI to support legal processes at scale.

The partnership extends beyond a standard enterprise licensing model. Freshfields and Anthropic have launched a joint development program to design AI applications tailored to legal practice. These tools cover contract review, document drafting, due diligence, and multi-step legal research. The agreement also grants Freshfields early access to upcoming models and capabilities from Anthropic, allowing the firm to integrate new features quickly into its operations.

The arrangement creates a dual relationship between the two entities. Freshfields will act as external legal counsel to Anthropic while both sides collaborate over the next year to define AI-native workflows in legal services delivery. At the same time, Freshfields is among the early adopters of the next-generation CoCounsel Legal platform developed by Thomson Reuters, which is built on Anthropic’s technology and integrates tools such as Westlaw and Practical Law.

This move comes as the legal industry undergoes rapid transformation driven by AI adoption. Thomson Reuters reported that CoCounsel has reached one million users across 107 countries, signaling widespread demand for AI-assisted legal workflows. Freshfields has also disclosed that more than 5,000 of its professionals are already using AI tools based on Google’s models through a separate partnership, underscoring the firm’s broad commitment to integrating artificial intelligence into its services.

Executives at Anthropic described the partnership as a turning point for enterprise AI in professional services. The large-scale adoption of Claude across legal work, internal operations, and emerging agentic workflows highlights a shift in how major law firms approach technology. Recent market volatility following the release of open-source legal plugins by Anthropic, which erased billions in market value from legal technology companies in a single trading session, further illustrates the disruptive impact of AI on the sector. Freshfields’ strategy suggests that leading firms now view AI integration as central to their business model rather than a threat.