The legal tech arms race just moved up a weight class. Kirkland & Ellis, the world’s highest‑grossing law firm, has set aside an eye‑watering $500 million to build its own proprietary generative AI platform, rather than relying on the same off‑the‑shelf tools everyone else can buy.

The strategy, revealed by firm chair Jon Ballis and first reported by the Financial Times, marks a deliberate pivot away from simply licensing commercial software. Ballis says the firm expects to spend more than $100 million this year alone on custom AI services, with hundreds of millions more to follow over the next three to four years – roughly 1% of Kirkland’s annual revenue.

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