Why Does a Law Firm Need 900 Technology Specialists?

What Latham & Watkins’ investment in legal technology reveals about the people changing work inside London law firms.

Think of a major law firm and you probably picture lawyers. Lots of them. Partners and associates moving between glass meeting rooms. Trainees buried in the less glamorous work. Rooms full of paper files.

You probably don’t picture hundreds of people working across technology, engineering and innovation.

Yet Latham & Watkins employs more than 900 technology specialists globally. According to the Financial Times article available on Latham’s website, they include professional technology staff, innovation lawyers, machine-learning engineers, AI engineers and coding lawyers.

Latham is an unusually large and well-resourced firm. Few firms can invest on this scale. But its technology workforce reveals something beyond one firm’s spending power.

Legal technology is changing who works inside a law firm, as well as how the work gets done.

What are 900 technology specialists actually doing?

Latham’s investment shows how much work sits behind technology in law firms. It has bought Nvidia GPU servers, leases space in a secure data centre and is adapting AI models to run on its own systems.

That gives the firm greater control over highly sensitive client information. It also gives Latham alternatives if external AI providers change their prices or terms.

But buying hardware is only the beginning. Someone has to maintain and protect the systems. Engineers adapt and test the models. Lawyers and innovation specialists work out where they could help on a real matter and where their limits lie.

Much of a law firm’s work starts with information: contracts, judgments, emails and evidence. Technology can help people search, organise and compare it. Finding a pattern, though, is not the same as deciding what it means for a client. That still calls for a lawyer’s judgement.

AI is only part of the picture. E-discovery helps teams find and review electronic evidence. Knowledge specialists make a firm’s accumulated work accessible. Others maintain the systems lawyers use every day and decide how sensitive information can be shared and protected.

At a global firm, those jobs must work across different practice areas and countries. The technology must be secure, useful to lawyers and reliable when a client needs it.

(Source: Latham figures reported by Bloomberg Law)

The 900 specialists are not one vast AI team. They are the people needed to make many kinds of technology work across a firm of Latham’s size.

How is technology changing work inside London law firms?

London law firms are drawing on expertise that sits well beyond traditional legal roles. The change becomes clearer when you look at what lawyers and technology specialists are doing together.

At Orrick, two associates worked with legal-technology specialists to simplify the firm’s UK company-incorporation process. Together they developed a digital form. The lawyers brought their knowledge of the legal steps involved, while the technology team helped turn those steps into something people could use. Kate Orr, the firm’s global head of practice innovation, described the project as combining legal insight, user-focused design and process engineering.

At Simmons & Simmons, lawyers drew on the data capabilities of its Wavelength team in a tax dispute with HMRC. The team analysed a large volume of transaction data to model possible approaches to VAT accounting. That helped the parties understand the implications of different proposed settlements.

Neither example is about handing a legal problem to a machine. Both depend on lawyers working with specialists who can see another way through the information.

What legal technology skills do lawyers actually need?

Working with specialists does not mean every lawyer needs to learn to code. Often, the more valuable skill is explaining a legal problem clearly enough for someone with different expertise to help solve it.

That takes some technical confidence. Lawyers need to understand what a system can and cannot do, recognise when its output needs challenging and know when confidentiality, security or professional judgement could be at risk.

Orr describes the lawyer of the future as “part-lawyer, part-business counsellor and part-technologist”.

These skills for lawyers are less about mastering every new tool than knowing how to work with the people who understand it more deeply. The strongest lawyers may be the ones who ask better questions, test the answers and recognise where human judgement still matters.

What might a career in a London law firm look like now?

For someone with a technical background, a law firm may not be the first place they think to look for work. Yet firms need people who can develop tools, manage information and improve processes, including specialists in legal operations.

The routes are changing for lawyers too, opening up legal technology careers that can sit alongside legal practice. Simmons & Simmons senior associate Simi Khagram has moved into a hybrid role in London, dividing her time between commercial law and legal technology. It is one example of a career that includes both practising law and improving how legal work is done.

Most lawyers will not want to make that move. But their choice of firm may shape the work they get to do. Can associates contribute ideas? Do they have access to specialists when a process is frustrating, or a client needs a different approach? Are they given time to understand the systems they are expected to use?

The question for a London lawyer is not just which technology a firm has bought, but who they will work with and what they will be able to do.

What does this mean for London law firms?

Law firm innovation depends on more than buying the right systems. It depends on identifying the problems worth solving and bringing the right people together to solve them.

Latham’s 900 specialists are a global figure. They do not tell us how many work in its London office, or suggest that every firm needs a team on that scale.

Smaller firms face a different calculation. Research for the Solicitors Regulation Authority found that some lack the time, technical knowledge or confidence to choose the right technology. They may need outside expertise and training rather than a large team of their own.

A law firm’s investment in technology is also an investment in the people who make it useful.

Considering your next move in London, or building a team that brings legal and technical expertise together? Explore JMC’s London legal recruitment and legal technology recruitment services.

Explore more legal market insight:

The Future is Technical

The Legal Tech Career Path