US firm Akerman has appointed its first director of AI development, hiring Charles Zerner from Texas firm Munck Wilson Mandala.
Zerner, originally a litigator before moving into AI, takes on a new role in which he will be responsible for building custom AI applications.
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Akerman is already a heavy user of AI, deploying tools including Harvey, TR CoCounsel, Copilot, Claude and ChatGPT, but Zerner is tasked with identifying areas where a tool does not currently exist, or where a bespoke tool may do the job more effectively.
“You have the ability to fulfil a certain number of needs with off the shelf products, but at the same time off the shelf products are designed for a large number of clients. There’s an enormous potential and an enormous gap between what models can do and the implementation of those models to accelerate legal work,” Zerner told Legal IT Insider.
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“Part of my job is to look for those specific needs that we have that are not going to be met by existing commercial platforms, or that we can do better; part of it is the long term understanding that models are evolving fast. What do we need to build out so that we’re ready when the models are that capable?”
Akerman chief executive officer Scott Meyers said the firm’s approach to AI was “holistic”, encompassing data, technology, and the governance required to ensure AI could be deployed safely. Zerner’s appointment followed Akerman’s August hire of Michael Adler as director of AI governance & data protection.
Meyers said Akerman had been investing heavily in AI in recent years, and it was now one of the firm’s “most significant budget allocations” as well as increasing faster than other areas relative to historic spend. He added that Akerman anticipated it would continue to increase its spend on AI as a proportion of total budget again this year, although he said: “It’s less about how much you spend and more about how you spend it.”
Meyers added: “Our approach has always been rather than to buy or build a tool and then figure out how to apply it to our work, to figure out what workflows we can apply to AI and then figure out the tool.”
Zerner said he was attracted to joining Akerman by the shared vision of anticipating lawyers’ requirements and working to fill gaps and solve problems. He said his experience both as a litigator and an AI engineer meant he was approaching the role from a unique perspective.
Zerner co-founded a neural-network startup in 2000 and has deployed machine learning in legal practice since 2012. At his previous firm he designed and built production-scale AI systems for legal practice, including a document review platform built on open-source models running entirely within the firm’s control.
“You can put a lot of investment into building things that don’t serve the lawyers’ needs because they don’t match the way that they work,” Zerner added. “That’s why having someone with a foot in both worlds is so important, and that’s where you can create value.”
Zerner will be part of Akerman’s information technology team under chief information officer Azfar Shamsi.
An increasing number of major international law firms are investing in building their own solutions in addition to buying from technology companies. Among the most significant announcements, in May this year, Kirkland said it would spend $500m over the next three to four years developing custom AI tools and services.