Use of AI
at Bristows

Bristows uses artificial intelligence (AI), including generative AI, to help our lawyers and business teams deliver high-quality legal services efficiently and responsibly. AI accelerates and improves our work; it never replaces professional legal judgement.

As a firm specialising in the science and technology sectors, we work with many of the leading innovators in their fields, including in AI, and we aim to be equally forward-thinking in how we work. This page explains, at a high level, how we use AI, how we govern it and the safeguards we apply.

How we use AI

Bristows has taken a deliberate and responsible approach to adopting artificial intelligence tools. We combine general-purpose and practice-specific tools, deploying AI where it can meaningfully improve our service while our lawyers stay in control of the output. Examples include:

• Enterprise generative AI tools: We use enterprise generative AI tools every day in support of, among other things, research, drafting, summarisation, data extraction and analysis.
• AI Agents: We deploy AI agents that are developed in-house to leverage our legal expertise to speed up our service to clients.
• AI-assisted disclosure: Relativity aiR within our own Relativity instance supports review in disclosure-intensive matters, inside an environment with established governance and security controls.
• Document automation and assembly: Document automation tools are used to simplify the generation of documents.
• Business operations: Beyond client work, AI tools are deployed within defined governance parameters to support internal knowledge work, research, collaboration and productivity.

Our experience of the legal AI market also means we are well placed to guide clients on their own use of AI in legal workflows.

Using AI safely, responsibly and securely

In legal services, accuracy, confidentiality and ethical standards are paramount. Our governance framework is designed to let our people benefit from AI while protecting those standards. Our approach to AI is guided by the following principles:

• Oversight: Our dedicated AI Taskforce leads our approach to responsible AI adoption. It oversees the implementation of AI tools, manages our AI policy and monitors how effectively our tools perform.
• Security: At the heart of our AI strategy and policy, and our vendor and tool onboarding, are cybersecurity and privacy. Our focus is on the safe and responsible use of AI. As part of our onboarding process, we ensure that third-party vendor AI tools that we onboard for use on legal matters will not use client data to train models.
• AI Acceptable Use Policy: Our policy sets out acceptable use, data handling protocols and review procedures and provides clear guardrails for our employees around the use of our AI tools. It is regularly reviewed and updated to reflect evolving best practice, regulation and professional guidance.
• Approved tools and data controls: We operate a tiered framework of approved general and practice-specific tools. The classification of the data involved determines which tools may be used, and no client or confidential data may be processed through tools outside our approved enterprise stack.
• Training: Our people receive continuing training on AI developments, ethical considerations and risk management.
• Professional responsibility and human review: Our professional, ethical and confidentiality obligations apply in full whenever AI is used. AI-assisted work on client matters is reviewed by appropriately qualified lawyers, and AI is never a substitute for professional legal judgement.