What Every Managing Partner Should Know About AI

A managing partner does not need to understand how a language model works. They do need to understand what AI means for the firm’s clients, its risk, its people and its reputation. Those are partnership questions, not technical ones, and they are increasingly landing on the managing partner’s desk whether or not the firm has decided how to answer them.

The most important realisation is that AI is already in use across most firms, formally or otherwise. Fee earners are using tools to draft, summarise and research, sometimes with approval and sometimes without. The choice a managing partner faces is not whether the firm uses AI, but whether it does so deliberately and with control, or by accident and without.

Value is real, but uneven

AI genuinely improves some work and adds little to other work. It is strong at accelerating drafting, summarising large volumes of material and surfacing relevant precedent. It is weak, and sometimes dangerous, where judgement, accuracy and accountability are paramount and where a confident but wrong answer carries real consequences. A managing partner should expect a sober account of where the value is, not a blanket enthusiasm.

Confidentiality is the sharpest risk

The most acute exposure in a professional firm is the handling of confidential and privileged client information. A fee earner pasting client material into a general-purpose tool may be transferring it to a third party on terms the firm has never reviewed. The firm, not the individual, must decide which tools are approved for which purposes — and that decision belongs at partnership level.

The choice is not whether the firm uses AI, but whether it does so deliberately and with control, or by accident and without.

Accountability stays with the firm

No tool assumes professional responsibility for its output. The obligation to provide competent advice remains with the firm and the individual, and every AI-assisted output that reaches a client must be reviewed by someone who owns it. A managing partner should insist that this principle is explicit and understood, not merely assumed.

• Where is AI creating value for us today, and where are we exposed by using it?
• Which tools are approved, and how do we protect confidential and privileged information?
• Who is accountable for AI use across the firm, and can they enforce it?
• Could we explain to a client or regulator how their matter was handled?

Reputation is the asset in play

Ultimately, what a managing partner is protecting is the firm’s reputation for judgement and trust. Handled well, AI strengthens the firm’s ability to serve clients. Handled carelessly, it puts the firm’s standing at risk. The role of the managing partner is not to master the technology but to ensure the firm adopts it with the same judgement it applies to everything else that matters.