Law Firms Roll Out AI for Deals and IPO Filings
Clients now question whether AI-driven efficiency will reduce hourly legal bills, though no price cuts have been announced.
Updated on Nov. 2, 2026 in Artificial Intelligence
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Major law firms have introduced AI tools that review deals, draft IPO filings, and produce diligence reports. The tools are shipped products in use at these firms, not research prototypes, though Ropes & Gray's diligence report tool is described as still in development.
Why it matters
The rollout follows OpenAI's announcement of a version of its latest AI model built for lawyers, and it signals that legal work once billed by the hour is being restructured around automated first drafts. Clients are now questioning whether that efficiency will lower their legal bills.
Ropes & Gray's developing tool is described as shortening diligence reporting from weeks to hours, but the source gives no benchmark or accuracy figures to verify that claim. Cooley's Go Public and Sullivan & Cromwell's Agreement Analyzer are reported as released products, though their performance metrics were not published in the source.
The players
Sullivan & Cromwell
A major international law firm that introduced its Agreement Analyzer tool to help review deals.
Cooley
A global law firm that introduced Go Public, an AI tool for drafting S-1 filings ahead of an initial public offering.
Ropes & Gray
A large international law firm developing an AI tool that could produce detailed, issue-level diligence reports in hours.
Kirkland & Ellis
A major law firm that has announced investments in building its own AI systems.
OpenAI
An AI research company whose latest model has been adapted into a version built for lawyers.
The details
Each tool targets a discrete stage of the legal workflow: Agreement Analyzer helps review deals, Go Public assists with the S-1 registration statement that a company files before an initial public offering, and Ropes & Gray's planned tool would generate issue-level diligence reports, the document review that investors and buyers use to assess legal risk. These products are built on large language models, AI systems trained on vast text collections to read and generate language. The tools were unveiled after OpenAI's announcement of a version of its latest AI model tailored for lawyers.
Timeline
Over the past year, Google and Anthropic released AI tools aimed at lawyers.
Law firms have since begun hiring chief AI officers to oversee these systems.
OpenAI recently announced a version of its latest AI model for lawyers.
The Tech Race
Google and Anthropic had already released AI tools for lawyers in the past year, so the field has moved from general-purpose assistants toward legal-specific products. Firms hiring chief AI officers and building in-house systems, as Kirkland & Ellis has announced, shows competition is shifting toward proprietary capability.
Clients of large firms may see AI-assisted deal review and filing drafts in their matters first, though the source gives no pricing or timeline for passing savings along. Whether hourly bills fall has not been announced, so clients should not assume lower costs yet.
The takeaway
Watch whether firms publish accuracy results for Ropes & Gray's diligence tool and whether clients report lower billed hours on AI-assisted matters. Those figures will show if efficiency gains reach invoices.
Further reading
For the broader technology context, explore our Artificial Intelligence coverage.
Source note: This article includes information reported by Tech4Law.
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