FT.com [no paywall]: “Kirkland & Ellis has set aside $500mn to create its own AI platform, as the world’s highest-grossing law firm seeks to develop proprietary technology rather than rely only on tools available to its competitors. The US-based firm expects to spend more than $100mn this year and hundreds of millions more in the next three to four years developing custom AI services, its chair Jon Ballis told the FT. That is in addition to the money it will continue to spend on licences to use third parties’ AI tools. “The idea is that we’re going to take the collective intelligence of our institution and be able to deploy that throughout our firm,” Ballis said. While the use of widely available AI tools was “raising the floor for everyone” in the legal industry, he said, Kirkland had to do more than use those because “we don’t get hired for the floor”.  Law firms have been racing to make greater use of AI, even as several have been reprimanded for misuse.  Elite firm Sullivan & Cromwell told a US federal bankruptcy court last month that a major filing it had made in a high-profile case contained multiple AI “hallucinations”. Meanwhile, Pinsent Masons was reprimanded by a London court last week for making false submissions based on AI. Law firms around the world have been announcing deals with the two main legal AI providers — Harvey and Legora — every week, while some have also tried to build their own in-house tools…”