The AI Lab at Lander & Rogers tackles “three or four” prototypes daily

Inside the law firm Lander & Rogers, an AI Lab is actively developing and testing “three or four” prototypes each day. They analyze how these prototypes engage with various data types and assess the feasibility of their use cases.

Jared Woodruff.

Jared Woodruff, the Head of AI Engineering, shared with the iTnews Podcast that the lab, established in February, is progressing through a substantial pipeline of ideas that have been raised since its inception.

Discussing the inception of the AI lab, Woodruff remarked on the influx of ideas they received, describing it as “absolutely phenomenal.”

Efforts are being made to prototype ideas through a series of Microsoft Copilots where feasible.

The firm is employing M365 Copilot as the primary implementation tool for initial use cases.

For ideas not suitable for Copilot, the lab explores alternative AI solutions, such as creating dedicated solutions for the use case or acquiring new tools.

Consideration is also given to non-AI options: “We can utilize [Microsoft] Power Automate or other existing workflow tools. We could even collaborate with a team to redefine the problem and proceed from there.”

Woodruff highlighted that the firm’s access to M365 Copilot and Microsoft’s resources has significantly accelerated the AI Lab’s progress, despite it being in its early stages.

Woodruff stressed the importance of AI use cases that save time in locating and presenting the required information to lawyers.

“That’s the main appeal for lawyers,” he noted.

“AI isn’t meant to rewrite their tasks or similar. AI’s purpose is to provide them with all necessary information to make decisions accurately and efficiently, saving their time.”

Through the collaboration with Microsoft, Lander & Rogers is exploring additional Copilots, including the GitHub Copilot for software development assistance and the newer Copilot for Security focused on incident analysis and response support.

While looking forward to more Microsoft-made Copilots, Woodruff emphasized that experimentation would wait until instances were available on servers in Australia.

Furthermore, Woodruff expressed enthusiasm for upcoming AI agents with computer vision capabilities.

“The potential of vision in AI excites me the most, as the possibilities with vision technology are vast,” he remarked.

“We’ve already demonstrated internal prototypes exhibiting what vision technology can achieve, which seemed unimaginable previously due to cost constraints at scale.

“As advancements unfold this year and vision becomes more accessible, it will revolutionize operations and provide tangible benefits to businesses.

“In terms of agents, I view them as critical for refining workflow execution, intricate mission planning, and logical reasoning.”

One potential use case under prototyping involves integrating AI agents with vision into existing legal-specific applications, enabling lawyers to interact with them akin to Copilot.

“We have established legacy applications at the firm, common across all law firms. We are developing an application that encapsulates these legacy systems, leveraging vision technology to ‘view’ into these applications, and delivering a Copilot-like conversational experience on the right side,” shared Woodruff.

“If successful, this approach negates the need to request AI support integration from legacy vendors; we’ll integrate it into the applications ourselves.”

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AndyC

Andy Curtis is an award-winning security consultant, researcher and public speaker. He has been working in the computer security industry since the early 1990s, having been employed by state and federal government, leading healthcare and banking providers across three continents. He has given talks about computer security for some of the world’s largest companies, worked with law enforcement agencies on investigations into hacking groups, and is a regular voice on TV and radio explaining IT security threats.

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