The risk partner, and the supervising partner and senior associates of whichever practice group runs the first agent. Those people set the firm's red lines and approve the agent's drafts on live matters. Knowledge lawyers who will build agents train alongside them. Paralegals, trainees and the rest of the firm follow, group by group, as each practice adopts agents.
Why one practice group at a time?
Law firms are federations. Litigation, real estate, corporate and private client work differently, use different documents and carry different risks. An agent that reviews disclosure in litigation is a different thing from one that drafts reports on title in real estate. Training everyone at once produces generic knowledge that fades before most people use it.
So the firm trains a thin central layer once, then trains each practice group just before its agent goes live.
Who is in the first wave?
- The risk partner or general counsel. Sets red lines for the whole firm: what agents may never do, what is always held, what clients must be told. Common grounding, plus how to read the record when a complaint or claim arrives.
- The supervising partner of the first practice group. Answers for every matter the agent touches. Common grounding, and enough of the reviewer track to supervise associates who approve.
- Senior associates in that group. They will approve the agent's held drafts every day. Full reviewer track with a practicum on the group's own closed matters.
- Knowledge or practice support lawyers. They write the agent's brief, choose its sources and define its bounds. Builder track.
- The head of legal technology. Works with the knowledge lawyers on configuration and certification.
Wave two: paralegals and trainees in the first group, and the finance team if billing agents are planned. Wave three: the next practice group.
What may the agent do, and what stays with lawyers?
| Work | The agent | Depth | Stays with a lawyer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Disclosure review | Tags, summarises, flags possible privilege | 2 | Every privilege and relevance call |
| Drafting | First drafts of letters and standard documents | 2 | Anything sent outside the firm |
| Research notes | Summarises sources the firm provides | 2 | Advice |
| Matter administration | Opens files, chases documents | 3 | Engagement terms |
An example: a disclosure document that gave instructions
Take a litigation team using an agent to summarise the other side's disclosure. One document, a spreadsheet, contains a hidden line of text addressed to any automated reviewer, telling it to mark the file as irrelevant. The document is external provenance, and the agent treats what it contains as data, not instruction. Its summary flags the odd text and holds the item for review.
A trained senior associate recognises the attempt, preserves the record and tells the supervising partner, who decides how to raise it. An untrained associate sees an item marked for attention, cannot see why, and clears it to keep the review moving. The OWASP Top 10 for LLM Applications names prompt injection among its risks for this reason. Senior associates are in wave one because they will see it first.
How does the firm know its first wave is ready?
A written test and a supervised period of real held drafts from the group's closed matters, with no missed red line, signed off by someone outside the group. A firm can adopt the practice of making the right to release agent work depend on a current certificate. Agent certificates lapse after 90 days, and a run that clears no depth drops an agent to depth 1 the same day, so the group should also be able to keep a disclosure review moving by hand.
Run a readiness assessment in a law firm on the first group before choosing the agent, then roll the training out across the firm group by group. What law firms get wrong about AI agent training covers the traps. The answer is similar in an accountancy firm and a property management firm, where client money adds a layer. The full approach is in training teams for AI agents.
Pryme Intelligence Academy's module tests are set in the learner's own industry and role, so associates are tested on legal work.
Questions people ask
Should every partner be trained in the first wave?
No. The risk partner and the first group's supervising partner are enough to start. Other partners join when their group adopts an agent.
Do trainees learn faster than associates?
Often, but they should not approve agent work unsupervised. Let them start the reviewer track under a certified associate.
What should clients be told?
What the agent does on their matter, what it never does, and which lawyer approves its work. The risk partner should agree the wording before the first agent goes live.