Big Law Race for AI Directors Intensifies as Firms Struggle to Fill New Role Requiring Decade of Experience

Large law firms across the UK and US are seeking to hire a new class of senior professional — the director of artificial intelligence — but are finding the talent pool frustratingly thin. The ideal candidate, as firms have defined the role, is a lawyer or legally-trained professional with at least ten years of AI-specific experience who has a demonstrable track record of helping law firms adopt new technologies at scale. The role has become one of the most hotly contested in Big Law precisely because it sits at the intersection of legal practice knowledge, technology strategy, and change management — a combination almost no individual currently has in the depth firms require. The ten-year experience threshold is particularly challenging given that generative AI (AI systems capable of producing text, code, and other content) only became a mainstream legal practice tool relatively recently, meaning the pipeline of candidates with that duration of legal-AI experience is structurally limited. The scramble reflects a broader strategic shift: firms that began deploying AI tools experimentally are now trying to institutionalise AI adoption across practice groups, which requires dedicated leadership rather than ad hoc champion-by-champion rollouts. Separately, a Thomson Reuters Institute report published this week finds that UK legal buyers are shifting their expectations for how legal work is delivered — signalling that client pressure, not just internal ambition, is driving firms' AI investment calculus. Separately, Travers Smith chief technology officer Oliver Bethell and Fieldfisher chief information officer Nigel Lang are among the panellists confirmed for a 9 July webinar on AI risk, governance, and adoption hosted by LexisNexis and Artificial Lawyer — part of a wider run-up to the Legal Innovators UK conference in London on November 4–5.