Weil Launches Two-Summer AI Programme for Law Students, Building on LASER Team and Google Cloud Partnership

Weil announced on 22 October 2026 a two-summer AI programme for law students, set to begin in 2027. The programme is open to first-year students enrolled at ABA-accredited law schools in the United States, who will spend 10 weeks working with the firm's Lawyer Augmented Solutions Engineering and Research (LASER) team on live legal projects, building legal software applications, and contributing to academic research on AI and law. Participants accepted for the 1L (first-year) summer will receive offers to return for the 2L (second-year) summer associate programme in 2028, with compensation in line with standard summer associate rates. The inaugural cohort will be based in New York. Andrew Simon, Weil's chief AI and innovation officer, described the objective as producing lawyers who understand AI well enough to ask better questions and work effectively with technologists, rather than lawyers trained as software engineers. Co-managing partner Jonathon Soler framed it as giving talented law students the opportunity to engage with the industry's transition as participants rather than spectators. The programme builds on Weil's existing AI investment, including the LASER team's proprietary litigation intelligence platform BenchMark, which analyses judicial materials including judgments, hearing transcripts, and bench rulings to identify trends for litigation strategy. In August 2026, Weil also announced a strategic partnership with Google Cloud centred on Gemini Enterprise for Legal, described as one of the first adoptions of Google's AI platform designed for legal work, with a focus on AI literacy, document review automation, and drafting efficiency. Other firms running comparable programmes include Reed Smith, which launched an AI leadership programme at Cornell University in July 2026, and , which welcomed eight students to an inaugural AI law internship programme in April 2026.