5 Key Takeaways From Kirkland’s Fund Formation Engine

Kirkland proprietary AI-powered Fund Formation Engine, built in partnership with Palantir, transforms how we deliver legal services in the investment funds space. Erica Berthou unveiled details and insights about the platform at Palantir’s AIPCon 10. Here are five key takeaways from her keynote address.

1. Our Fund Formation Engine signals a fundamental shift in how legal work is delivered.
   The Fund Formation Engine is a brand-new operating model that centralizes and embeds our senior partners’ judgment and tradecraft and puts it at the fingertips of every Kirkland lawyer, allowing us to provide tailored solutions and support for our clients at every stage of the fund formation lifecycle.
2. Our proprietary AI solution for fund formation is unique in the market.
   Kirkland is known for delivering differentiated, Firm-specific insights that our clients can’t get anywhere else. Existing legal AI tools have been trained and developed on widely available market knowledge, making them suitable for common, straightforward legal tasks. The Fund Formation Engine goes much further, integrating complex end-to-end transactions and offering the nuanced, innovative solutions our clients expect.
3. Kirkland’s institutional knowledge is the real competitive advantage.
   Our Firm helps raise hundreds of billions of dollars every year for over a thousand fund formation clients. Our lawyers work with hundreds of investors and manage thousands of investor comments. This unprecedented volume of knowledge, which lives within thousands of documents and in the minds of hundreds of accomplished practitioners, is what sets us apart from other firms. Every time our lawyers engage with our Fund Formation Engine, this knowledge is harnessed and makes the engine smarter — ensuring that all our lawyers get immediate access to the most current insights and strategies.
4. The Fund Formation Engine is not a replacement for lawyers.
   Kirkland lawyers remain the heart and soul of our Firm, with the Fund Formation Engine enhancing their work through greater, quicker access to market intelligence, precedent and the collective judgment of our senior lawyers. The platform handles the drafting, analysis and synthesis of materials in minutes (instead of the days it would typically take), freeing up our lawyers to do what they do best: think strategically, apply commercial judgment and make the pivotal decisions that lead to successful outcomes.
5. Fund managers and investors are the ultimate winners.
   While the Fund Formation Engine allows our lawyers to work more efficiently and knowledge-share at an unmatched scale, no one benefits more than our clients and their investors. Our teams not only deliver better results for fund managers, but also provide bespoke solutions to their investors’ requests, reducing friction in complex transactions and making the entire private markets ecosystem more efficient.

The conference was also covered by Bloomberg Law. Article available to subscribers.