News

New brands and refreshed ones.

AI launches are coming thick and fast across the legal industry — and there will be plenty more.

But every new product, platform and solution brings a naming decision. Without some discipline, firms risk creating a smörgåsbord of names that makes an already complex innovation landscape even harder for clients — and partners — to navigate.

As AI portfolios grow, brand architecture matters. In Brand architecture: it’s no joke, we look at how firms can bring greater clarity and coherence to their offer — in our article From AI tools to AI brands: how law firms are packaging artificial intelligence we examine how some are already tackling the challenge.

But first, some of the latest launches — and the thinking behind their names.

New AI. New names

Setfords – Halo

Setfords, UK’s largest platform law firm, launched Halo, its in-house legal intelligence platform, used by 650+ consultant lawyers. Consistent with its technology-first proposition, Halo is the next phase in the way the firm operates. The firm hasn’t explained the name, but there’s an interesting connection: its underlying data platform is Helix, while Halo sits above it — connecting case, accounts and practice management in one system.

Lewis Silkin – Lettu

Building on its reputation for innovation, Lewis Silkin strengthened this positioning by launching an AI platform aimed at the creative industries to help creators, talent managers, agencies and brands manage commercial deals. Known as Lettu, it’s quite a deliberate piece of naming. Lewis Silkin says Lettu stands for “Legal Expertise Tailored to You”, with the final “U” deliberately speaking directly to the creators, talent managers, agencies and brands the platform is designed for.  Can operate as a product brand in its own right while retaining the credibility of being “powered by Lewis Silkin.”

Aavalynx – Sisu

Aavalynx is a law technology company and named its AI-native disputes platform Sisu, a Finnish word meaning perseverance, resilience and determination. It reflects the founders’ Finnish roots and, more distinctively, the ambition behind the technology: relentless tenacity in using AI to rethink dispute resolution (also the name for a top Finnish movie too!)

White & Case – Atlas

White & Case launched Atlas, its conversational AI assistant, ‘has all the things you would expect such as web search, chat history and a prompt library, plus document upload feature in different formats’, as the firm claims. The firm hasn’t publicly explained the name, but it feels apt: Atlas suggests global reach and navigation — helping lawyers find their way through vast volumes of legal documents, data and research.

David Fox – Irving

Co-founded by former Kirkland & Ellis partner David Fox, Irving is an AI-native law firm split into a lawyer-owned firm and an investor-backed technology platform. Its name reflects an AI industry trend of using classic, approachable human first names—like Anthropic’s Claude, Garfield, or legal-tech rival Harvey—to make complex software feel accessible rather than cold and algorithmic.

While the vintage name evokes the stability, trust, and meticulous intellect of a traditional legal archivist or IBM’s Watson, it intentionally masks a cutting-edge AI engine designed to research and draft documents at a senior-associate level.

Branding conundrum for Freshfields Lab

News that Freshfields may spin out Freshfields Lab raises an interesting branding conundrum. Retain the name or rebrand? If the ambition is to sell AI tools to businesses, in-house legal teams and rival law firms, a new name and identity may be the smarter option.

Hogan Lovells Cadwalader took this route with ELTEMATE, its legal technology and AI business, creating a distinct brand endorsed by the parent firm: ‘A Hogan Lovells Cadwalader Technology Company’. However, ELTEMATE appears primarily focused on commercialising technology for the firm’s existing and prospective clients. Its association with the parent brand could become a constraint if it wants to sell to rival law firms.

Freshfields Lab could potentially go further, opening up a much larger market by selling technology to competing firms, as the FT reports. But here’s the dilemma. The Freshfields name could be one of its greatest commercial assets — and one of its biggest barriers to growth.

It brings instant credibility, recognition and trust. But would Clifford Chance, Linklaters or A&O Shearman feel comfortable buying technology bearing a competitor’s name?

There is a broader lesson here for law firms considering commercialising their AI capabilities: Separating a technology business legally and financially is one thing. Separating it in the minds of customers, competitors and investors is quite another.

And that is why brand strategy and brand architecture should be considered at the beginning of any spin-out discussion, rather than treated as a naming exercise once the commercial structure has been agreed.

Going ‘Beyond Legal’ at Macfarlanes

We’ve previously highlighted how auxiliary services — from HR support, secondments and training to fixed-price document templates and 30-minute consultations — offer law firms an opportunity to strengthen their client proposition and demonstrate added value. Yet many firms still fail to fully recognise or articulate the opportunity.

Macfarlanes, however, has recently brought its auxiliary services and technology capabilities together under a single proposition: ‘Beyond Legal’.

It showcases how the firm’s non-legal expertise complements its legal advice, spanning accounting, valuation, intelligence, AI and technology. By bringing this breadth and depth of capability together, Macfarlanes says it enables clients to understand the financial, strategic and operational implications of their decisions — and act with confidence in high-stakes, judgement-led situations.

It’s a good example of how firms can move beyond simply listing additional capabilities to package and position them as a distinctive part of the overall client proposition.

Top 50 UK law firms: is innovation becoming invisible?

Fourteen of the UK’s Top 50 law firms (28%) make no reference to innovation on their websites – up from 12 (24%) in October 2025. Given the AI revolution, you might expect the opposite.

DLA Piper has joined the ranks of firms making little mention of innovation on their websites, alongside long-term absentees including Clyde & Co, Taylor Wessing, Withers, RPC, HFW, Watson Farley & Williams, Hill Dickinson and Penningtons Manches Cooper. Particularly surprising is that several advise technology-led businesses, yet their own positioning fails to reflect the innovative markets and clients they serve.

DLA Piper’s absence is especially notable. Its Law& group — previously the public face of capabilities spanning design thinking to its Aiscension platform — has disappeared from the website.

At Linklaters, Innovation has disappeared from the main navigation, with capabilities reorganised under Legal Operations. CreateiQ has also gone too.

Both raise a bigger question: as AI and technology become embedded in everyday legal delivery, how should firms position innovation?

Clients increasingly expect sophisticated firms to use AI, technology, data and process improvement. Simply claiming to be “innovative” therefore carries less weight. The more important question is what does innovation enable for clients?

Firms don’t necessarily need to tell clients they are innovative. But they do need to make the results visible:

Visibility → Evidence → Productisation → Client value

Shoosmiths provides a good example, turning innovation into clearly defined services and solutions, supported by evidence of how they help clients.

Perhaps the question is no longer “Are we innovative?” but “Can clients see what our innovation does for them?”

That shifts innovation from a capability narrative to a compelling market proposition.

Top 51 to100 UK firms: is silence golden?

A review of firms further down the rankings — UK firms 51–100 — reveals little change since we reported 12 months ago.

Just nine firms (18%) talk visibly about innovation, technology and AI, while 82% remain largely silent. If anything, that represents a slight step backwards from 2022, when we found 78% were keeping quiet in ‘What’s happening below £100m?’

So what does this apparent silence tell us?

Lower client pressure, fewer resources, less formal innovation infrastructure and innovation not being a strategic priority may all play a part.

But silence shouldn’t be mistaken for inactivity.

Many firms ranked 51–100 will already be using technology and increasingly experimenting with AI. The bigger issue may be that they haven’t translated this activity into a clear, compelling client proposition — explaining how technology, AI, process and legal expertise combine to deliver a better service.

The exceptions are revealing.

Firms such as Harbottle & Lewis, Lewis Silkin and Wedlake Bell clearly see the strategic value of making their capabilities visible and using innovation to reinforce their wider market positioning.

For Harbottle & Lewis, for example, innovation supports what the firm wants the market to believe about it: entrepreneurial, contemporary, technology-aware and closely connected to the worlds in which its clients operate. Keeping those capabilities hidden would arguably weaken that positioning.

Perhaps, then, the real gap isn’t simply one of innovation. It’s a gap between doing it and communicating it. And that matters. Prospective clients — and talent — can only judge a firm on what it chooses to show them.

If technology and AI are increasingly part of how sophisticated law firms deliver legal services, at what point does saying nothing about them become a brand problem?

Features

Harvey Intake. Legora Intake. Same innovation. Same name. Different brands.

The near-simultaneous launch of Harvey Intake and Legora Intake illustrates an increasingly important branding challenge. As AI accelerates product development, businesses risk innovating faster than they differentiate.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with descriptive names. They can make new capabilities immediately understandable. But when competing businesses adopt identical names for similar solutions, the opportunity to build distinction through naming disappears.

For law firms developing their own AI products and services, the lesson is clear. Naming shouldn’t be an afterthought or left to individual product teams. It needs to be guided by a coherent brand architecture that balances clarity, differentiation and consistency.

Do you brand individual products, create a specialist AI capability, develop an umbrella proposition – or keep everything beneath the firm’s existing brand?

This is where, brand architecture matters.

Increasingly however, firms are naming and packaging their capabilities in five ways.

Brand the team: Linklaters’ Applied Intelligence brings together lawyers and data scientists to develop AI-powered client solutions – turning multidisciplinary expertise into a specialist capability.

Brand the technology: Firms are giving proprietary AI tools their own identity. Simmons & Simmons has Percy AI, Dentons DAISY and FleetAI, Foley & Lardner FoleyChat, and Setfords Halo.

Brand the client product: Debevoise & Plimpton’s STAAR turns AI regulatory expertise into a client-facing product. ClearyX’s CX+ packages AI-powered contract intelligence and transactional workflows, while Kingsley Napley’s KNavigate provides an AI-driven legal service.

Brand the umbrella proposition: TLT Intelligence goes further, creating an architecture encompassing Intelligent Workspaces, Accelerate Intelligence and Intelligent Delivery. It gives TLT scope to add new AI products and services without creating another standalone brand each time.

Brand the innovation engine: Willkie Works and Freshfields Lab communicate where innovation happens, providing a parent identity beneath which AI products, workflows and services can be developed.

There’s no right or wrong approach to naming. Much depends on a firm’s brand architecture. But one thing is certain: as AI portfolios expand, the need for a coherent brand architecture becomes increasingly important.

In our article, Brand architecture: it’s no joke, we explore how firms can organise their growing portfolios of services, solutions and products to bring greater clarity and coherence to their offering — and help overcome barriers to internal engagement.

Partners are often criticised for failing to initiate conversations about how technology can help solve client challenges. But if poor or non-existent brand architecture makes it difficult for partners themselves to understand, navigate and articulate their firm’s technology-enabled capabilities, is it any wonder they struggle to engage clients?

If partners can’t make sense of what their firm offers, how can we expect clients to?

Visibility makes innovation easier to understand and access

Law firms’ innovation, technology and AI credentials are often difficult to find. This may reflect a lack of strategic priority, uncertainty about where innovation belongs or nobody taking ownership of the story. The result is fragmented content scattered across the website.

If clients must navigate through About us → How we work → Legal Operations → Solutions → Technology, innovation risks appearing peripheral.

Simply adding “Innovation” to the main navigation is not enough. Stronger firms create a clear proposition connecting legal expertise, technology, AI, data, people and process—and make it easy to find. That is far more compelling than separate pages for AI, legal technology, legal operations and alternative legal services without explaining how they fit together.

Freshfields provides perhaps the clearest example. Its prominent Innovation section brings together knowledge and legal data, smarter service delivery and legal technology—combining lawyers, data scientists, AI specialists, developers, technology and process improvement. The principal omission is client case studies demonstrating the value delivered.

This reinforces the central finding from our Top 50 and Top 100 research: the communications challenge is no longer proving that a firm uses AI or has an innovation team. It is turning multiple capabilities into a coherent client proposition.

Alternative or Complementary?

Our review of firms found several still grouping services, solutions and products under labels such as Alternative Legal Services (Pinsent Masons) or Alternative Business and Legal Solutions (Womble Bond Dickinson). But perhaps it is time to retire the word ‘alternative’?

Alternative Legal Service Providers (ALSPs) emerged in the late 1990s and 2000s, offering legal support outside the traditional law firm model. The terminology stuck and, over time, entered the law firm lexicon.

But the market has moved on. Today, what exactly are these capabilities an alternative to?

Technology, AI, data, project management, consulting and other specialist expertise increasingly sit alongside lawyers to improve how legal services are delivered and help clients solve broader business problems. They are not alternatives to a firm’s legal, sector or commercial expertise. They complement it, enhance it and, increasingly, differentiate it.

Continuing to label these capabilities ‘alternative’ risks positioning them as peripheral when they are becoming increasingly central to how sophisticated firms compete and deliver value.

Perhaps ‘complementary’ better reflects their role. Better still, firms might stop separating them from the core proposition altogether and start presenting them for what they increasingly are: an integral part of a modern legal service.

About

We are a boutique branding and design agency specialising in the legal sector. For over 25 years, we have partnered with leading law firms to craft and implement creative branding solutions to help set them apart. Increasingly our focus is helping firms brand their business of law capabilities —an area of growing importance for firms. We have helped firms define, position, and communicate their innovation and technology capabilities, ensuring their brand truly reflects the full scope of their expertise and forward-thinking approach.

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Further information, contact Grahame@soukiasjones.co.uk.