Hand holding mobile phone with chatbot application. A chatbot application on a mobile phone. Photo: Shutterstock.com

Writing is typically an important part of the summer associate experience at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. This year, that includes writing code for a chatbot.

As part of a new program, a group of summer associates at Wilson Sonsini is partnering with the firm's senior attorneys and technical staff to create automated chatbots for clients to use.

Wilson Sonsini corporate strategic innovation counsel David Yi Wang, who is in charge of the “build a bot” program, said the next generation of incoming lawyers will need to know how to use technology to build tools and contribute to the firm's existing portfolio of tools in order to add value to the firm's practice.

“Given our firm history and culture, we have always considered ourselves to be one of the innovators and disruptors in the industry,” said Wang. “That's how Wilson Sonsini become Wilson Sonsini. To keep that tradition alive, we want to become a leader in legal technology and applying legal technology in practice.”

According to Wang, this is the first time the firm is allowing its summer associates to build chatbots, instead of completing the standard writing requirement, to be eligible for a job offer. He said the initiative also allows the firm to test whether a small group of lawyers is able to develop an automated solution in a short period of time.

“If three summer associates and one lawyer over the course of six weeks can build a bot themselves … that means that there is a far broader potential for decentralized automation than people previously recognized,” Wang said.

“If summer associates can do it, that means there is really very little substantive knowledge required. They are not even lawyers yet,” he added.

Altogether, five different teams are building five different chatbots. Each team consists of three summer associates and one attorney adviser. These teams are collaborating working with Australian-based legaltech startup Josef Legal Pty Ltd to develop the chatbots.

For example, one of the teams is making a bot that can automate the intake process for CFIUS review matters. Instead of putting a team of attorneys on every part of the transaction, the bot will handle the initial information collection and analysis, Wang explained.

This year, Wilson Sonsini accepted about 90 summer associates, according to Wang. Associates who elect the chatbot project for their apprenticeship will have to present the result to the hiring committee and practice technology committee, of which Wang is a member.

“They would fail if they don't do the project,” said Wang. “I don't think there is a precedent for anybody failing, so certainly I am not intending to fail anybody.”

Wang, who joined Wilson Sonsini from Davis Polk & Wardwell in 2014, was elected to serve as the firm's first corporate strategic innovation counsel last May when Wilson Sonsini formed a new technology community to increase collaboration between its legal practitioners. Wang said the group has grown to 30 attorneys and staff.

In other recent tech initiatives, the firm's subsidiary SixFifty recently launched a privacy app that helps companies comply with California's new privacy law.

“With all of our automation here at Wilson Sonsini, our goal is not to replace the lawyer, but to enable the lawyers to do more with their time, by replacing the element of their practice that is inefficient and routine,” said Wang.