Wake Up Call: AI Startup Raises Millions to Cut Law Firm Work

Welcome to Bloomberg Law’s Wake Up Call, a daily rundown of the top news for lawyers, law firms, and in-house counsel.

• AI is coming for outside counsel work. Wordsmith has raised $70 million to help corporate legal departments handle more matters themselves instead of sending them to law firms. The startup, founded by former lawyer Ross McNairn, offers software that gathers legal requests from workplace tools, produces initial drafts and answers, and directs work to the appropriate in-house team members. McNairn said the company chose to focus only on corporate legal departments, not firms, because helping clients reduce outside spend would conflict with selling to the firms losing that work. (Business Insider)
• Eric Herschmann must take his pay fight to arbitration. A New York judge ruled that the former Kasowitz LLP partner and onetime Trump lawyer is bound by the firm’s amended partnership agreement, including its arbitration clause, even though he argued he never signed that version. The decision sends Herschmann’s claims that Marc Kasowitz mismanaged firm finances and withheld millions in compensation out of court and into confidential proceedings. (New York Law Journal)
• Latham & Watkins is expanding in downtown Houston. The firm is adding 26,763 square feet at 811 Main, bringing its total footprint in the building to 103,336 square feet. The expansion means Latham will occupy about a tenth of the tower, which has also attracted other law firm tenants in recent months. (Houston Business Journal)

Laterals, Moves, In-House

• Kevin Donahue and Jacob Clark joined Cooley LLP as partners in its infrastructure, energy and real estate group in New York. They join from Kirkland & Ellis.
• Bryon Mulligan joined Proskauer LLP as a partner in its global finance practice in Charlotte. He joins from Hunton Andrews Kurth.