How One Real Estate Firm Integrated AI Throughout Its Operation

While many companies are still dabbling in AI, Jones Lang LaSalle Inc.'s three-year push to get artificial intelligence into the hands of its 110,000 employees offers a case study of how a pervasive, organization-wide strategy can play out.

JLL, a Fortune 200 commercial real estate and property investment company, developed a customized AI tool powered by several large language models employees can toggle among. It’s testing AI agents that help with daily tasks in Teams, Outlook, and calendars. And the company is figuring out ways for lawyers to use general purpose AI tools instead of paying for legal-specific software, JLL Technologies general counsel Christopher Chan said.

JLL is far from the only company that’s built customized wrappers and tried to get the most out of general-purpose AI tools, but it got a head start on others by rolling out JLL GPT in 2023 and is now mandating that all its employees use AI.

“My number one priority with our chief legal officer is make sure everyone uses it and uses it responsibly and uses it efficiently,” Chan said.

Lucy Bassli, a consultant to in-house legal teams, said JLL’s AI strategy stood out during a panel she moderated this month at the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium’s annual convention where Chan outlined the company’s AI plans. Delta Air Lines acknowledged Chan as a pioneer, asking him to address some employees about using AI tools.

“There are general counsels and CLOs that are actively pursuing AI and certainly asking their teams to pursue AI for the department,” Bassli said in an interview. “But to see such a personalized, hands-on approach and a depth of interest and knowledge that we heard, I think is certainly ahead of the curve.”

Going for a General Solution

There’s a “huge” range of maturity among companies using AI, said Richard Robinson, director of client success at the legal services company Epiq. That includes “some people that still don’t really even understand the technology itself, all the way to people who have complex AI centers of excellence already in their organizations and are building these tools,” he said.

Within that spectrum, some companies including JLL are opting to have frontier models like Google’s Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s GPT do the heavy lifting to deliver AI computing power to their employees.

“Those big three companies are developing so quickly with such great budgets that it’s hard for people to keep up,” Chan said.

Some industry watchers expect more lawyers to turn to Claude and GPT rather than legal specific software. Anthropic has made a direct play to get corporate employees, and specifically lawyers, to rely on Claude.

Lawyers are increasingly aware they can use Claude directly instead of buying other tools, said Will Chen, a former Latham & Watkins associate who went viral on LinkedIn for using Claude to build an alternative, open source version of popular AI legal software. Chen said his alternative showed lawyers that the high-priced, specialized software can be replicated more easily than they realize.

“They’re aware of how software has been rapidly commoditizing, and so they know that perhaps they could use some of these tools in-house,” Chen said.

Legal-tailored solutions pitch themselves as sensitive to the needs of attorneys, but JLL’s Chan said by using more general tools, the legal department makes itself more attuned to the rest of the company. Chan’s team has worked with other departments to build AI agents, he said.

“I need my legal team and the rest of the people to understand, how does our business use AI on a really deep level, and then use those tools,” he said.

Monitoring Risk and Use

Chan said he’s aware his company’s aggressive approach brings risks. Most technology providers don’t have the right security measures, so corporate users need to provide their own. JLL’s policy prioritizes data security, ethical use and human involvement alongside AI. He said the company updates its use policies regularly to keep up with changing technology.

“People are moving so quickly with this—and using every single tool they can figure out—because many of them are extremely useful,” Chan said. “But I would approach it very differently if you’re at a big global company, because there’s a tremendous risk of data loss and that’s the one thing we have to think about.”

Due to that concern, JLL blocked access to unapproved AI tools.

There are consequences for violations, Chan said. “You have to have some kind of disciplinary regime in place, otherwise it becomes just talk,” he said.

At the same time, JLL is trying to make sure employees are using the tech, Chan said.

“It’s going to transform how our legal team is, and they have to be on board with this,” he said.

“I’m not saying it’s meant to replace everybody, but there is an aspect of ‘We give you a tool, we teach you how to use the tool, you should use the tool,’” he added.

Looking to a Super User

Chan spoke with Delta’s legal team from his perspective as a super user, he said. He also uses AI in his personal life, making it more comfortable to use it more at work, he said.

Laura Dieudonné, legal operations and administration director at Delta Air Lines, said the company often brings in guest speakers to “to inform and inspire our employees on a variety of business topics, and in this case we asked Chris to attend to talk about creative ways to use GenAI.” She said Delta also partnered with Microsoft as the company rolled out Copilot out to its external affairs team. Microsoft “held our hand from the beginning to the end,” she said.

JLL’s policies reflect a broader trend of legal departments taking a less risk-averse stance on AI, Bassli said. Companies in recent months have set up boundaries on AI use rather than banning it, she said.

“Progress has been made very swiftly there across the board,” Bassli said.