Finnegan Formalizes AI Practice as Client Demand Grows

Finnegan formally launched its artificial intelligence (AI) practice on September 9. The firm has been advising on AI since 2018, however, after the growing legal demand surrounding the topic, Finnegan decided to officially create a practice group.

The new formalized practice will advise and litigate claims at the intersection of AI and intellectual property. Additionally, the firm launched subpractices that combine AI with copyright, patent, privacy, and trade secrets law.

In an exclusive interview, Finnegan partners Frank DeCosta and Karthik Kumar chatted with The National Law Journal about the new practice.

“Our clients are coming to us en masse for common questions that we’re getting in the space. And so rather than have bespoke outreach and dealing with each of these inquiries, sort of one-off, we’re launching at scale,” Frank said. “So we’re both growing the practice and growing our outreach.”

More than 60 attorneys make up the new practice. Each subpractice will address how different AI IP protection strategies come into play.

“There is often that triage as to what legal scheme do we use to protect the IP that's going to bring the most value to the company?” Frank said. “So there is this, in my mind, a very regimented triage that we help clients go through, and we spend probably most of our time doing that with clients and helping them walk through that.”

The new practice aims to work with new and existing clients at the firm.

“We sort of see three categories of companies come to us: AI developers themselves, AI adopters, and then AI use cases," which Karthik said includes both large and small companies.

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