Husch Blackwell streamlines legal processes with Microsoft Copilot, saving lawyers 8,800 hours

Husch Blackwell is at the forefront of implementing AI and unlocking its benefits in the legal sphere. With AI, the firm is creating unique opportunities for lawyers and other legal staff to save time, increase efficiency, and form deeper connections.

Many law firms are seeking ways to help attorneys spend less time performing routine tasks and more time engaging with clients and doing meaningful work. Husch Blackwell has used solutions like Microsoft Azure, Azure Compute, Microsoft Copilot, and Microsoft Teams to meet those goals, cutting the time and costs associated with common repetitive jobs.

Empowering the legal community with the latest technologies

Husch Blackwell, a law firm with expertise in renewable energy and other large industries, hosts more than 20 offices across the United States, including a virtual office called The Link. Since its founding, Husch Blackwell has been a pioneer in implementing new technologies, championing remote work, and hiring data scientists and IT staff that many firms do not employ—all to improve efficiency while lawyers focus on legal responsibilities. “We’re different than typical law firms,” says Blake Rooney, Chief Information Officer at Husch Blackwell. “That has allowed us to become more diverse in our staffing of both lawyers and business professionals and a very data-driven law firm. We hired data scientists who helped us solve problems even before AI came on the scene.”

As the renewable energy sector brought in more cases, Husch Blackwell saw a major opportunity to revolutionize its legal practice. The firm faced the challenge of costly, repetitive tasks, like transcribing meetings, summarizing depositions, managing emails, and listening to voicemails, which left less time for engaging with clients. Recognizing that these routine activities were not adding value, Husch Blackwell partnered with Microsoft to implement Copilot and Azure, tools designed to help automate these tasks while maintaining the security and accuracy essential for legal matters. This strategic move not only saved thousands of hours but also allowed attorneys to focus on what truly matters—building stronger client relationships and delivering high-quality legal services.

Deploying AI tools to hundreds of lawyers with Copilot

In 2023, Husch Blackwell began deploying generative AI tools that quickly scanned and summarized large documents or online databases to help its workforce accelerate research and analysis. Lawyers used these tools to search for specific information and quotes from transcripts. AI was able to highlight that text in large documents or files so attorneys could save the time needed to read or search through them manually. Husch Blackwell also developed a tool called Prompt Composer where lawyers could upload specific datasets and obtain swift answers to questions about them. After the success of such tools, Husch Blackwell wanted to implement AI to ease other tasks and make way for more meaningful jobs and better interactions with clients.

The firm deployed Copilot to attorneys in 2024. It worked closely with Microsoft and used Azure compute to ensure scalability. “We have derived a lot of value from the collaboration with Microsoft,” says Thom Hutchison, Director of Data Science and AI at Husch Blackwell. “We’ve been able to access the tools available in Azure and then create complex solutions from those tools, which has been a real force multiplier.”

Additionally, Husch Blackwell appreciated how flexible Copilot could be to meet the demands of each individual attorney so they could use it for whatever work was taking up most of their time and energy. “We recognized that the application of the technology could cover multiple needs and trained the workforce on those capabilities,” says Justin Helms, Senior AI Solutions Strategist at Husch Blackwell.

Improving relationships and saving thousands of hours of work with Microsoft Teams and Copilot

Husch Blackwell attorneys outsourced much of their meeting note-taking to AI, freeing them up to focus more on engaging with clients during meetings. “Using Microsoft Teams makes the interaction between our attorneys and clients more seamless,” says Rooney. “They’re now more focused on making eye contact with clients. For us, AI is creating more personal human relationships.” AI transcription is also removing the need to hire transcriptionists for attorneys who have hearing loss, both cutting costs and increasing accessibility.

In one instance of success, Husch Blackwell used AI technology to save hundreds of hours of work writing website content. In 2024, the firm hired more than 100 summer associates. Writing their bios would have taken staff up to 160 hours, but with Prompt Composer and the Microsoft framework, it was done in one afternoon. “This is the sort of project a lot of knowledge workers get saddled with, but we were able to use this technology to automate it instead,” says Rooney.

Using Copilot, attorneys can find information easily. “One amazing thing you can do is ask, ‘What do I know about [insert topic]?’ and it will go across your entire Microsoft landscape to find Microsoft PowerPoint presentations, documents, emails, etc., on that exact topic and help you recall important information quickly,” says Helms. This and other Copilot capabilities helped attorneys save 8,800 hours of work in 2024 so they could put together cases and help clients more swiftly.

Advancing efficiency in the legal sphere with AI solutions

Husch Blackwell is pioneering new ways of using AI to serve law firms, which traditionally have been slow to adopt new technology. Moving forward, the firm is excited to see how it can implement AI for specific needs across the legal sphere, from reading patents to drafting entire contracts.

Seeing AI empowering so much efficiency for lawyers, Husch Blackwell is working with Microsoft to increase access for all staff. “Everyone is using these solutions,” says Helms. “Our tools have really good integration at all levels, and we hear from everyone how much they love using them. AI is really becoming that thought partner that will help legal workers succeed.”

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