Towards the end of last year, Australian law firm Allens decided the best way for its lawyers to understand generative AI was to start using it themselves—but they didn’t want to risk client confidentiality and privacy by using public AI such as ChatGPT. 

So instead, the firm set out to build its own. In August, it announced it had done just that, making it one of the first law firms to launch its own version of a generative AI platform.