By refusing to treat innovation as a side project, technology becomes a strategic lever for how legal work can be delivered. According to Rolf Brustad, Chief Digital Officer at Wikborg Rein, the firm no longer debates whether AI belongs in legal practice.

“We’re well past the ‘fad’ stage,” he says. “AI is here to stay. The question now is not if law firms should adopt AI, but how they do it in a way that genuinely changes the way work gets done for the better.”

From experimentation to infrastructure

The firm’s AI journey began with realising quickly that ad-hoc experimentation was not enough. “There are lots of niche solutions out there, and some of them are very interesting,” Brustad explains. “But the common denominator is that many promise a lot without being robust or significant enough for full adoption.”

“I think we’ve only scratched the surface both in terms of new legislation around AI, all the legal work AI itself will create, and very specifically, the “nitty-gritty” use cases. It will only be worth it if the AI tool delivers significantly better quality in a fraction of the time. Otherwise, what’s the point? Lawyers still must learn how to use the solution, and time is a big challenge.”

Wikborg Rein therefore set out to identify a single, general-purpose AI platform capable of supporting lawyers across all practice areas and jurisdictions and undertook a structured evaluation of what it considered the leading platforms on the market. “We realised we needed one platform, not another tool for individual workflows. That’s how we landed on Legora,” says Brustad.”

A partnership, not a vendor relationship

The decision to adopt Legora was driven by a thorough evaluation of platform functionalities and equally important vendor attitude and ability to drive client value. It quickly became something more strategic.

“With Legora, we don’t just receive a product. We receive real involvement and support,” Brustad says. “What stood out was not only product capability, but mindset. We like the DNA of Legora, and the drive to play to win. That creates a positive spiral. That sense of shared ownership feeds a “win-win” philosophy – success for Wikborg Rein and for Legora moving in lockstep.”

Driving adoption through champions

For Wikborg Rein, technology alone does not create transformation. Adoption starts with people.

At the heart of its AI rollout strategy is a network of internal champions: senior lawyers who are early adopters, highly respected in their teams, and commercially astute.

“These champions spearhead the initiative, while team leaders act as sponsors,” Brustad explains. “If you want significant impact, you must move the early and late majority – roughly 70% of the employees. That’s where real ROI is created.”

This has evolved into what he describes as a three-headed operating model: the business, the digital function, and Legora working together in close partnership.

“That setup has been incredibly valuable.”

Firmwide rollout, human in the loop

Rather than prioritising specific departments, the firm chose a broad rollout from day one. Each team has at least one champion, with larger teams having two or more.

“Essentially, everyone has been involved,” Brustad says. “Transactional teams were quick to engage, particularly around contract review and document analysis, where Legora’ s ability to summarise large volumes of material provides immediate value. But dispute teams have also developed their own workflows, showing that the platform’s usefulness is not confined to transactional law.”

Despite the gains, Wikborg Rein remains firmly human-in-the-loop.

“In some parts of a workflow you can move faster, but you still have to validate and verify,” Brustad says. “We’re not seeing significant cost savings yet, but efficiency is improving. The potential is there but the technology is still immature”.

When momentum doesn’t fade

One of the biggest surprises of rolling out Legora firmwide has been sustained engagement.

“I expected usage to dip after the first month,” he admits. “Normally there’s a lot of initial excitement, and then it fades. But it hasn’t.”

Even more encouraging has been the rise in cross-team collaboration.

“People aren’t just sharing within teams, they’re sharing across teams. If someone else’s best practice gets you 60–70% of the way there, that’s already a big win. There’s still room for improvement, but Legora has already created more collaboration than I expected at such an early stage.” he adds.

“In the longer run, Legora will make us more robust. ROI, both direct and indirect, will prove the value. Not just the value of the solution or product, but our organisation’s ability to use AI-based products to realise better work processes.”

Client expectations have also evolved just as quickly as internal behaviour.

“AI is now part of most RFPs, often alongside AI governance, and has been for a while” Brustad says. “But what’s new is that clients are now asking us to run workshops, to talk about what we’ve learned, what’s worked, what hasn’t, and what we’d do differently. Experience, not just tooling, has become the differentiator.”

Preparing for a different future

Looking three to five years ahead, Brustad expects profound change.

“We’ll see AI tools that aren’t even on the market today disrupting generic workflows. The pace of change is accelerating. If you look six-to-nine months back and six-to-nine months ahead, I think the pace of change will at least double compared to what we're used to. That will push us in terms of the level of change we need to absorb.”

Yet despite the technological shift, he is clear that lawyers remain central.

“We still need humans in the loop, owning both the input and the output. But AI will free up time for more valuable work and create new areas of legal demand. We are in this to maintain, secure and grow our position.”

Advice to hesitant leaders

For leaders still unsure where to begin, Brustad’s advice is blunt.

“There’s no way around it. You must try it.”

Wikborg Rein began cautiously, with security, security, and security as a core focus. That made lawyers and partners much more confident in trying out solutions because they knew they were in a safe environment.

“One of the most common questions we get from people beginning to use AI is why they didn’t get the output they expected, “he says. “I always tell them if you get an intern to help you, you must explain what you want them to do, guide them on how to do it and what you want the output to look like. If you treat legal AI the same, you get a long way.”

“There’s no magic wand,” says Brustad. “You must work for the output. But once you’ve done that work, you can reuse it, scale it, and move faster every time, especially when people start sharing what they’ve built.”

Brustad adds, "A lot of people still think they’re no good at technology and that everyone else is better. They want to wait and see what other colleagues are doing. But those days are gone, or at least, they should be.”

A strong foundation

So, what does AI represent inside Wikborg Rein today?

“New opportunities and access to higher-quality, more relevant data,” Brustad says. “That means we can provide a higher level of quality in the advice we give to clients, and on a broader spectrum. We can access directly related information around that scope of what the client needs us to do, which can give a sounder base for decision-making and next steps.”

The firm’s processes are not undergoing a revolution, but they are being constantly refined.

“What we did last week is still good this week,” he reflects. “But the pace of change is accelerating. Our processes don’t have to go through a revolution, but they do need to be updated and tweaked. After a couple of months, the way we work will already have changed, sometimes quite a lot. And I think that’s exactly where we need to be.”