Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, a Magic Circle law firm with more than 2,800 attorneys, announced a multi-year strategic partnership with Anthropic on April 23, 2026 to deploy Claude across its entire global operation and co-develop agentic AI workflows for legal services.
What the Deal Covers
The partnership has three components, according to the firm’s announcement. First, Freshfields will deploy Claude’s full product suite across all 33 offices and every practice group and business service line. Second, Anthropic’s legal team will work directly with Freshfields to deliver “AI-native legal services” for Anthropic as a client. Third, the firms have established a co-development program to build legal-specific AI applications and design agentic workflows that handle multi-step legal tasks end-to-end.
Freshfields also plans to expand its use of Cowork, Anthropic’s agentic AI platform, as reported by Legaltech News. The deal includes early access to future Anthropic models.
The Adoption Numbers
The firm has already given 5,700 employees access to Claude through its proprietary general AI platform. According to Legaltech News, adoption and usage of Claude increased by approximately 500% in the first six weeks following deployment.
“Claude’s capabilities have become an essential part of our proprietary AI-powered solutions,” said Gerrit Beckhaus, partner and co-head of Freshfields Lab. “With this collaboration, we are going further: co-developing agentic workflows with Anthropic that can handle multi-step legal tasks end-to-end.”
Kate Jensen, head of Americas at Anthropic, called the deal “the clearest signal yet that the enterprise AI moment in professional services has arrived.”
Why Co-Development Matters
The structure of this deal differs from a standard enterprise software license. Freshfields is not just buying seats. Anthropic’s legal team will work as a client of Freshfields while simultaneously collaborating on building the tools, creating a feedback loop where the law firm develops agentic workflows while handling real legal work for the AI company building the underlying models.
This mirrors a pattern emerging across professional services: vendors partnering with domain experts to build vertical-specific agent capabilities rather than shipping general-purpose tools and hoping for adoption. The 500% usage spike suggests the legal profession’s initial skepticism toward AI may be giving way to practical demand, at least at firms willing to invest in proper integration rather than bolt-on chatbots.