Welcome to this week's edition of the Weekly Briefing!
Where we break down the commercial stories law students should actually be paying attention to.
CNN Sues Perplexity Over Copyright Laws
CNN joins an ever-growing list of companies suing AI businesses on the basis of copyright. Perplexity is an AI platform that reads the web in real time and scrapes from a variety of sources (including CNN) to give its users detailed answers. CNN argues on two fronts:
- CNN did not give Perplexity permission to scrape its articles to be used in AI-generated responses
- If Perplexity uses content from CNN to answer users' queries, it would reduce the chance of the user visiting CNN's platforms, driving down revenue for CNN
What makes this case different than other AI copyright lawsuits is the fact Perplexity cannot claim the benefit of doubt. Court documents indicate that CNN had previously tried to strike a content deal with Perplexity, which fell through. This meant that Perplexity was explicitly forbidden from using CNN's content, unlike other AI companies (e.g. Meta, who announced the deal last December). CNN is not anti-AI ; CNN is anti-scraping-data-when-you-were-explicitly-forbidden-from-doing-so-in-writing.
If CNN wins this case, it'd be another massive hit to the AI start-up, which currently has six active lawsuits against it, all for similar reasons.
Top American Firm Breaks NQ Salary Record in Ploy to Poach UK Talent
Top American firm, Quinn Emmanuel, has just smashed the NQ (newly qualified) salary record by raising it to £189k. On top of this, they've given all their employees a 5% salary boost. These rises were preceded by salary bumps across the Atlantic in response to some of their rivals (Milbank and McDermott Will & Emery) doing the same.
The battle for the highest pay has been well documented. American firms that are newer to the British Big Law climate try to poach top talent from Magic Circle and other prestigious firms by introducing American pay. More established British firms retaliate by increasing their pay. However, while a pay increase usually insulates against leaky pipelines, it also means that the lawyers are worked harder. This leads to less people doing more work, and eventually a decrease in the size of the firm. Whether British or American, law firms are constantly striving for the balance between competitive salaries and lawyer retention.
Even though "go where the money is" is advice that has stood the test of time, it may pay more for future lawyers to consider the scale of work that is expected of them for the salary that they have been offered.
LegalTech Firm Acquires Real-Estate AI
Legora, a Swedish legaltech firm, has acquired Cadastral (a real-estate AI that has many capabilities, from reviewing drafts to analysing properties). Legora's aim, like many companies, is to speed up the rate at which they process the large volumes of legal documents that the company produces.
Cadastral's co-founder, Abe Somani, has taken on a role as Director of Asset Management at Legora, indicating that Legora wants to completely integrate the AI into their workflow. Their first task? Build Legora a major engineering hub in the heart of New York City that would house more than 200 staff.
This is not Legora's first acquisition of legal AI. Other assets purchased this year include:
- A regulatory intelligence platform from Australia (Graceview)
- An AI legal research start-up (Qura)
- A Canadian agentic legal AI platform (Walter AI)
With so many acquisitions in such a short period of time, Legora is positioning itself nicely for expansion. Usually, this would be a ripe opportunity for lawyers, but with the advent of AI, many companies are trying to do without them. Whether Legora sinks or swims may serve as a market indicator for similar companies. If their ambitions do not come to fruition, lawyers may be able to benefit from the fallout, similar to consultants after Deloitte's AI caused disaster.