Ropes & Gray Real Estate Lawyers Talk Using AI with PLI

Sally Davis and Pete Scherer, members of Ropes & Gray's real estate group, recently sat down with PLI to discuss how their practice group has embraced artificial intelligence and legal technology—and what lessons other real estate practitioners can take from the experience. Drawing on nearly two years of hands-on adoption, their conversation covered the full arc of the group's AI journey, from early experimentation with low-hanging fruit to the development of bespoke, client-specific tools, as well as the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. You can find the full recording of this podcast here. Below are the key takeaways from their discussion.

Key Messages for Real Estate Practitioners:

• Identify specific pain points in your practice and match them with available legal tech tools.
• Treat AI as a tool changing how lawyers work, not a replacement for the tailored legal advice lawyers provide.
• Invest in human workflows that are designed to leverage both currently available AI tools and those that are in the development pipeline.
• Recognize that adoption requires patience, communication, firm-wide support, and human systems designed to guard against the weaknesses of generative AI (e.g., hallucinations) while leveraging its strengths.

How Ropes & Gray's Real Estate Group Adopted AI

Ropes & Gray's real estate group began its AI journey close to two years ago. The group started by identifying pain points in its practice, testing technology solutions to address those points, and developing adoption plans to roll out only the most promising tools and use cases group-wide. While AI adoption was firmwide, it was important to explore AI at the group level to ensure tools were suited to the practice’s specific needs. A group steering committee identified priority areas, a dedicated legal tech team vetted tools, and attorneys at all levels participated in testing. Early adopters shared what they learned through training, playbooks, and celebrating wins.

Deploying AI Across the Practice: From Low-Hanging Fruit to Client-Specific Tools

The real estate group focuses their AI strategy around three core use cases. The first is low-hanging fruit, such as using AI for quick questions, proofreading, document review, and bulk production tasks, like preparing signature pages. Second, we develop customized workflows. Such as pre-wired, prompt-engineered diligence matrices that can dramatically increase efficiency in bulk document review and other diligence tasked and AI-enhanced, curated knowledge resources (e.g., natural language searchable precedent libraries of both client specific and broader market precedents, and engineered playbooks that when paired with AI can largely automate initial markups of many ancillary documents). Finally, the group builds bespoke deliverables. The group has built client-specific workflows and tools customized to specific client needs; for example, AI generated “user manuals” for credit agreements or joint ventures, and tailored due diligence reports addressing bespoke client needs.

Navigating Challenges: Quality Control, Pace of Change, and Deal Deployment

The panelists were candid about the challenges of AI adoption. The market for AI tools is evolving rapidly, and the group leverages its in-house technology team to keep pace—noting material improvement in their tech stack over the past 6 months alone. Quality control remains a top priority: the group focuses on wrapping its use of AI in human centered processes to ensure an appropriate level of accuracy for the given task. The pace of change also requires making AI adoption as “plug and play” as possible for busy deal teams, with projects strategically selected to address the biggest pain points for the group’s practicing attorneys first.

Looking Ahead: Commitment, Patience, and Communication

The panel's message was clear: the next 24 months will require commitment, patience, and communication. At Ropes & Gray, this means a whole-firm commitment to revolutionizing its products and services with AI integrated as a foundational level - including giving first year associates billable credit for learning AI tools, our TrAIlblazers program. The firm provides multiple opportunities and resources to meet people where they are, while also frequently communicating about new developments and tools, and making AI accessible to lawyers at all levels of practice.

The Ropes & Gray real estate team was recently “highly commended” as part of the Financial Times’ 2025 North America Innovative Lawyers special report which specifically recognized the innovation of the real estate practice building reusable AI templates. See more here.