By Mike Scarcella

WASHINGTON, April 23 (Reuters) - Global law firm Freshfields and artificial intelligence startup Anthropic said on Thursday that they signed an agreement to develop new AI tools, as large law firms look increasingly to embed generative AI into their legal services.

London-based Freshfields will work with the legal team at Anthropic to develop AI applications for legal services, they said in a statement.

The law firm, which employs more than 2,800 attorneys, will also receive early access to future Anthropic models and products as part of the deal. No financial terms were disclosed.

Gil Perez, Freshfields' chief innovation officer, said in a statement the deal is expected to “bring new capabilities into our work in a way that is secure, compliant and focused on client needs.”

Spokespeople for Anthropic and Freshfields did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Freshfields had already rolled out Anthropic’s Claude chatbot models internally before Thursday's announcement, the firm said. The firm said it plans to expand to Anthropic's autonomous, or agentic, AI platform called Cowork. Anthropic released a legal plug-in for Cowork in January.

Freshfields said it will work with Anthropic to create applications for legal and market research, contract review, document drafting and automation of internal business‑services workflows.

Reuters parent company Thomson Reuters also sells legal-focused AI tools, including CoCounsel, which uses technology from Anthropic and other AI companies. Freshfields said on Thursday it "is also an early adopter and tester" of CoCounsel's newest version. A Thomson Reuters spokesperson said Freshfields is a "valued partner" and an early innovator in applying AI to legal work.

"The focus is now shifting from experimenting with AI to embedding it into day-to-day workflows at scale," Thomson Reuters Chief Technology Officer Joel Hron said in a statement.

Large law firms have emerged as a key customer base for AI products, which can speed legal research and drafting of contracts and court documents. Two startups that develop AI products for lawyers, Legora and Harvey, have reached multibillion-dollar valuations in recent months.

AI's growing use for legal work has also led to errors in court documents due to the technology's potential to "hallucinate" legal sources. Law firm Sullivan & Cromwell last week apologized to a federal bankruptcy judge after the firm submitted a filing with inaccurate citations and other errors generated by an unidentified AI program.