Fidal and Microsoft reinvent the legal profession with Azure OpenAI

Fidal is France’s leading law firm, which specializes in helping customers resolve legal and tax issues. As an expert in its field, the firm is committed to continuous innovation, in order to be ever more relevant.

In this context, Fidal is launching "Fidal IA," a legal assistant based on generative AI and the Azure OpenAI environment, dedicated to Fidal's 1,200 professionals.

Currently in its beta version, the application is based on 40,000 internal sources, 2.7 million data items from legal open data, and already boasts 119,000 messages and 28,000 conversations, as well as numerous use cases.

Public law, competition law, real estate law... For over 100 years, Fidal has been assisting organizations with their legal and tax issues, a range of skills that France's leading law firm has built up over the decades, benefiting 69,000 clients today.

Beyond law in the strict sense of the term, the firm is also interested in new technologies, especially AI and generative AI, and how they can benefit the legal profession. Jean-Godefroy Desmazières, Deputy Managing Director, and Stéphane Mariotto, CIO, tell us all about it.

A digital transformation focused on productivity and data

It all began in 2019, when the firm launched its digital transformation with one objective: to develop AI tailored to its expertise. "We're convinced that AI and generative AI are moving the lines in our profession. They are transforming our long-term business model," Jean-Godefroy Desmazières says.

Indeed, these technologies address the challenges faced by Fidal's 1,200 professionals, particularly when it comes to data analysis. “We produce almost 520,000 documents a year. Our corpus of documents is therefore colossal and endowed with great value,” the lawyer and managing director stresses. “Thanks to AI, we can make the most of it.” In concrete terms, this means capitalizing on this data to avoid repeating the same tasks over and over again. “We have the opportunity to improve team productivity by freeing up time reallocated to strategy and creativity.”

“We're convinced that AI and generative AI are moving the lines in our profession. They are transforming our long-term business model.”

Jean-Godefroy Desmazières, Deputy Managing Director, Fidal

"Fidal IA": A secure and independent assistant by Azure OpenAI

Data also means vulnerability. “The more data we have, the more exposed we are to the risk of data leakage,” Stéphane Mariotto points out, “which is why we can't do AI without investing massively in securing our tools.” The firm also wanted to control these tools from end to end, in order to “maintain its technological independence.”

With this in mind, two years ago, Fidal launched “Fidal IA,” a generative AI solution adding value to lawyers' day-to-day work. Designed as a legal assistant in its own right, it is based on the Azure OpenAI environment and two large language models (LLMs): OpenAI and Mistral Large. "The various LLMs are available in the interface and selected by employees according to their specific needs," Stéphane Mariotto clears up.

Combining artificial and human intelligence in a collective approach

In terms of use cases, there are numerous applications, from generating summaries to drafting emails, comparing conclusions, and legal monitoring, translation… "We developed these cases directly with the lawyers, with a focus on prompting," Jean-Godefroy Desmazières explains.

The idea is to co-construct a library of prompts on specific themes, accessible to all. Orchestrated by Fidal's “AI Club”—made up of some fifty members—and the IT Department, this library is constantly evolving: “Our professionals are creating its richness.”

Training courses are also regularly provided, as are webinars and collective brainstorming sessions. "Lawyers are self-employed professionals who tend to work alone, but a project of this nature can't be carried out without a collective effort," Jean-Godefroy Desmazières points out. "Which is why we bring our teams together every week to present the latest deployments and actively involve them in the process," Stéphane Mariotto adds.

Thousands of conversations later: A proven solution

And the dynamic works: even though this is still the beta version of the application, 119,000 messages and 28,000 conversations have already been processed. What's more, the solution draws on some 40,000 internal sources and 2.7 million data items from legal open data and boasts a Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) architecture of 6 million documents.

At the same time, dozens of users are joining "Fidal IA" every month, and they are proving to be won over. "With “Fidal IA,” the average legal research time has been reduced by 30%," Maud Roux, tax lawyer, testified. “It's now an essential tool that enables us to devote more time to analysis, strategy, and customer relations.”

Jean-Godefroy Desmazières insists that this powerful solution is not intended to replace the human touch. "This tool is at the service of our professionals. It enables them to improve their practice in a field where complexity and risk are inescapable." Finally, in addition to investing in technology, Fidal is betting on the future: “We're at a pivotal point in our profession, with generations of lawyers changing, and we have a duty to remain attractive, in particular by integrating innovation into our working methods.”

“With the support of Microsoft, we have built a generative AI capable of meeting our requirements in terms of security, confidentiality, and legal rigor.”

Stéphane Mariotto, CIO, Fidal

What’s next? Continuing to develop a robust, pragmatic technology

“With the support of Microsoft, we have built a generative AI capable of meeting our requirements in terms of security, confidentiality, and legal rigor,” Stéphane Mariotto enthuses. “This has required complex technical and expertise-oriented choices which have resulted in the development of a reliable, robust device, anchored in the reality of lawyers.”

In the light of this success, the firm is continuing to innovate and has set its sights on extending the Fidal AI knowledge base. Experimentation with agentic AI is also on the agenda, as is team training. "We remain attentive to ensuring that everyone takes the technology in hand." Jean-Godefroy Desmazières warns, "Without humans, nothing is possible."