Recently, AltaClaro held a panel at the NALP-PDI conference titled “The Power of Prompting: Teaching Lawyers How to Leverage Generative AI,” bringing together legal industry leaders to discuss how law firms can effectively integrate Gen AI training into their organizations. Moderated by Abdi Shayesteh, CEO and founder of AltaClaro, the session featured Carolyn Austin (Director of Practice Innovation at K&L Gates) and Matt Galando (Director of Professional Development at K&L Gates). Carolyn shared insights from her work leading K&L Gates’ AI Solutions Group, including governance, policy considerations, and firmwide education strategies. The insights and strategies shared here are inspired by that discussion, highlighting the key themes and takeaways.

For many law firms, generative AI is a puzzle missing critical pieces. The technology is in place, the licenses paid for, and the hype impossible to ignore — yet adoption lags. Lawyers resist changing established workflows, compliance risks dominate discussions, and leadership can’t clearly connect AI use to measurable ROI.

One of our most innovative clients, K&L Gates, cracked the AI adoption challenge. Through a deliberate, collaborative, and measurable approach, they’ve turned AI from a shiny object into an everyday tool that adds real value to legal work. 

With the combined leadership of Carolyn Austin, Director of Practice Innovation, Matt Galando, Director of Professional Development, and others in K&L Gates’s AI Solutions Group, the firm has turned AI curiosity into confident, everyday use. 

Their approach rests on six core strategies that make adoption practical, measurable, and sustainable while overcoming hesitation, managing risk, and unlocking the full potential of generative AI. Here are the pillars behind their success and how your firm can apply them.

1. Build a Collaborative Governance Structure

AI adoption at K&L Gates began with defining leadership and decision-making structures. 

The firm assembled a deliberately cross-functional, global working group, including legal professionals, innovation leads, IT, knowledge management, and professional development. 

This mix of roles and locations ensured that every perspective shaped the adoption plan. Diverse viewpoints helped the firm identify risks early, test assumptions in real workflows, and develop policies and processes that teams could actually follow.

It was also intentionally composed of individuals with differing perspectives. Some were enthusiastic early adopters, while others brought a more cautious, questioning mindset.  

Crucially, K&L Gates invited both early adopters and skeptics to the table. That balance was intentional. By including a mix of voices, the group was able to surface challenges early, pressure-test assumptions, and develop a practical approach grounded in day-to-day legal work.

As Carolyn Austin, Director of Practice Innovation, explains: “You want to have the naysayer’s perspective represented to ensure that those on the outside have confidence in your GenAI strategy.”

This collaboration by design helped ensure the firm's GenAI strategy was not just innovative, but also implementable across varied roles and regions.

2. Create a Network of AI Liaisons

To gather feedback and guide use across the firm, K&L Gates appointed AI liaisons in each practice area. These colleagues serve as the designated experts and communicators for generative AI within their teams.

AI liaisons not only help disseminate updates and training opportunities, but also bring client feedback and user challenges back to the central AI group, helping the team stay closely aligned with both internal and external needs.

By connecting day-to-day firm-wide users with the leaders shaping the firm’s AI strategy, this network creates a continuous feedback loop. It ensures that tools, guidance, and policies reflect actual workflows and challenges, keeping adoption practical, relevant, and reflective of the firm’s different teams and workflows.

3. Empower Power Users

K&L Gates developed a power user program to support individuals deeply engaged with GenAI tools. 

These staff members received dedicated space to experiment and refine their use of AI, while contributing back to the firm’s shared resources. In exchange, power users contributed to prompt libraries and use case collections, mentored peers on effective AI usage, and shared use cases grounded in their workflows. 

Over time, they evolved into a community of practice. As internal champions, they drove grassroots innovation and supported ongoing refinement of the firm’s AI approach, ensuring that adoption remained practical, informed, and connected to real legal work.

4. Align Education, Change Management, and Internal Communication

Carolyn Austin emphasizes the critical integration of education, change management, and internal communication in the firm’s generative AI adoption efforts. She highlighted the central role of the professional development team, noting their effectiveness in coordinating AI education initiatives across the firm. 

Led by Matt Galando, Director of Professional Development at K&L Gates, the team facilitates collaboration among IT trainers, library trainers, and partners with specialized knowledge, ensuring a comprehensive and expert-driven training program.

This alignment enables the firm to leverage expertise from across departments and seniority levels, creating a cohesive and scalable learning environment. The change management team supports these efforts by managing internal communications, promoting training participation, and providing context to reinforce the firm’s commitment to AI adoption. 

Together, these coordinated efforts foster consistent engagement and a smooth, firm-wide rollout of generative AI technologies.

5. Partner with Proven Training Solutions for Comprehensive AI Education

K&L Gates recognized that effective AI adoption requires more than conventional classroom-style training or basic vendor demonstrations. Drawing on their long-standing partnership with AltaClaro, the firm leveraged AltaClaro's simulation-based experiential learning approach to drive firm-wide GenAI adoption.

Having successfully used AltaClaro's experiential training courses for associate development, K&L Gates understood that behavioral change requires hands-on practice, not passive learning. As Carolyn Austin notes, "You can't teach people how to swim through videos"—the same principle applies to AI adoption. Vendor training alone wasn't sufficient, and passive learning modules wouldn't drive the behavioral shifts needed for successful implementation.

K&L Gates chose AltaClaro's "Fundamentals of Prompt Engineering for Lawyers" because it provided exactly what they needed:

• Foundational Knowledge: Platform-neutral training applicable to all GenAI tools, ensuring skills transfer across different AI platforms
• Hands-on Practice: Simulated legal use cases and assignments with immediate application to real workflows
• Interactive Review Sessions: Live reviews with practitioner experts for knowledge reinforcement and best practices

The key was teaching prompting through legal context and legal use cases, making the training immediately relevant and applicable to attorneys' daily work.

As the program proved successful, K&L Gates recognized the need for a more holistic approach. They returned to AltaClaro requesting that they also create a program for allied legal professionals and support teams, understanding that effective AI adoption required training across all roles, not just attorneys. AltaClaro swiftly mobilized their curriculum design team and delivered such a program.

Six months later, they identified another gap: while it's valuable to train AI users, partners and managers who supervise AI work—but may not be daily users themselves—needed their own specialized training. Once again, they emphasized the need for simulation-based, experiential learning rather than passive video content. And, once again, AltaClaro swiftly developed and delivered the new course. 

This iterative partnership resulted in AltaClaro's comprehensive GenAI training suite, including specialized courses for attorneys, allied professionals, and supervisory roles. The cohort-based model perfectly aligned with K&L Gates' strategy of creating AI champions and power users who could evangelize throughout the firm.

To complement this structured training, K&L Gates also introduced hands-on "clinics"—interactive sessions where participants demonstrate current projects, troubleshoot challenges, and exchange practical insights in collaborative virtual environments. These clinics, supported by power users and product experts, create dynamic learning experiences that connect training directly to everyday workflows while fostering a community mindset around AI adoption.

By combining AltaClaro's foundational training with ongoing interactive support, K&L Gates created a comprehensive education strategy that transforms AI curiosity into confident, everyday use across all levels of the firm.

6. Encourage Innovation Through Hackathons

K&L Gates understands that real innovation happens when people actively engage with technology. 

To foster this, they host events like hackathons and “promptathons” where teams across the firm come together to explore generative AI hands-on. These events create a space for experimentation and collaboration, helping participants discover practical applications for AI while learning from one another. 

By making innovation a shared, interactive experience, K&L Gates embeds AI fluency into the firm’s culture and encourages continuous improvement.

From Strategy to Practice: Making AI Work for Your Firm

K&L Gates’ experience demonstrates that successful AI adoption in a law firm requires more than technology and mere vendor training. It requires strategy, structure, and alignment with real legal workflows. 

By defining leadership, incorporating diverse perspectives, empowering key users, and coordinating training and communication, the firm transformed AI from a curiosity into a capability that drives practical results. 

These strategies offer a clear framework for leaders looking to move their firms past hesitation, manage risk, and realize the full potential of generative AI.

AltaClaro: A Turnkey Solution for GenAI Readiness

Firm-wide GenAI adoption is complex, but getting started doesn’t have to be.

AltaClaro’s experiential training model offers a turnkey, hands-on approach to help law firms accelerate GenAI adoption. By combining practical, role-specific assignments with foundational prompt engineering skills, AltaClaro enables lawyers and legal professionals to confidently integrate GenAI into their daily workflows.

Built on a proven “Learn. Do. Review.” framework, the curriculum fosters active skill development, encourages experimentation, and supports responsible use of generative AI. The process unfolds in three stages:

• Learn: Participants gain essential knowledge of generative AI concepts and foundational prompting skills.
• Do: Learners apply their knowledge through hands-on, role-specific exercises that mirror real legal workflows.
• Review: Structured, personalized feedback helps refine skills, deepen understanding, and promote continuous improvement.

Rather than reinvent the wheel, firms can use AltaClaro’s curriculum to jumpstart internal GenAI readiness while building a culture of innovation, cross-functional collaboration, and responsible use.

Explore how AltaClaro’s “Fundamentals of Prompt Engineering for Lawyers” and “Guiding Effective Use of GenAI: A Supervisory Course for Law Firm Partners and Managers” can enable your firm to adopt generative AI confidently and ethically.

Book a demo today to learn how AltaClaro can help your firm drive adoption, reduce risk, and support a culture of innovation.