On May 15-16, 2025, the “Chambers & Partners’ Greater China Forum 2025: Beijing” was successfully held at the InterContinental Beijing Sanlitun By IHG. The forum attracted over a hundred elite legal professionals, corporate legal counsel leaders, and technology experts. Zhonglun W&D Law Firm was invited to attend and share key insights during the main forum’s roundtable discussion.

In the panel discussion on “The Impact of AI on Law Firm Development and Legal Practice”, Mingzi Chen, the firm’s Communications Director, served as the moderator. She facilitated an in-depth dialogue with Executive Committee members Zhenming Li and Gaochong Hu, Senior Partner Bingling Zhao, and Tiansheng Wen, Director of the Tianjin Office.

Zhenming Li emphasized the need to adopt a dialectical perspective when examining AI’s impact on law firms and the legal profession. In the face of technological transformation, he urged proactive learning and mastery of AI skills while maintaining a balance between technological empowerment and professional integrity. For lawyers, especially younger practitioners, Lawyer Li highlighted the importance of leveraging their unique strengths to pursue differentiated development paths. He also stressed that continuous learning and adaptation are core strategies for addressing future challenges.

Gaochong Hu noted that the era of artificial intelligence has arrived, and the entire industry ought to embrace AI with an open mindset. From a law firm management perspective, he pointed out that the adoption of AI tools requires systematic consideration of three core factors: cost control, data confidentiality, and phased implementation. For individual lawyers and their career development, Lawyer Hu emphasized the need to actively build a dual competitiveness combining “professional expertise and technological thinking”. By transforming AI into a key tool for enhancing service efficiency and quality, lawyers can solidify their professional value amid technological advancements.

Lawyer Bingling Zhao pointed out that with the development of artificial intelligence, lawyers are required to focus on enhancing their professional capabilities to tackle complex legal issues, including cross-dimensional and interdisciplinary thinking, as well as the ability to provide highly strategic advice. AI can serve as a powerful assistant, freeing lawyers from repetitive and mundane tasks, allowing them to concentrate on crafting precisely tailored, value-added legal service solutions for clients. For individual lawyers, the ability to communicate effectively with AI and to make personalized judgments based on AI’s objective conclusions has become particularly crucial. As AI continues to evolve, this capability will also become a key factor for law firms or large teams to build differentiated competitiveness and may even give rise to a new industry trend.

Lawyer Zhisheng Wen emphasized that the value of AI in improving the efficiency of legal services and tackling challenging legal issues is beyond doubt. From the perspective of the legal community, courts and arbitration institutions across the country have already widely adopted AI technology. In light of this trend, the legal profession should proactively embrace AI, actively explore its potential, and deeply integrate this technology, rather than adopting a wait-and-see or avoidant attitude. For individual lawyers, it is even more essential to adopt a positive mindset toward learning AI-related knowledge and applications, calmly adapting to the industry transformations brought by AI, and ensuring that AI becomes a truly effective tool for enhancing professional efficiency in legal practice.

Several partners from Zhonglun W&D Law Firm were invited to attend the forum, including Senior Partner Wei Hao, Partners Chunfen Cao, Xiaoqin Liu, Junyan Fan, Huishan Pei, Yunfei Xu, Ping Zhao, Xuening Li, Pengli Zhao, Shengnan Huang, Zhuoya Tian, Kai Sun, Miao Zhang, and Partner Zhihan Du from the Tianjin Office.

The future is already here. At the intersection of technological revolution and industry transformation, Zhonglun W&D Law Firm consistently upholds the principle of “expertise as the foundation and technology as the driving force ”. We continue to deepen our dual-driver strategy of “Legal + Tech”, delivering more forward-looking and precise legal services for ourclients.