Falcon Rappaport & Berkman runs first firmwide AI hackathon

Falcon Rappaport & Berkman held its first firmwide AI hackathon in New York City on Aug. 21, bringing attorneys and staff together to build workflow tools in a single day with support from Harvey. The event is part of a broader push to expand AI across the firm while reworking pricing and infrastructure around efficiency.

Why it matters: - Falcon Rappaport & Berkman is testing how AI can change everyday legal work, from internal workflows to client pricing. - The firm is also signaling that efficiency gains from AI may be shared with clients through subscription and flat-fee arrangements. - The hackathon shows a law firm model where lawyers, staff and legal technology teams build tools together instead of waiting for centralized product development.

What happened: - Falcon Rappaport & Berkman held FRBuild, its first firmwide AI hackathon, on Aug. 21 at the firm’s New York City office. - Attorneys and professional staff spent a full day identifying workflow bottlenecks and building practical solutions with the firm’s AI and automation tools. - The event was open to employees in every role and department, and no coding or technical background was required. - Teams presented live demonstrations at the end of the day. - Harvey’s Legal Engineering and Customer Success teams joined on site to help teams build more complex agents in Harvey.

The details: - Participants included attorneys, paralegals and professionals from operations, administration and marketing. - Small cross-functional teams organized around the workflows they wanted to improve. - FRB judged projects on potential impact, quality of the live demonstration and how easily the work could be adopted elsewhere in the firm. - Prizes were awarded for first place, best demonstration and biggest time-saver. - First place went to Michael Landsman, Julia Salanitro and Deborah Dyle for an AI agent that helps triage incoming real estate deals. - Emily Yoklavich, a customer success manager at Harvey, served as a guest judge. - Yoklavich said the teams turned concrete challenges into working solutions by the end of the day and showed how applied AI can save time, improve consistency and create better ways of working across the firm. - FRB has rolled Harvey out to all of its attorneys and professional staff. - The firm is implementing AI across its practice groups and business operations. - FRB is moving a growing number of matters to subscription and flat-fee arrangements. - FRB is also experimenting with local compute, including an NVIDIA DGX Spark, to test AI models running on firm-controlled hardware. - For more information, visit the firm’s website.

Between the lines: - FRBuild was less a one-off competition than an internal change-management exercise. - By involving non-lawyer staff and rewarding adoptable workflows, FRB appears focused on practical adoption instead of novelty. - The pricing shift suggests the firm wants AI-driven efficiency to support a different business model, not just faster internal work. - Testing firm-controlled hardware indicates FRB is also thinking about control, security and deployment flexibility, not only software access.

What’s next: - FRB is expected to keep expanding AI use across legal and business teams. - More matters are likely to move into subscription and flat-fee pricing as the firm tries to align fees with efficiency. - The firm will continue testing what can run on its own hardware as part of its AI rollout. - The winning and other hackathon-built workflows may be adopted more broadly if they prove useful in daily practice.

The bottom line: - FRB is trying to turn AI into an operating model for the firm, not just a tool for individual lawyers.