Cooley separates AI delivery into a wholly owned operating unit
Inside Practice · OCTOBER 26, 2026 · 1 MIN READ
On October 19, 2026, Business Insider reported that Cooley had created Cooley AI as a wholly owned subsidiary, giving a combined legal and engineering team more freedom to hire and test client-facing technology. The firm described work with Legora, OpenAI and Google on contract review, IPO documentation and confidential-information redaction, alongside simulated matters intended to develop associate skills. For KM leaders, a separate unit can accelerate delivery but also creates a boundary problem: ownership of precedents, evaluation sets, playbooks and lessons learned must remain connected to the practices that supply and validate them. The governance test is whether the structure produces reusable institutional learning rather than an isolated product team with its own knowledge silos.