KPMG’s Trusted AI Principles – Artificial Lawyer

This site recently looked at Cooley’s AI Principles, in effect their legal AI manifesto. Now we take a look at Big Four firm KPMG and how it is approaching AI and applying it to the legal sector.

The giant professional services firm brands its approach as the ‘KPMG Trusted AI Principles’, which is their over-arching philosophy for the use of AI. (After this we’ll take a look at what they do in terms of the legal sector). So, first, the principles:

• ‘Values-driven – We implement AI as guided by our Values. They are our differentiator and shape a culture that is open, inclusive and operates to the highest ethical standards. Our Values inform our day-to-day behaviours and help us navigate emerging opportunities and challenges.
• Human-centric – We prioritize human impact as we deploy AI and recognize the needs of our clients and our people. We are embracing this technology to empower and augment human capabilities — to unleash creativity and improve productivity in a way that allows people to reimagine how they spend their days.
• Trustworthy – We will adhere to our principles and the ethical pillars that guide how and why we use AI across its lifecycle. We will strive to ensure our data acquisition, governance and usage practices upholds ethical standards and complies with applicable privacy and data protection regulations, as well as any confidentiality requirements.
• We recognise that the field of AI is rapidly evolving — and so is our approach. As the technology advances and legal, ethical, risk and regulatory standards mature, we will continue to review and evolve our approach as necessary.’

So, there you go. Understandably they are keen to impress upon clients that they are ethical and values-driven. Perhaps the most tangible aspect here is the point about being human-centric, e.g. where they say they ‘prioritise human impact’ and want to ‘augment human capabilities’. I.e. this is not about replacement.

Is this real, or just good marketing? For now it’s probably both. Telling clients you aim to replace some of their work with AI may not always go down well. (Although….with some it might….). Either way, unless you are a software company or live by providing basic digital design work, then it’s unlikely that in 2025 large swathes of jobs in your business are about to be replaced by AI.

The challenge is that in the future that may well be the case for other sectors, especially as agentic systems take hold and become more capable. At which point maybe professional services groups, whether KPMG or others, start to say: ‘While we care about humans, we are financially-focused and seek to help you use AI to save money…’ ? And that connects to their last point about how they will review their approach as needed.

So, that’s the big picture, here are some of the things they offer for their inhouse legal clients in terms of AI services:

• ‘Drive efficiency with intelligent automation – Streamline processes by substituting manual efforts in document generation, form completion, preliminary review, redlining, and more.
• Unlock deeper legal insights at speed – Identify patterns, spot issues and analyze documents and contracts quickly and accurately.
• Anticipate and mitigate legal risks in real-time – Analyze contract performance, review regulatory outputs and track workflow status to drive proactive processes.
• Summarize complex legal issues and events into strategic storytelling narratives, with scenario planning and near-real-time business issue analysis.’

They note they also have a well-developed digital legal front door called their KPMG Digital Gateway with genAI features, which can help with:

• ‘Instant document upload – Replace manual and repetitive tasks from day-to-day workflows with automation across document generation, review functions and more.
• AI-generated export – Export and share AI-generated data to a range of downloadable formats, including branded templating for premium users.
• Create pre-configured and customizable virtual assistants tailored to your legal team’s specific needs, personalizing efficiencies for a range of roles and responsibilities.
• Enhance AI capabilities for legal tasks across the platform, with specialized onboarding and on-demand training programs.
• Process and transform data based on specific instructions, using the platform’s dedicated spreadsheet transformer tool.
• Gather information and execute tasks engaging with multiple personas, all within a single chat channel.’

Much of this is about leveraging what you can do with genAI’s many skills – but it shows they have brought those skills into their offering and they’ve built out distinct features from them.

And they also work with ContractPodAi and its Leah genAI assistant on a range of contract review needs for inhouse teams. Plus, KPMG helps on the legal side with entity management and legal ops advice, and more, all with an AI aspect. In short, AI has found its way into nearly every aspect of what they offer in the legal world, with a set of values placed over and above these offerings.

Overall, it’s a comprehensive approach, which combines a set of values designed to encourage trust with an emphasis for now on the human-centric application of AI.

You can read more about KPMG’s approach here.

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Legal Innovators Conferences in New York and London – Both In November ’25

If you’d like to stay ahead of the legal AI curve….then come along to Legal Innovators New York, Nov 19 + 20, where the brightest minds will be sharing their insights on where we are now and where we are heading. 

And also, Legal Innovators UK – Nov 4 + 5 + 6

Both events, as always, are organised by the awesome Cosmonauts team! 

Please get in contact with them if you’d like to take part.