Christian Bartsch, CEO of Bird & Bird
Meet Christian Bartsch, CEO of Bird & Bird and a long‑standing leader at one of the world’s most tech‑forward law firms. With nearly two decades at the firm and a background in technology law, Christian brings a clear, grounded perspective to leading through change in a profession being reshaped by innovation.
We caught up with Christian to discuss scaling AI responsibly, embedding innovation into everyday legal work, and how trust, education, and governance shape the progress.
Photo: Christian Bartsch
Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your background?
I’ve been at Bird & Bird for nearly 20 years, during which time I’ve held a range of firm‑wide leadership roles, including UK Training Principal, Co‑Head of our International Financial Services Sector Group, Global Board Member and Chair of the Risk Committee. In April, I began my second term as CEO, a role I feel honoured to hold at a time of significant change for both the legal profession and our clients.
My leadership experience within the firm has shaped a longstanding interest in social mobility and access to opportunity across the profession. In that context, I encourage talented people not to self-select out of a career in law before they have had the opportunity to understand its full range of paths.
At heart, I am a technology lawyer. I have spent most of my career advising on complex, large‑scale transformation projects, often involving emerging and disruptive technologies. That background strongly informs how I think about AI, not as an abstract concept, but as a practical tool that can enhance legal work, client outcomes and the development of talent within our firm.
As AI tools mature, many firms are moving from experimentation to structured deployment. What has Bird & Bird learned about scaling legal tech in a way that is secure, compliant, and genuinely useful to lawyers?
Bird & Bird has a long history of experimentation and being at the cutting edge of new developments. Innovation is embedded in our operating structure and decision-making, rather than treated as a separate initiative.
We recognise the significant potential that AI offers in enhancing legal work and driving positive outcomes for our clients, alongside a clear responsibility to deploy these technologies responsibly and ethically.
Meaningful change at scale requires trust, confidence, and education. That’s why we have invested heavily in upskilling our people. At the end of last year, we designed and launched a global training programme across the firm, our Digital Academy. We developed content drawing on expertise from our technology lawyers, our professional support lawyer community, the Head of Legal Tech and Innovation, our IT training team and an external provider.
With mandated modules, the programme sets a clear baseline of capability, ensuring our people understand areas such as the limitations, risks and appropriate use of LLMs, data handling and prompt engineering. Creating an environment where people feel empowered to experiment within clear guardrails is essential.
Working closely with our Risk, LegalTech & Innovation, and InfoSec teams, we developed the firm’s Global AI Policy, which establishes clear expectations around confidentiality, data use, human oversight and quality controls. Responsible adoption is far easier when expectations, boundaries, and accountability are clear from day one.
Finally, continuous monitoring and structured feedback loops allow us to refine and improve our technology initiatives over time, ensuring they remain aligned with our quality standards and client service expectations. We see this disciplined approach as the foundation of responsible innovation.
Clients increasingly expect firms to demonstrate technology maturity. How is Bird & Bird integrating legal tech into client-facing services beyond traditional efficiency stories?
We’re lawyers who understand technology, which lowers the internal friction typically associated with deploying legal tech at scale.
We have lawyers and legal technologists working hand in hand to design and develop bespoke solutions for clients. A good example is the Green Claims AI Scanner, a tool developed and delivered entirely in-house. It automates a compliance challenge scanning entire websites and analysing the data to highlight at-risk marketing communication.
The team co-designed a multi-layered AI pipeline, combining keyword heat maps plus contextual LLM clustering, iteratively trained bespoke prompts on live regulatory materials and human review of the LLM outputs. Recently, the LLM has been trained not only to provide a risk-analysis, but also to provide alternative wordings that are compliant.
The solution allows clients to undertake efficient, repeatable compliance monitoring as regulations evolve, helping them stay ahead in a fast-changing regulatory landscape.
This is where the role of legal innovation teams is evolving. Lawyers and legal technologists are working seamlessly to enable enhanced client solutions within secure, governed environments, allowing ideas to be tested, refined and scaled safely.
Christian Bartsch will be speaking at the upcoming Legal Geek Conference on 14-15 October in London. Join us!
