Latham & Watkins is putting $1 million behind a new incentive for associates who help turn artificial intelligence into useful tools for the firm and its clients.

The law firm has earmarked the money for its Associate AI Impact Award program in 2027, according to Reuters. The program will recognize associates who lead or make substantial contributions to AI initiatives that create value for clients, practice groups, matter teams or the firm as a whole.

Individual awards will vary according to an initiative’s impact and its potential to be scaled. The approach is designed to encourage ideas that can do more than solve a problem in one setting: projects could also be considered for their ability to deliver benefits more broadly.

Michael Rubin, global chair of Latham’s AI practice and chair of its AI strategy committee, said associates are well placed to identify opportunities for the technology.

“Our associates bring firsthand insight into where AI can make a meaningful difference, and this award is designed to foster that ingenuity and help identify and scale the ideas that can create the greatest value for our clients and our firm,” Rubin said.

The award adds a financial incentive to Latham’s wider investment in AI. The firm recently partnered with Harvey on a tool for investment funds and invested in Nvidia-powered servers to run and customize AI models in-house.

Those efforts give the firm both an external technology partnership and computing infrastructure of its own. The associate award, meanwhile, focuses on contributions from lawyers whose day-to-day work may reveal opportunities for new applications.

By making an initiative’s ability to scale a factor in the size of an award, Latham is also signaling that it wants to identify ideas with potential beyond their initial use. The program’s eligibility criteria recognize both those who lead initiatives and those who materially contribute to them.

The $1 million allocation is a pool for the 2027 program, rather than a stated prize for a single winner.