How Seyfarth Is Raising the Bar in Real Estate Law with Practice-Specific AI

Seyfarth Shaw LLP is an Am Law 100 firm with more than 1,000 lawyers across 17 offices. Innovation has long defined the firm’s approach. Through initiatives like Seyfarth Labs, one of the first in-house incubators in the legal industry, Seyfarth has built a reputation for rethinking how legal services are delivered to achieve better outcomes for clients.

The Real Estate Challenge

Seyfarth’s real estate department is among the five largest in the United States. The team advises institutional owners, major developers and national retailers in multi-million- and billion-dollar transactions across the U.S. Their work is both high-volume and high-stakes, requiring attorneys to analyze and interpret complex title, survey, and lease documents with absolute precision.

Given this complexity, the real estate group at Seyfarth is selective about the technology it adopts.

Byong K. Kim, Seyfarth’s Chief Data & AI Officer, recognized that challenge as an opportunity to show where AI could deliver real impact. His AI strategy is to focus on practical applications that deliver genuine value to lawyers and clients alike.

“The real test of AI is whether it works in practice. At Seyfarth we focus on solutions that improve how our lawyers deliver services and how clients experience that value. With Orbital Copilot we are demonstrating how real estate AI can transform one of the most complex areas of law.”

— Byong K. Kim, Chief Data & AI Officer, Seyfarth

A Purpose-Built Solution

Seyfarth turned to Orbital Copilot, the AI assistant designed for real estate law, to support attorneys with aspects of their work that were highly time- and resource-intensive. 

The platform delivered immediate impact in three key areas:

• Real Estate Blueprints give attorneys immediate leverage in title, lease and construction document reviews.  Orbital provides customizable real estate-specific templates that facilitate document review. Orbital performs some of the time consuming parts of document abstracting so that legal professionals can focus on analyzing data and tailoring the work product to the client’s needs.

• Document Restorer converts decades-old, barely legible easements into clean, usable text within minutes. What once required weeks of outsourcing to costly document processors is now handled instantly, giving attorneys faster clarity and clients quicker answers.

• Visual-Integrated Due Diligence connects documents to the physical property by combining mapping, plotting and image analysis with textual review. This real-world context provides attorneys with a clearer foundation for advising clients on risks and opportunities tied to the asset itself.

“The restoration function is phenomenal. We had easements I could barely read—within five minutes Orbital Copilot produced a clean version with a high degree of accuracy. That’s unique, and it directly benefits our clients.”
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— Angela Hsu, Partner, Real Estate

Results That Speak for Themselves

Momentum built quickly, showing clear product–market fit in a practice group that has historically set a high bar for new technology. Real estate attorneys began using Orbital Copilot on live matters from day one, and the impact was immediate in streamlining analysis, accelerating document review, and delivering the speed and precision needed to advise clients under pressure.

As adoption spread, demand grew organically. Word of mouth drove partners, associates, and paralegals to request access, underscoring its value at every level of the real estate team.

Within the first four months:

✓ Licenses doubled, driven entirely by attorney demand.
✓ 100% of trained lawyers were active within the first quarter.
✓ More than 900 documents were analyzed and 400+ reports generated in the first three months.

“Orbital Copilot has made a noticeable difference in how we approach complex reviews. It enables us to work with greater speed and accuracy, giving clients the confidence that critical details are addressed without delay.”
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‍— Justice Barber, Partner, Real Estate

Impact for Clients and the Firm

For firm leadership, adoption in real estate highlights that investment in the right AI can strengthen both legal processes and client service.

With Orbital Copilot, Seyfarth’s real estate team is delivering faster, strategic advice on multi-million-dollar transactions where timing and precision are critical. Clients gain earlier clarity on easements, leases, and development matters—helping them move forward with confidence.

“Our clients expect us to be responsive and precise. Orbital Copilot’s AI helps our lawyers deliver on that promise at scale.”

‍— Paul Mattingly, National Chair of Real Estate

Looking Ahead

With adoption growing, Seyfarth’s real estate team is moving from out-of-the-box workflows to building custom Blueprints in Orbital Copilot. These tailored reporting workflows will further reduce the amount of manual review required and align first drafts with the firm’s house style, ensuring work is not only faster but also consistent with Seyfarth’s high standards of quality.

By embedding AI more deeply into the way attorneys work, Seyfarth is setting a benchmark for how top firms can modernize practice through technology while staying true to their client-focused values.

“We’ve already seen the time savings on lease and construction due diligence reviews, and Orbital Copilot is already changing the way we integrate technology into our deal flow. The next step is building custom Blueprints that tailor workflows to our practice and take the benefits even further.”

‍— Chris Manzer, Partner, Real Estate