When Fennemore director Emily Ward logs into work each morning, she’s not just opening case files and email threads — she’s stepping into what she calls “a completely new era of lawyering.” Her firm isn’t merely adapting to artificial intelligence; it’s working to lead the charge.
“We call it Project BlueWave AI,” she explains. “The idea is that we’re looking for areas where the water isn’t already red — where it’s still blue. That’s where we can jump in and be the trendsetter.”
Project BlueWave AI represents Fennemore’s leap into the future, harnessing AI, automation and innovation to unlock smarter workflows and greater client value. It’s not just a technology initiative — it’s a strategic commitment to innovate, improve efficiency and empower attorneys and support staff. The firm is developing proprietary AI models with OpenAI tailored to its specific needs, including attorney-client matching, transactional document review, commercial real estate matters, business development and arbitration.
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Redefining the legal workflow
For Ward, that wave has already reshaped the way she practices law. Her firm’s secure enterprise version of ChatGPT — built with client consent, strict confidentiality safeguards and limited data retention — has become a daily companion.
“It’s fully secure,” she emphasizes. “It doesn’t use client data to train its models, and even the documents I upload aren’t retained for long before being purged. If I come back later, I usually have to re-upload them.”
What she does with the tool is where things get interesting.
One of Ward’s most striking examples comes from a recent 15-day bench trial — one she hadn’t attended. With a new judge stepping in post-trial, she needed to distill nearly two weeks of testimony into a crisp, three-page introduction for a post-trial motion.
“If you printed the transcripts, they’d be two inches thick,” she says. “I knew the case, but I didn’t live it.”
Turning mountains of data into actionable strategy
Ward uploaded the transcript set and asked ChatGPT to draft multiple versions of an introduction: sympathetic, neutral, argument-forward and even “overly professional.”
“It felt like brainstorming with a colleague,” she says. “I’d read what it produced, pull sentences or paragraphs, and make them my own.”
The time savings were dramatic.
“Normally that would have taken me 10 hours,” she says. “Instead, it took maybe an hour and a half. And the client benefits from that.”
The tool also helped her locate transcript passages instantly.
“I can say, ‘Give me the best cites to support this argument,’ and it pulls page and line numbers,” she says. “That’s huge.”
Ward is quick to clarify that ChatGPT isn’t replacing traditional legal research platforms anytime soon.
“It’s a starting point,” she says. “Our model includes reported cases, and the version we use doesn’t hallucinate. It hyperlinks to Justia so you can verify instantly.”
Still, it has become a powerful research assistant. She even uploads draft motions and asks the platform to check case citations.
“It caught one where I was off by a single numeral,” she says with a laugh. “That alone saved me time.”
A digital devil’s advocate in the courtroom
One of the most surprising benefits, she adds, is how the tool helps her think — especially when she’s too deep in a case to see it clearly.
“All lawyers get blinders on,” she admits. “We believe our client’s side so much that it’s hard to see the weaknesses.”
So she prompts ChatGPT to act like a skeptical judge.
“I’ll say, ‘Tell me the other side’s best arguments and why. Now give me my counterarguments.’ Or, ‘Act like a skeptical judge — what questions should I expect?’”
Not every suggestion is realistic, she says. But many are invaluable.
“It gets me out of advocate mode. It forces me to see the case from a neutral perspective. That’s incredibly helpful before oral argument.”
She used the technique just last week before appearing at the Court of Appeals.
In another ongoing case, Ward faced more than 600 pages of complex bank statements.
“The other side was playing around with money,” she says. “It was very hard to follow.”
She uploaded the records and asked ChatGPT to produce an Excel file mapping transfers to and from specific accounts.
“It helped me explain where the money went,” she says. “It truly is amazing that it can do that.”
For clients — especially those without legal or financial backgrounds — that kind of clarity can be invaluable.
Ward spends a significant portion of her time translating legal complexity into client-friendly updates. ChatGPT has become a go-to tool for that process.
It can be a blessing for clients
“I’ll upload pleadings and say, ‘I need to summarize this for a client,’” she explains. “And I’ll specify whether the client is in-house counsel, an insurance adjuster or someone with no legal background.”
The summaries differ dramatically depending on the audience.
“For an adjuster, it focuses on cost and settlement strategy. For a non-lawyer, it explains the big picture,” she says. “It’s incredibly helpful.”
She also uses the tool to polish emails and documents before sending them.
“I want everything to look as polished as possible,” she says. “It’s such an easy tool for that.”
One feature that still amazes her is its integration with Outlook.
“I asked it to summarize my emails with a client for the past month,” she recalls. “It gave me a high-level summary, a bullet-point chronology and even action items. I honestly was floored. I called it magic.”
When a client recently requested a flat-fee proposal for a John Doe complaint, Ward turned to ChatGPT again.
“I asked it for filing fees in that jurisdiction, the cost of serving a subpoena and even the bank’s typical charges for responding,” she says. “It came back with a number — $572.”
That provided a baseline of hard costs she could combine with her own time estimates to create a flat-fee proposal the client ultimately accepted.
Not all clients are immediately comfortable with AI.
“A lot of them are still apprehensive,” Ward acknowledges. “They’re not using it themselves, so they don’t understand its versatility.”
But once she explains the security protocols and they see the efficiency gains, most come around.
“I didn’t understand its potential until I started playing with it,” she admits. “And I only did that because the firm created this platform and encouraged us to use it.”
Balancing innovation with professional judgment
Ward is clear-eyed about the technology’s limitations.
“It’s not a substitute for legal judgment,” she says. “Sometimes it takes too big a leap, and I have to scrap what it gives me. You still need to know the case. You still need to think.”
But she’s equally clear about its value.
“It’s a backstop, it’s a brainstorming partner, it saves clients money and it helps me be a better lawyer.”
In a profession often slow to embrace change, Project BlueWave AI shows that innovation doesn’t have to be theoretical. It can be practical, secure and transformative — reshaping how legal professionals work without replacing the expertise that defines the practice of law.
And for Ward, it’s already become part of the job.
“I truly cannot believe what it’s able to do,” she says. “It’s wonderful.”
