Six Partners Leave Herzog Firm to Launch AI-Native Law Practice
Six partners have departed from the prominent Israeli law firm Herzog, Fox & Neeman, including the former head of its white-collar and special solutions department, Guy Neeman, and attorney Lilach Kenan. They are launching a new, AI-Native law firm, the first of its kind in Israel, which will focus on corporate and commercial litigation, corporate governance, securities, and white-collar cases. The new firm will be located on HaHaskala Boulevard in Tel Aviv.
Joining Neeman and Kenan are attorneys Hila Cohen, Philip Lipschitz, Tamar Maoz-Kanz, Roi Boker, Dana Hasson, and Adi Yitzhak-Yaffe. Neeman and Kenan previously founded their own firm in 2011, which merged in 2017 with another firm before joining Herzog, Fox & Neeman in May 2023. The departing group includes members from their original firm.
The new practice aims to revolutionize the traditional law firm structure. Instead of a few partners managing numerous junior associates, the firm will operate on a "Partner-led, Low-leverage and Senior-leverage" model. Approximately 80% of the firm's lawyers will be partners or senior attorneys. This structure, powered by technology, is intended to provide senior staff with advanced research, analysis, and data processing capabilities that previously required much larger teams.
Professor Barak Orbach, an expert in law, business, corporate governance, and AI, will serve as a senior advisor, focusing on designing AI-driven workflows and training. Additionally, a technology company named CIDAH, which develops AI infrastructure for corporate, legal, and financial sectors, will operate alongside the law firm.
In a statement, Neeman and Kenan emphasized that their firm is not a traditional practice with added AI, but a fundamentally new model. They described it as combining "elite partners" with a technological infrastructure that offers unprecedented execution, research, and data processing capabilities. They distinguished their approach as "AI-Native" rather than "AI-Assisted," meaning technology is integral to the firm's foundation, not merely an add-on. This integration, they stated, provides speed, depth, and scale, while partners contribute expertise, judgment, strategy, and professional responsibility.
