Robert Mahari has joined Anthropic as its first "Head of Claude for Legal," where he will lead the deployment and expansion of the Claude AI model across the legal industry. Mahari holds a PhD in legal AI and founded the legal AI startup Akiva AI. In May, Anthropic unveiled twelve legal plugins for Claude and announced partnerships with more than 20 legal tech companies, including LexisNexis and Relativity. The legal market has drawn increased attention from major tech firms, with OpenAI hiring Ironclad founder Jason Boehmig, Amazon launching Amazon Quick for legal tasks, and Microsoft introducing a legal agent in Word. Until recently, AI systems were not reliable enough for legal work, as they could fabricate sources and case citations, and privacy and confidentiality rules made adoption harder. Models have since become more capable and are now better connected to legal sources and existing practice software, making them easier to integrate into the workflows of law firms and legal departments.