Pillsbury Appoints Oz Benamram as Chief AI Officer

Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman has appointed Oz Benamram, a veteran of legal innovation leadership at three major firms, as its inaugural Chief AI Officer, a role signaling a formalization of AI governance at a top global law practice. The appointment places Pillsbury among the first Am Law 100 firms to create a dedicated executive position focused specifically on the deployment of data science and artificial intelligence.

The legal industry has been slow to establish formal AI governance structures compared to the corporate world, where Chief AI Officer titles have proliferated since 2022. While firms have routinely appointed Chief Innovation Officers and Chief Knowledge Officers, the specialized CAIO reflects a maturation of how law practices approach AI, which is a shift from general technology experimentation to structured data and model governance. Benamram's hiring suggests Pillsbury is betting that AI adoption requires dedicated executive accountability rather than distributed responsibility across existing roles.