Major international law firms are beginning to count artificial-intelligence experimentation and training toward lawyers’ annual billable-hour requirements, in one of the clearest signs yet that AI competence is becoming embedded in mainstream legal practice.
Ropes & Gray is allowing more than 1,000 associates and counsel to count up to 100 hours spent on approved AI experimentation and training toward their annual billing targets.
The firm has reportedly invested more than 35,000 associate hours in AI-related work during 2026.
Its programme follows an earlier initiative under which first-year lawyers were permitted to devote a substantial portion of their time to AI development, training and simulations.
Akerman is also giving billing credit for meaningful AI projects, including development of contract-review tools and assessment of legal-research technology.
The shift matters because billable hours remain one of the fundamental economic currencies of large law firms.
Time spent on activities that cannot be billed to clients traditionally competes with lawyers’ commercial targets.
By giving formal credit for AI work, firms are effectively saying that learning how to use the technology has become part of professional production.
The trend also intersects with concerns raised this week at the IBA Annual Conference in Copenhagen about whether AI could reduce traditional opportunities through which junior lawyers learn research, drafting and judgment.
The emerging challenge is therefore twofold: firms must train lawyers to work effectively with AI while ensuring that the technology does not replace the very experiences required to develop lawyers.
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