In a move that sounds more Silicon Valley than legal ivory tower, Ropes & Gray is giving its newest lawyers permission to step away from the grind of billable hours—and dive into artificial intelligence instead.
The firm’s latest experiment, fittingly dubbed “TrAIlblazers,” lets first-year associates spend nearly one-fifth of their required annual billable hours—about 400 in total—exploring AI tools, running simulations, and testing ideas that might one day change how legal work gets done.
For a profession obsessed with time sheets and six-minute increments, that’s no small act of rebellion.
Jane Rogers, a finance partner and part of the firm’s management team, described the initiative as both practical and visionary: a way to teach young lawyers the importance of a technology that’s reshaping industries, while freeing them to actually learn it. “It’s about giving them time to understand the tools, not just hear about them,” she said.
Ropes & Gray, which employs about 1,500 lawyers worldwide, typically expects new associates to clock around 1,900 billable hours a year—time that clients pay hundreds of dollars per hour for. Now, up to 20% of that can be spent training AI models, running experiments, or reimagining legal workflows without billing a single client.
The firm insists this isn’t a cover for slower client demand. It’s an investment, not a stopgap. “This is a deliberate commitment to the next generation of lawyers,” said a firm spokesperson.
The program is currently limited to first-year associates—fresh recruits who joined the firm last week—but Ropes & Gray expects its impact to ripple through the ranks. For now, these young attorneys are the designated pioneers, learning how to collaborate with machines rather than compete with them.
Some firms, like Orrick and Reed Smith, have flirted with innovation credits before, but usually on a much smaller scale. Ropes & Gray’s plan stands out for the sheer volume of hours it’s carving out of the billable model—a model that has defined the legal profession for over a century.
Legal industry consultant Bruce MacEwen called it a bold but necessary move. “There’s an opportunity cost, sure,” he said, “but training young lawyers in AI isn’t optional anymore. It’s survival.”
And while talk of AI often sparks anxiety about job security, Ropes & Gray’s leadership isn’t worried. “We’re always going to have humans,” Rogers said. “It’s about enabling them to do their jobs better, not replacing them.”
Meanwhile, in other corners of the legal world:
A federal judge handed the Rosen Law Firm a win in a tug-of-war over who would lead a securities class action against offshore driller Sable Offshore, rejecting a rival firm’s claim after a spat over press releases.
And the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals slammed the door on objections to a $600 million settlement tied to the East Palestine, Ohio train derailment, after challengers missed filing deadlines and failed to post an $850,000 appeal bond.
As Ropes & Gray’s rookies tinker with AI while others battle over old-school litigation, the message is clear: the legal world may still run on precedent, but its future might just be coded in Python.
