Ropes & Gray and Akerman credit up to 100 AI-training hours

On October 8, Reuters reported that Ropes & Gray and Akerman let lawyers count as many as 100 hours of approved AI training or experimentation toward annual billable expectations. Ropes said its lawyers had invested more than 35,000 hours in training and testing, turning adoption into a capacity allocation decision rather than an extracurricular activity. Firms using similar credits will need matter-level use cases, supervision and outcome measures so the program produces reusable workflows instead of unstructured experimentation. The second-order issue is economics: once AI learning is recognized like billable work, partnership leaders must decide how the resulting efficiency is reflected in staffing, realization and client value.