The CEO of one of the world’s biggest law firms thinks AI will let the firms figure out who their future rainmakers are years earlier than they can today — and cut loose the associates who aren’t.
For most of its history, Big Law has sorted its talent on a slow clock: Associates advance in near-lockstep for years before bosses determine whether they are partner material — whether they can bring in business rather than just execute it — or quietly shunt them off to counsel roles or lower-tier firms.
With AI doing much of the execution work, “you could start making those types of determinations earlier,” Rachel Proffitt, the CEO of Silicon Valley giant Cooley, said on the latest episode of Compound Interest.
“I hate to single it out to charisma, but there will need to be an increasing element of value-add,” she said, likening law to the software world, where technical coding skills are becoming less important than business-building and product design. “You need big thinkers… people who can help design strategy and not just do the execution piece,” she said.
The fast-track sorting could work in both directions, she said, letting leaders “identify those superstars who come to this business [with] high EQ” and strong tech and networking skills and promote them faster.
A similar dynamic will play out across the knowledge economy’s pyramid-shaped workforces. Young bankers freed from spreadsheet prison might develop relationships with their counterparts at clients or pitch a new coverage strategy, showing chops that will help them rise — at least that’s the optimistic line from senior executives trying to calm anxious juniors.
Since 2024, Proffitt has been CEO of Cooley, a firm that has long been more tech-forward than East Coast rivals. Last month, it announced it was building an AI-powered self-service portal for more routine legal work.
Proffitt also discussed the long-predicted death of the billable hour (this time for real), what a law firm built from scratch today would look like, and whether private equity will ever get to own a piece of Big Law.