Reed Smith turns to AI for lawyer staffing solution

Soham Panchamiya, an associate at Reed Smith Dubai, has used the platform to “get connected with associates in the global network who had capacity during exceptionally busy periods,” and feels he has gained “more visibility on junior resources’ capacity,” as well as the “opportunity to get involved in matters from the global offices,” which he says helps improve teamwork, grows internal relationships, and boosts networking opportunities.

“It helped me grow my network and experience different teams and ways of working. I’ve also had more opportunities to practice management and leadership skills in the delivery of complex client matters,” Panchamiya says.

To better balance workloads, Reed Smith leaders examine Smart Resourcing data at the practice level to ensure that there is low variance between the “most busy person to the least busy person,” taking it from roughly 50% to 20% since releasing the platform, Pendlebury says.

Moreover, Smart Resourcing has also helped reduce the common practice of partners turning to the same people they always do by giving them an easy way to source new help without adding a ton of work to their own plates.

And the speed with which the AI system can do this is a significant business benefit. Pendlebury points to the example of a large document review task that came in requiring a “small army of associates.” The partners were struggling to pull together a team because they were busy finalizing the deal. Using Smart Resourcing, they were able to bring together a team of 40 people within six hours — a task that would have taken a couple days to do manually.

Roxana Burghel, a Reed Smith associate in London, has noticed better work allocation across her team since the launch of Smart Resourcing, and she has gained more experience on projects that she was interested in, with partners she doesn’t typically work with, while also “getting assistance when I was at capacity to ensure we deliver for the client.”

Future goals for the platform include increasing the sophistication of data sources to improve the tool’s recommendations. Pendlebury’s team also plans to continue improving the user interface and user experience to maintain positive momentum on employee-adoption.

“Having a team that is focused on driving that change, and able to push those people that just need a little bit of help to get busy, is one of the success stories of having the Smart Resourcing tool,” Pendlebury says. “That’s where that ‘golden triangle’ of tech, people, and processes all come together.”