AI could eat Big Law's billable hours. Cooley's boss says bring it on.

Cooley has made billions doing what law firms do: employ awesome lawyers, invoice for their time, and keep clients happy. Artificial intellect is scrambling that formula. If machines can do in minutes what formerly took an affiliate hours, what exactly should clients be paying for?

Rachel Proffitt thinks she has the answer.

On a toasty October midday in San Francisco, I met Proffitt for lunch to conversation concerning the forthcoming of the earth law resolute she now leads. When the inspect arrived, neither of us knew how much the eatery paid the dishwasher or how many minutes the chef spent preparing our meal. We were paying for the experience, not the labor rearward it.

Why, she wondered, should lawful services be so different?

"Clients have never been enthusiastic concerning the fact that it took us 82 hours to do something. They don't care," she says. "They fair desire the outcome. They desire the results."

The billable hr is lone the beginning. AI is forcing law firms to rethink how many associates they really need and how those young lawyers study their craft. Client relationships are changing as companies use software to get a caput commencement on the activity they dispatch to exterior counsel. Some of that activity may never attain a attorney at all.

If tech is concerning to reinvent law firms, Cooley have to be among the firms alongside the clearest perspective of what's coming. From its first days on San Francisco's Market Street, it worked alongside semiconductor manufacturers and project capitalists whenever the vale was motionless covered in create trees and canneries. Cooley grew up alongside the tech industry, and today it is as comfortable defending Meta in court as it is assisting Andreessen Horowitz circular up billion-dollar funds.

That development has been lucrative. Cooley says its income revenue jumped from $912 myriad in 2015 to $2.4 milliard final financial year. Its crosstown rival, Wilson Sonsini, brought in $1.7 milliard in 2025, according to The American Lawyer. Still, the gulf between Cooley and Big Law's largest firms remains enormous. Kirkland & Ellis, the industry's income leader, cracked $10 milliard final year. Latham & Watkins, another go-to resolute for Silicon Valley, hit $8.3 billion.

The next motion of tech community listings promises a fortune in lawful fees for the chosen few. Gibson Dunn landed SpaceX's IPO. Anthropic tapped Wilson Sonsini for its coming listing. And Cooley is reportedly sharing OpenAI's IPO activity alongside Wachtell Lipton, one of Wall Street's most formidable law firms.

The irony is difficult to miss. Big Law is fighting for a part of the biggest innovation companies in the world, equal as those companies build the tools that could upend the endeavor of law itself.

Proffitt came up as a attorney under the old rules. Her next project is to fig out what it volition obtain to build a awesome law resolute under the new ones.

'The winner's circle'

Profitt didn't develop up wanting to be a attorney but liked how law academy taught her to think. Litigation was out of the question: Public speaking during imitate trials made her stomach turn. "It was transactional law or bust," she says.

She started her occupation as a summer affiliate at Wilson Sonsini and worked her way up to partner. She cut in affection alongside the power of the work, pulling all-nighters at the financial printers anywhere she marked up securities filings by hand. She recalls the Christmas Eve whenever her begetter marveled that she had made it through the day without taking a activity call. After 15 years at the firm, she remaining for Cooley in 2017.

Three years ago, Proffitt got a call at residence that she didn't see coming. Joe Conroy, afterward Cooley's chief executive, wanted to cognize whether she would regard succeeding him.

She was flattered, but additionally "a bit terrified," she says. She spent two decades assisting startups, including Unity Software, Procore, and Instacart, lift prosperity and go public. Running a resolute alongside 3,000 workforce was another matter. She talked to her family, afterward put herself onward for the job. She started in 2024.

Proffitt couldn't have guessed how quickly AI would jolt her industry from its dependable state. It wasn't too lengthy ago that clients insisted that the innovation go nowhere near their work, fearing what would happen if their data disappeared into person else's model.

"It was apparent to me afterward that we don't get to fair be as we are and continue to be at the top of our game," she says.

Cooley had remade itself formerly before. The firm's Silicon Valley roots were the two a power and a liability, stated Conroy in an interview. Cooley was known for assisting startups get off the ground. The accepted knowledge was that as those companies grew, they would alumnus to among the choose New York law firms for their biggest deals and courtroom battles.

To keep clients from the car shed to the boardroom, as Conroy put it, Cooley needed to expand. It opened new offices and built out its litigation and chief markets practices. The resolute additionally spent years courting Wall Street banks, says Proffitt, so that whenever a business asked which law resolute to employ for its IPO, Cooley would create its shortlist.

Today, its client roster says akin a Kiplinger roundup of hot tech stocks: Nvidia, Uber, Snowflake, and Zoom, to name a few listings it worked on. Since 2016, Cooley has advised issuers on 183 IPOs that raised nearly $59 billion, making it the second-most energetic resolute by agreement figure following Latham, according to Deal Point Data. Proffitt wouldn't conversation reports that Cooley has landed OpenAI's IPO work.

For 16 years, Conroy pushed Cooley toward what he calls Big Law's "winner's circle." Proffitt's job is to get it there.

Startup speed

Her scheme starts alongside making Cooley move additional akin the tech companies it represents.

Proffitt recruited David Wang, a erstwhile attorney turned lawful innovation executive, alongside an aspiring mandate. She didn't fair desire to create Cooley's lawyers additional productive, Wang stated in an interview. She wanted to alter how clients engage alongside them altogether.

Earlier this year, Cooley launched a tool alongside the startup Legora that lets Y Combinator founders assessment average contracts without calling a lawyer. OpenAI helped it build a tool for Cooley's lawyers to prepared paperwork for companies going public. Next, Cooley is operating alongside Google on an AI delegate that scans documents for confidential data before they're submitted in court, afterward suggests redactions for lawyers to review.

There's item nearly cannibalistic concerning a law resolute construction application that could eat into its own billable hours. But Cooley sees a bigger hazard in letting person alternatively do it. In-house lawful teams are increasingly using chatbots to obtain the archetypal expert at activity they would alternatively dispatch to exterior counsel. A new breed of "AI-native" law firms is promising cheaper, faster services.

Big Law does not desire to be caught flatfooted. Firms are throwing prosperity at startups akin Harvey and Legora, and increasingly, they're construction their own technology. Kirkland has committed $500 myriad to proprietary software, starting alongside a phase for personal equity fundraising built alongside Palantir. Latham bought its own Nvidia servers so it can customize models in-house. Like Cooley, Wilson Sonsini has self-service tools that let companies grip essential lawful work.

For Proffitt, the danger isn't misplaced billable hours. It's the missed connections. The scrappy startup that needs a agreement reviewed today power need assistance decision an acquisition later. But if the bots obtain attention of the small stuff, Cooley could young female its chance to build the relationship.

Proffitt says Cooley must discover new ways to nexus alongside clients. Putting innovation in their hands is one option, equal if it method giving distant a small of the work.

"When you need the next item that matters, the item that you don't rely to put into the machine," she says, "how do I justify that you desire to conversation to our team?"

The resolute is additionally rethinking its own construction for the new era. Wang now leads Cooley AI, a entirely owned subsidiary designed to run at item nearer to startup speed. The distinct business gives his squad additional liberty to employ engineers and put new innovation through its paces, he says, without getting bogged downward in the genitor firm's bureaucracy.

The irony, Proffitt says, is that all this innovation could depart lawyers alongside additional period for the individual stuff. Lawyers may sojourn their clients more. Talk through thorny decisions. Drop in on the scheme meeting to study how their direction fits into a client's business.

Keeping those relationships living power necessitate a small additional old-fashioned schmoozing. When I asked Proffitt whether the answer was throwing awesome parties, she didn't entirely disagree. "Everyone loves a party," she says.

The forthcoming of lawful work

Proffitt doesn't feign to have a gemstone ball. She has ideas, though.

The billable hour? Not deceased yet. She expects law firms to recommendation clients a list of pricing options, from hourly rates to flat fees and outcome-based pricing.

Hiring slowdowns at the younger level? "Too first to tell," she says.

The apprenticeship model? That gets trickier. If application can compose archetypal drafts and place issues, how volition young lawyers get the custom they need? Proffitt says Cooley is exploring ways for associates to sharpen their skills on simulated lawful matters, starting alongside AI-powered imitate depositions.

Proffitt came up in an era whenever canceled dinners and all-nighters were a sign of honor. She's betting that the next generation won't need fairly so many of them to rotate into awesome lawyers. Her test volition arrive a decade from now, whenever today's younger associates are prepared to create partner.

If Cooley has established a improved way to instruct them, perchance the old example won't be missed. If it hasn't, no amount of AI can create up the difference.

Melia Robinson is a elder equal at Business Insider, anywhere she writes concerning how synthetic intellect is changing the lawful industry.

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