Designing the Frontier Firm: How Reed Smith is Rewriting the Playbook With :Harvey:
“Generative AI is not a spectator sport. You learn by doing and engaging with the technology.”
Rich Robbins
Senior Director of AI & Innovation at Reed Smith
Key Highlights
- 1,800 lawyers across 34 offices globally
- 700 Harvey users per day, 1,100 per week, 1,400 per month — and intensifying
- 100% firm-wide associate AI certification
- Partners win more work due to AI-enabled service delivery
About Reed Smith
Reed Smith is a global law firm with approximately 1,800 lawyers across 34 offices worldwide. Under Managing Partner Casey Ryan’s five-year strategic plan, the firm operates on the frontier of legal service delivery — not just by adopting AI, but by fundamentally rethinking how it creates value for clients. Reed Smith’s innovation function doesn’t sit in a silo. It runs horizontally across the entire organization, acting as an accelerator for everything from practice development to business growth.
Opportunity
Most law firms treat AI adoption as a technology project: roll out a tool, train a few champions, and hope usage sticks. Reed Smith recognized early that this approach wouldn’t deliver transformation at the scale its strategic ambitions demanded. “For the first time, we have a capability, not just a technology, that’s forcing us to redesign and rethink how we work,” says David Cunningham, Chief Innovation Officer. The firm didn’t need a pilot program. It needed a complete operating model, one that wove AI into the DNA of how lawyers think, deliver, and create value.
Solution
A Trio Built for Transformation
Reed Smith assembled a leadership structure unlike any in Big Law: a Chief Innovation Officer, a Senior Director of AI & Innovation, and a Director of Change Leadership — working as one integrated team. Cunningham provides the strategic vision and client lens. Rich Robbins, a former General Counsel and law firm partner, brings technical depth and peer-to-peer credibility with partners. Adrienne Levine, recruited from outside legal to lead change enablement and cultural integration, treats AI adoption as an organizational transformation, not a technology rollout. “Change management is a discipline in helping individuals and an organization move from current state to future state,” says Levine. “We want to make sure that our organization has the grit and perseverance to navigate the ambiguity that’s in front of us.”
Culture Before Code
Levine’s team focuses on three cultural capabilities essential for AI transformation: change resilience, innovation mindset, and enterprise thinking. “AI technology can only scale if we couple that with a culture that evolves alongside it,” she explains. The approach starts with understanding resistance. Lawyers’ inherent conservatism and autonomy require subtler interventions: communications tailored to address specific concerns, stakeholder engagement with influential partners, and structured programs that acknowledge the exhaustion of constant change. “When I think about enabling a successful AI transformation, it’s about moving from a culture of entrepreneurship to having an enterprise mindset,” Levine adds, “where you’re becoming a steward of the larger global platform.”
Broad, Fast, and Self-Sustaining
Rather than piloting with a handful of practice groups, Reed Smith went broad across the entire firm from the start, prioritizing awareness and engagement over depth. Managing Partner Casey Ryan set a firm-wide expectation: 100% AI certification for every associate. The result was a self-sustaining adoption curve. Partners who experienced Harvey’s impact became the most vocal advocates, telling their teams, “You cannot work on my matters unless you’re using AI.” “We took an approach of going broad across the firm to stoke a fire,” says Robbins. “When leadership got on board, it really kicked off.”
From AI-First to AI-Native
Today, Reed Smith reports 700 Harvey users per day, 1,100 per week, and 1,400 per month, a cohort composed of lawyers across every office, practice, and seniority level. But Robbins is already pushing toward a deeper shift: from “AI-first” — applying the technology to existing workflows — to “AI-native,” where practices are redesigned from the ground up. Through its “Legal Team of the Future” initiative, the firm runs anthropology-based workshops with practice leaders, mapping scatter graphs of opportunities and selecting the two or three highest-impact changes to execute now, with a three-to-five-year transformation horizon.
Impact
The results extend far beyond adoption metrics. Reed Smith’s AI-enabled delivery model is reshaping client relationships entirely. “We’ve had clients where we said, ‘If we can get this work done twice as fast, is that of more value to you?’” says Cunningham. “The value was ten times higher for the client.” Partners are winning work from competitors because clients see measurable impact, and are explicit about giving less work to firms that aren’t using AI.
The market signal is unmistakable. Lateral partners arriving from peer firms with progressive reputations consistently say Reed Smith is “a mile ahead.” The firm isn’t just attracting talent with its AI capabilities, it’s accelerating what those laterals can deliver from day one.
Levine sees the trajectory pointing toward an even more fundamental shift. “Our North Star is that you no longer need change leadership support because Harvey and our AI-enabled technologies are just embedded in the way of working,” she says. “It’s no longer an innovation initiative. It’s the steady state.”
“The reason that people come to Reed Smith is for the judgment, for that level of trust, the essence,” says Robbins. “It’s those things that are particular to being a great lawyer. That’s going to endure.”