“Consulting Giants See AI Shaving Years Off the Path to Partner”, 2023-12-04 ():
To make it to partner level typically takes at least a decade. AI seen freeing up junior staffers to do more meaningful work.
Consulting giants and law firms are looking to artificial intelligence to speed up the time it takes junior staffers to make it to the prestigious partner level as the technology eliminates vast swaths of the repetitive, time-consuming tasks that typically filled up their first few years on the job. At KPMG, for instance, freshly-minted graduates are now doing tax work that was previously reserved for staff with at least 3 years of experience. Over at PwC, junior staffers are spending more time pitching clients rather than the hours they used to spend prepping meeting documents. And at Macfarlanes LLP, junior lawyers are interpreting complex contracts that their more—experienced peers used to have to handle.
“It’s a real balance because there is a great deal of benefit for learning by doing some of these documents, but do you need to do that for two years?” said Jeff Westcott, global director of innovation and practice technology at the law firm Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner. “Probably not. Once you’ve done it 3–4×, you’re comfortable.”
…It currently takes about a decade to make partner at a law firm, according to the Law Society, while the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants has found it takes an average of 17 years to reach that title at one of the so-called Big 4 accounting giants…“We are trying to take years off of the time it takes for somebody from when they’re hired to when they become a partner”, said Jeff Wong, who’s EY’s chief innovation officer. “We are specifically targeting certain accelerations and I know we have been successful along that pathway.”
…“For many of us, we started our careers doing the necessary but often tedious work in support of senior professionals”, said Bret Greenstein, generative AI leader at PwC. “A lot of this work—writing drafts, taking meeting minutes, researching topics—is greatly aided by GenAI today. This allows junior employees to be more productive and impactful much quicker.”
[By the time any of that happens, AI may just be adequate for senior roles entirely…]