AI agents are starting to take on the junior work that pays for the partnership model
Some firms now hire graduates to run and check AI agents instead of doing the routine work themselves. If agents take that work, partners need to rethink what they charge for and how they train the people who will replace them.
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Lotte Underwood joined the London PR agency Fight or Flight in November 2025 with the job title "AI associate". Her team has built around 30 AI agents, and much of her day goes on managing them and reviewing their output, the BBC reported on 4 November.
An AI agent is software that carries out a task with several steps rather than answering a single question. At Fight or Flight the agents do industry research, client reporting and preparation for media interviews. Underwood checks what they produce and passes it to the colleagues who deal with clients and journalists.
The BBC found other firms building graduate jobs the same way. That matters well beyond PR. Most law firms, accountancy practices and consultancies are built as a pyramid: a few partners at the top and many juniors below doing the routine work. That routine work is where much of the partners' profit comes from, and it is how juniors learn enough to become partners themselves.
So if agents do the junior work, two questions follow for every partner. Where will the profit come from? And who will be ready to take over from the partners in ten years' time?
How the partnership pyramid makes money
In a traditional professional firm, partners own the business, win the work and take responsibility for it. Most of the hours on a job are done by people below them: trainees, juniors and managers. Clients pay for those hours at a rate well above what the firm pays the people doing them. Across many juniors, that difference makes up a large part of what the partners take home.
The more juniors each partner has working under them, the more of those marked-up hours the firm can sell. That is why firms have grown by adding juniors under each partner.
The same routine work, such as checking figures, drafting first versions and researching earlier cases, is also how juniors learn. A junior who has prepared a hundred sets of accounts can tell when the hundred-and-first looks wrong. Over time the best of them become managers and then partners.
Why AI agents reach junior work before partner work
The tasks that fill a junior's first years are the ones AI is taking on. James O'Dowd, founder and chief executive of Patrick Morgan, wrote in Bloomberg Tax in January: "Research, first drafts, data analysis, testing, and reconciliation are increasingly performed by AI."
AI does not do this work perfectly, which is why Underwood's job exists: she checks what the agents produce before it goes further. Where checking a draft takes less time than writing it, a job needs fewer junior hours than before.
Partners' work is changing too, though in a different way. O'Dowd writes that firms are "rewriting the partner job description" and that partner groups are "becoming smaller, more commercial, and more accountable for outcomes". That is a change in what partners are for. The change at the junior level is in how many hours a job needs.
What job adverts show about junior roles
The clearest numbers come from job adverts. PwC's 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer, published in June, analysed 2.4 million entry-level job adverts in the US. It found that the entry-level roles most exposed to AI increasingly ask for skills usually expected of senior staff, such as leadership, creativity and dealing with people face to face. Openings for those roles have grown 35% since 2019, while other entry-level roles have shrunk by 10%.
Those figures cover every kind of employer, not just professional firms, and they show what employers ask for, not what happens to their profits. Read with that care, they suggest the junior job is changing shape more than it is disappearing. Employers still hire juniors, but they expect more from them earlier. Nobody has yet shown that the partnership model is collapsing.
The BBC's examples show what a redesigned junior job looks like inside a firm, and what it can leave out. Underwood told the BBC she would like to pick up the traditional PR skills her role is not currently focused on, such as pitching directly to the media, and that she plans to. Her role is a different apprenticeship from the one her predecessors had.
Why firms are reshaping junior roles
The graduates the BBC spoke to describe bigger jobs with more responsibility, sooner, and that is the case firms make for the change.
Firms have a money reason too, and O'Dowd states it. He writes that "many firms are willing to pay more for a smaller number of highly capable professionals rather than maintain large populations of undertrained generalists". With agents producing first drafts, a smaller team may be able to take on work that used to need a larger one.
Whether the firm keeps the saving depends on how it charges. If a firm bills by the hour, every hour an agent saves is an hour it can no longer bill, and its income on the job falls. O'Dowd makes the point that under hourly billing, a partner who finds a way to solve a client's problem in minutes is penalised for it. If the firm charges a fixed fee for the job, it keeps the difference. If clients then push fixed fees down because they know the work is quicker, the saving passes to them.
Who gains and who loses when agents do junior work
Partners in firms that charge by the job, and hold their prices, gain: they deliver the same work with fewer paid staff. Clients gain if fees fall or work comes back faster. Juniors gain responsibility earlier, but may lose some of the slow, repeated practice that taught their predecessors the trade.
The biggest loss may fall on the firm itself, years later. O'Dowd warns that "if firms train fewer juniors, supervise fewer people, and compress the layers between entry-level and senior roles, the traditional partner pipeline weakens". He notes that "lateral hiring from industry roles is increasing": firms are bringing in experienced people from outside instead of growing their own. A small firm that stops training juniors now may have to do the same when its partners retire, or may find nobody ready.
One employer the BBC spoke to has chosen to protect the training. Simon Pratt, chief operating officer of Portman Finance Group, told the BBC that its two-year graduate programme is centred on "learning the trade": graduates spend six months in each of four areas alongside senior relationship managers, and progress to running deals from start to finish. A partnership can do the same with its own work.
Who answers for an agent's work
If more of the work is drafted by agents, the question of who stands behind it becomes sharper. In one regulated profession the regulator has already answered it for one firm. In May 2025 the Solicitors Regulation Authority authorised Garfield.Law, the first purely AI-based firm allowed to provide regulated legal services in England and Wales. It helps small and medium-sized businesses recover unpaid debts through the small claims court.
The SRA said that the firm's named solicitors "will also be responsible for all the system outputs and for anything that goes wrong", and that it had checked the firm has processes in place to check the quality of its work. The software does the volume work, and named professionals carry the responsibility. Other professions have their own regulators and rules, but the SRA's approach is a sensible model for any firm: a named person who checked the work and answers for it.
Five decisions for your next partners' meeting
For a small or mid-sized firm these are decisions for the partners, because they change how the firm earns, promotes and pays.
- See how much of your income rests on junior hours. Sort last year's time records by level and by task. For each junior task, ask whether an agent could produce a first draft that a person then checks. If you do not know, try it on a few past jobs before deciding.
- Decide how you will charge for work agents speed up. If most of that work is billed by the hour, decide which jobs move to a fixed fee, and how you will explain the change to clients before they raise it. Our piece on what to charge when AI cuts the hours sets out the options.
- Keep a graduate intake, and protect their training. Work out how many managers and partners you will need in ten years and hire for that. Name the routine tasks juniors will keep doing by hand as practice, even where an agent could do them, and tell them why. Our piece on AI taking the work that used to train your juniors covers how.
- Put every agent under a named person. That person checks the agent's work before it reaches a client and signs it off. Give agents their own accounts with limited permissions, never a person's login.
- Review how partners are promoted and paid. If promotion and profit shares depend partly on the hours a partner's team bills or how many people they lead, those measures will reward building large teams just as the work needs fewer people. Add judgement, client relationships and the quality of the work a partner signs off.
Our AI Strategy work helps a leadership team take decisions like these in two to three weeks and leaves a written plan. If you would like to talk it through first, book a free 30-minute call.
Common questions
Will AI replace junior staff in professional firms?
The evidence so far shows junior roles changing rather than disappearing. PwC's 2026 analysis of US job adverts found that entry-level roles most exposed to AI are growing while asking for more senior skills, such as leadership and creativity. Some firms are now hiring juniors to run and check AI agents.
How does a partnership make money from junior staff?
Clients pay for juniors' hours at more than the juniors cost the firm. Across many juniors, that difference funds much of the partners' profit. When AI agents do some of those hours, that source of profit shrinks unless the firm changes how it charges.
How will future partners learn the trade if AI does the routine work?
Firms can choose some routine work to keep with juniors as practice, and give them structured time with senior people. One finance firm the BBC spoke to rotates graduates through four areas alongside senior relationship managers for two years.
Who is responsible when an AI agent's work is wrong?
For law firms in England and Wales, the SRA said when it authorised the AI-based firm Garfield.Law that its named solicitors are responsible for all the system's outputs. Other professions should check their own regulator's rules, and any firm should name a person who checks agents' work before it reaches a client.
Sources
- BBC News, "Graduates jobs: More work with AI but what else?", 4 November 2026: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c820vz6wyp65o
- PwC, 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer press release, 15 June 2026: https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/news-room/press-releases/2026/pwc-2026-ai-jobs-barometer.html
- James O'Dowd, "AI Quietly Rewrites Professional Services Firms' Talent Model", Bloomberg Tax, 7 January 2026: https://news.bloombergtax.com/tax-insights-and-commentary/ai-quietly-rewrites-professional-services-firms-talent-model
- Solicitors Regulation Authority, "SRA approves first AI-driven law firm", May 2025: https://www.sra.org.uk/garfield-ai
This is general information, not legal advice.
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