Reed Smith wants to start training its lawyers to be technology innovators from the first day they arrive at the firm.

This summer, the 1,500-lawyer firm will divert five summer associates into a new programme where they will work on developing projects that use tech to improve legal services.

That's in addition to the traditional research and writing work attached to summer programmes for law students.

"We want to start developing lawyers that are not only great lawyers, but also understand how technology can deliver services more efficiently and more collaboratively and can offer new solutions for clients," said the firm's London-based chief knowledge officer Lucy Dillon.

The firm picked three students from American law schools and two from UK law schools for the inaugural Legal Technology Summer Associate Programme, which Dillon said is the first of its kind. Overall, the firm expects to have as many as 60 summer associates in the US in 2018.

"A number of firms have trained their lawyers to code or have had programmes to train up the lawyers they already have," Dillon said. "But I'm not aware of any law firms recruiting into their summer associate programme students who have an interest and an appetite in this and have demonstrated that by taking classes or doing programmes with a legal technology focus."

Reed Smith looked to law schools with strong legal technology curricula to recruit its first tech-focused summers. In the US, the firm tapped second-years Danielle Chirdon from Michigan State University College of Law and Arthur Surratt from Chicago-Kent College of Law, and first-year Tyler Siminski from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. The UK participants have not yet been selected.

Along with participating in their schools' technology programmes, the US trio all have completed academic coursework in computer science.

The five summer associates will work out of Chicago, Pittsburgh and London, and the firm hopes to expand the programme to additional offices by next summer.

Dillon outlined several potential projects that the budding lawyers might wind up working on. One involves the application of blockchain to real estate transactions, and another involves improving artificial intelligence tools for document review.

She said the programme will be deemed successful if the summer associates' expertise helps to move the projects forward, while also gaining them a positive experience with the firm. But even if the projects turn out to be duds, the programme will still provide dividends.

"To have someone spend sometime on a project and report back that this isn't a runner, that's time well spent as well," Dillon said. 

The initiative comes as firms are increasingly competing with one another – and with alternative legal services providers – on the innovation front. And the new summer associate programme is not the only way Reed Smith is working to bolster its artificial intelligence capabilities. It is also involved in a partnership with AI contract review platform Heretik, trading training hours and access to the firm's data for an ownership interest in the startup.

The announcement also comes after the firm revealed earlier this month that in July it will be opening a new back office in Leeds, Reed Smith Global Solutions, which will offer a records and e-discovery practice as well as support services for its operations in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

• Reed Smith senior counsel Roger Parker is among the speakers at this year's Strategic Technology Forum, which will take place in Italy this June. Subjects on the agenda include AI, the war for tech-savvy millennial talent, and how to react to a public hacking. Click here for more information.