Case Studies - How We've Helped Leading Companies | Axiom

Global Energy Company Backfills Open Headcount with Axiom’s AI-Enabled Talent

Written by Axiom Law | Feb 4, 2026 6:41:46 PM

Challenge

A global energy services company faced significant budget constraints that forced the departure of two full-time employees from their legal team. Rather than backfilling the headcount with traditional hires, the client wanted to explore whether a secondee armed with AI tools could reduce full-time headcount needs while maintaining legal output quality.

Approach

The client onboarded an experienced Axiom attorney focused on creating scalable and more efficient contracts playbooks for the team. Using DraftPilot, the Axiom lawyers builds AI-powered playbooks for commercial and supply chain contracts. Within six weeks, the playbooks are so successful that the client extends DraftPilot licenses to 5 additional legal team members. The Axiom lawyer ensures the foundational playbooks are being used correctly and leads hands-on training sessions to drive adoption until the team is trained up on the new systems.

Impact 

  • Maintained legal output quality without backfilling for expensive permanent roles, enabling client to reallocate budget towards strategic investments
  • AI-powered playbooks drove major contract efficiency gains, preserving internal legal team bandwidth and reducing time spent on manual redlining, review, and negotiation
  • Validated leadership's consolidation hypothesis, proving that a team of three attorneys equipped with AI tools could match the output of four