A few weeks ago, we raised the topic with our friends at Thomson Reuters Legal Practice Management about what the consequences of a widespread deployment of Generative AI might portend for–you guessed it–the business of law firms, and in short order the conversation focused on implications for our industry’s seemingly intransigent attachment to the billable hour pricing model.
Parenthetical note to our readers: You might think, and many we know do, that here at Adam Smith, Esq., we would have written something at some point predicting the death of the billable hour, but the fact is we never have foreseen, much less predicted in public, any such thing. As irrational as it may be in the light of the theory and principles of economic analysis, decades of law firm and client behavior demonstrate beyond shadow of a doubt that our industry has an implacable reliance on it. Essentially no one practicing today in BigLaw has ever experienced any other pricing model with non-trivial market share.
So as happens in the course of these things, it led to our submitting, and their being kind enough to publish, some of our thoughts on where this all might lead.
Without further ado, have a look.
