Special Publication

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has moved from distant horizon to daily reality with startling speed. It presents both an existential threat and a transformational growth opportunity for law firms. Capabilities like original drafting, automated due diligence and document review, tech-enabled document summarization, and agentic research are poised to shrink the billable hours historically devoted to routine tasks, threatening the revenue model that has sustained the legal profession for decades.[1] At the same time, the very tools that threaten the billable hour also unlock faster insights, deeper analytics, and entirely new advisory domains—advantages and services that clients will pay a premium to secure.[2] The firms that thrive will be those that recognize GenAI not as a zero-sum substitution for human expertise, but as a catalyst for reinventing what legal services can deliver and for creating new ways to measure value. For law firms, there are really two possible outcomes: either GenAI becomes a margin eroder or a growth accelerator. In our view, the ultimate outcome will depend on the degree to which law firm leaders integrate two disciplines in law firms that normally co-exist without much, if any, strategic interaction: business development and legal spend data analytics.


[1] See, e.g., Nancy B. Rapoport & Joseph R. Tiano, Jr., Fighting the Hypothetical: Why Law Firms Should Rethink the Billable Hour in the Generative AI Era, 20 Wash. J. L. Tech. & Arts 41 (2025); Nancy B. Rapoport & Joseph R. Tiano, Jr., Reimagining “Reasonableness” Under Section 330(a) in a World of Technology, Data, and Artificial Intelligence, 97 Am. Bankr. L.J. 254(2023) (hereinafter “Fighting the Hypothetical”). See also Robert J. Couture, The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Law Firms’ Business Models, Harvard Law School Center on the Legal Profession (Feb. 25, 2025), https://clp.law.harvard.edu/knowledge-hub/insights/the-impact-of-artificial-intelligence-on-law-law-firms-business-models/ [https://perma.cc/CAW4-NDS8]. For a discussion on how GenAI promises to change the inhouse legal department world, see Deloitte, How Generative AI Is Changing Legal Department Functions (Sep. 6, 2024), https://deloitte.com/global/en/services/legal/perspectives/how-generative-ai-is-changing-legal-department-functions.html [https://perma.cc/4KR8-WAB9].
[2] ACC Research, Generative AI’s Growing Strategic Value for Corporate Law Departments — Survey Results, Ass’n Corp. Couns. (Apr. 14, 2024), https://www.acc.com/generative-ais-growing-strategic-value-corporate-law-departments-survey-results [https://perma.cc/2ZDW-RFV6].
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