Thread

As A.I. makes law firms more efficient, clients ask: 'Where's my discount?'

150 points · 162 comments · mooreds

keeda · 1790571870 · focus · HN ↗
Can’t recall where I read it, but there was an interesting post about how AI was being received by the legal industry. There were largely two camps, those who got it and knew they must adopt and adapt, and those who got it but were like “why should I adopt something that directly reduces my billable hours?” It seemed pretty clear that the latter camp was not going to exist much longer. I guess this is playing out as expected.
1. ButlerianJihad · 1790572183 · focus · HN ↗
  > directly reduces my billable hours
  Think about the adversaries using LLMs to generate ever-increasing preponderous walls of text that are mostly sycophantic and subtly legally blonde. If every adversary to my law firm generates 250% more text than before, our billable hours will balloon accordingly to the time it takes junior partners to read it all, digest it, redact, whatever. In fact, speaking of redacting, perhaps billable hours increase as you proofread your own LLM output. Regardless, LLMs should empower even criminal defendants to become quasi-eloquent and "type" 1,000wpm. It would seem that "reduces billable hours" is a naïve and premature prediction.
  1. keeda · 1790573150 · focus · HN ↗
    I mean AI was being sold to law firms as a tool to automate the drudge work that takes the most time and hence contributes most to the billable hours. That is what they were reacting to. I’m not sure I follow the adversarial model here?

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