How AI will cross the legal chasm

Some perspectives from my experience selling cloud e-discovery and contracts tech

Here’s how I see it playing out: Corporate legal will adopt AI technology more quickly than Biglaw due to pressures from the general business world and the existence of legal operations to help select reliable tech. Biglaw will struggle with adoption due to their reliance on the billable hour, which could be threatened by AI. Among firms, solos and smaller firms will be the earliest adopters as they are less bureaucratic and can rearrange their business model around new technology more easily.

Here’s how I anticipate AI will impact the legal industry is based on my firsthand experience watching cloud e-discovery and contracts technology “cross the chasm” and become widely accepted by lawyers. A few predictions:

Corporate legal will adopt more quickly than large law firms

One of the biggest lessons of my legal tech sales career is that corp legal departments are far more sensitive to changes in the general business world.¹ It’s because they’re pressured to. Pressure comes in the form of, say, sales demanding legal to approve contracts more quickly. Corporate legal exists to enable the business, so if the business moves more quickly through the use of technology, like AI, that trend will impact in house lawyers.