AI native firms are finally attracting Biglaw attorneys’ attention but the underlying philosophy remains relevant to more traditional solos and smalls.
To paraphrase a popular quote, when an innovation happens in legal, is it really a trend if Biglaw isn’t around to make it matter?
Case in point. Back around 2009, I published this little handbook, From Biglaw To YourLaw: Why starting a law firm isn’t a last resort but may be your only resort. At a time when massive layoffs were taking place at large firms, I suggested law firm ownership as a viable (not to mention obvious) option when the profession was suggesting that laid-off attorneys work at unpaid internships or settle for legal adjacent jobs that didn’t require a J.D.
Seems crazy, but back then, the idea of a biglaw attorney – even one who was unemployed – starting a practice was utterly radical and incredibly unpopular. I don’t think more than a dozen people ever downloaded my radical little manifesto.
Fast forward almost two decades, and AI’s making law firm ownership sexy to both biglaw attorneys and their potential clients. A recent conference on AI Native Law Firms (the modern nomenclature for what we once called solo, independent, or more whimsically “fun-sized” practices), attracted 150 attendees at $1500 a pop and up.
But is there anything different between AI Native firms and the Foonberg-esq solos of yore?
Matt Pollins, one of the event’s co-chairs, argues yes, there’s something happening here. His data reports that:
- 86% [of AI Native Firms] earn most of their revenue from fixed fees, subscriptions or products.
- 68% let clients interact directly with AI or self-serve part of the work. (When I speak to law firms, I often hear how clients are sending them AI-generated work product or comments, and that this is actually slowing things down. It seems that the firms on the Index are leaning into this and providing a channel for it, rather than fighting it.)
- 93% run AI first on every matter, before a lawyer begins work on it. (This is important: AI is used not just as an assistant or Copilot to an individual lawyer, but as a fixed step in the production line before it reaches the lawyer.)
- 82% have a dedicated AI, product, or engineering role. (A meaningful number as a percentage of the overall headcounts of these firms, which tend to be startups or scale-ups.)
These ideas have been around for decades and thanks to blogging, I have the receipts to prove it! Over at MyShingle.com, I wrote about flat fees twenty years ago here, here and here ; subscription services back in 2014, and I even identified the trend of your client as partner on cases in 2010 here.
But there’s a big difference.
While I wrote to a small audience, now there’s a big audience listening. Even better, there’s actually a growing group of lawyers who are executing on these trends.
Sure, I may have written about them, even adopted some myself, but these trends didn’t matter until the Midas touch of biglaw.
And just as twenty years ago, I found myself trying to persuade biglaw attorneys to come over to law firm ownership, I now find myself preaching to solos and smalls not to discount these trends. As AI gains traction, I see solos and smalls retreating from technology. Leasing brick-and-mortar offices, in-person meetings, using AI to create more work to bill more hours instead of striving for efficiencies. Many solos and smalls are being convinced that focusing on the human elements of practice and the traditional role of lawyers is their only salvation.
But human-based law costs, and not everyone is willing to pay. And if the huge corporations that attended the AI Native Law Firm Conference are willing to gamble on AI-powered native law firms to reduce costs, why won’t cash-strapped consumer clients do the same?
Maybe that’s the real significance of the AI Native Law Firm movement. BigLaw didn’t invent new business models and ways of practice. But it’s given those ideas legitimacy, capital, and an audience. The innovations were there all along. But now that BigLaw is paying attention, the profession finally hears a trend. The question for solos and small firms is whether we’ll seize the moment—or retreat from the very future we helped create.