My partner spent many years in big law and now sits across the table on the client side. The billable hour has been problematic for much longer than AI has been in the picture, but what many people forget (including sometimes the companies paying the bill) is that you often aren't really paying for the hours, you're paying the structural tax that has been established by the system. Hours imply work product, but sometimes the reason firms are paying outside counsel _at all_ isn't because their in-house team couldn't do it, it's because the market/courts have told them they need the liability transference granted by a signed piece of paper.

That said, the rest of the article is on point. AI billing analysis software + internal knowledge of how the sausage gets made has shaved literal millions off bills at this point. I wouldn't expect them to lose money in an absolute sense though. More like a balloon you squeeze from one end.

One thing I came here to say, but turn out not to be the case, was the large jump in associates salaries as an interesting possible driver. I found a handy tracking number that does inflation adjustment. Turns out when you index for inflation, the associate pay scales are more or less flat.