A lawyer I work with now takes three hours to draft a document that used to take him three days. His price didn’t move. On this kind of case, his fees are at least 5,000 to 10,000 euros, mostly tied to the outcome.
Do the math. Time divided by ten, same price. Whatever AI saves him, he keeps. All of it.
From what I see, he’s not the only one. And nobody talks about it, because it’s a very comfortable time for the ones who get it. It won’t last.
I almost didn’t write this, by the way. I’ll tell you why at the end.
A rare window
Lawyers who adopted AI are living through what I call a latency period: the cost of doing the work collapses, and prices don’t move yet. Firms keep the value. Their margin goes up, and they can take on more clients.
Why aren’t prices dropping? Because it’s very recent. Clients don’t know what AI changes. And the profession keeps its rates, as if everyone had agreed without ever talking about it.
One detail: it doesn’t help everyone the same way. For AI to do three days of work in three hours, you need to know what to ask it, what to fix, what direction to give the case. That takes experience. Senior lawyers are the big winners of this period.
It will close from the bottom
One day, someone will use that gain to stand out. They’ll cut their prices. Then someone else will. And competition will do the rest.
When that happens, the market won’t drop all at once. It will split into three floors:
- Standard cases. Simple, repetitive, with little judgment, or judgment that can be industrialized. Here, prices will collapse. They’ll become commodities, cheap, available to everyone. And for clients, that’s great news.
- Judgment cases. Litigation, emergencies, cases where something vital is at stake. Here, prices will hold, because judgment stays valuable and AI doesn’t replace it.
- The high end. Here, prices will hold, maybe even rise. Lawyers will be more productive and more precise, and the competition will be about the quality of the work.
The trap
Now put yourself in the shoes of a young lawyer starting out. He needs clients, fast. He discovers AI, and he sees the move: produce faster than everyone, and slash prices to grab the market.
It’s the most natural reflex in the world. And it’s a trap.
Because slashing your prices now means fighting for the floor that’s about to become almost free. You’re not getting ahead. You’re speeding up your own fall.
There’s one exception, and it matters: the bottom floor will be won by someone. But not by a lawyer alone cutting his rates with ChatGPT. By firms built for volume from day one, with AI at every step. That’s exactly the bet I’m making with Hendy. Cutting prices is only a strategy if you’re built for it.
Why I almost didn’t write this
I was afraid of one thing: that a young lawyer would read this, think “prices are going down, might as well go first,” and slash his own. By publishing, I would have ended the latency period myself.
Then I reread what I was writing. This essay tells him the opposite. Whoever cuts prices without a machine doesn’t win the race. He fights for the floor that’s about to become free. So I might as well say it.
What you do with this
If you’re a lawyer and AI already saves you time, you’re right in the middle of the latency period. Enjoy the margin, but don’t spend it on price cuts. Invest it to move up a floor: your expertise, your judgment, the quality of what you deliver. That’s what will hold when prices at the bottom collapse.
If you’re a builder or an investor, look at the bottom floor. A huge number of people are about to get access to legal help for cheap. Whoever builds the machine to serve them will hold a huge market.
And whatever happens, time divided by ten won’t stay a secret for long.