The number of law firms dead set against using generative AI tools appears to be dwindling by the day. One recent survey showed that some 60% of lawyers now believe the technology is a must for their practice, and 95% said artificial intelligence will be a central component of their workflows within five years.
But clients want law firms to move faster. They see potential costs savings ahead and want outside counsel to make use of AI to increase efficiency. Many of them are hoping for a wholesale change to the law firm business model—one that dramatically reduces reliance on the billable hour in favor of alternative fee arrangements and more transparent pricing.
Will clients get their wish? Firms are certainly aware of the pressure, a new survey shows, and many are experimenting with AI or have fully integrated AI tools into their work. But most are less interested in reducing costs than freeing up time to focus on premium work.
Feeling the Pressure
Law firms—particularly those focused on litigation—are feeling the pressure to adopt artificial intelligence, according to a just-released survey by Disco, an e-discovery provider.
Forty-three percent said their firm leaders were turning up the heat to adopt AI. That’s compared to 36% who said clients were directly exerting pressure on their firms, 25% who said partners were leading the charge and 18% who pointed to associates.
A significant number—42% of respondents—said they were not feeling outside pressure at all to use AI. Nonetheless, many of those said they were aware that their future livelihoods could be at stake if they failed to adapt. As one respondent quoted by Disco said, “I feel pressure from myself to stay up to date on the industry and our competition.”
Legal professionals, the survey said, are also growing increasingly interested in becoming more proficient in their use of AI in their practices. “I wouldn't say pressured,” one legal professional told Disco. “It is a desire to understand the use of AI within the framework of the practice, along with the concerns voiced by clients.”
Freeing Up Time
The desire for greater efficiency is driving generative AI adoption for many firms. The survey found that nearly 8 in 10 law firm participants cited efficiency as their key motivator. Half of firm professionals also said they wanted to use their AI proficiency to differentiate their firms from competitors. And half said they believed AI would improve client outcomes. “Every time I have taken a finished piece of work and applied generative AI, it comes back with good ideas and vastly improves the quality of the work I provide to the client,” one law firm professional told Disco.
Client demand is driving 39% of the firms to adopt AI, and 36% said they see AI tools as an effective way to reduce costs. Disco noted that the relatively low number of firms citing cost reductions as a driving factor in AI adoption “was not surprising,” quoting one law firm leader who said, “anyone who thinks it reduces cost does not know how to perform basic math.”
Nearly half of respondents said AI will simplify routine tasks and “free up more time for complex legal analysis,” Disco said in its survey report. Roughly one in five said AI will give them more time for strategic work, and a similar number said AI is becoming a requirement for success in the legal profession.
That’s not to say law firms are completely comfortable with the technology. In the e-discovery space, for instance, “several adoption blockers…remain for both law firms and in-house teams,” Disco noted. Some 70% said privacy and security were the most important issues blocking AI adoption at their firms. Malpractice and ethical concerns were cited by 36%, bans on AI by clients were obstacles for 35%, and 25% reported a lack of understanding of the technology.
Rates of Adoption
The Disco survey focused on 112 corporate law departments and law firms. The results show that 35% have already integrated generative AI into routine legal processes, and another 36% said they would do so within the year.
The results are not entirely dissimilar from Best Law Firms’ survey of nearly 5,000 U.S. law firms conducted earlier in 2025. Nearly three-quarters of firms in that survey said they were either exploring the potential for generative AI adoption or had launched pilot projects testing AI tools in select practice areas.
About a quarter of firms with more than 150 lawyers had gone a step farther, fully implementing generative AI tools across multiple practice areas. Smaller and midsize firms had made significantly less progress. Just 14% of midsize firms (20-150 lawyers) and 6% of firms with fewer than 20 lawyers had fully implemented AI tools, the Best Law Firms survey showed.
“Small practices might focus on affordable and easy-to-implement solutions, while midsized practices may prioritize scaling up AI integration to enhance efficiency and client services,” a recent Thomson Reuters white paper noted. “Large firms often emphasize firm-wide adoption of enterprise-level solutions and strategies. Tailoring the approach to these specific needs can ensure more effective AI integration.”
Unlike the Disco survey, firms responding to Best Law Firms were more likely to cite AI-related risk as a significant obstacle to embracing the technology. The numbers showed that law firms were well aware of lawyers being sanctioned by the courts for including fake, AI-generated case citations in court documents and that AI hallucinations could pose a significant threat to client relationships and law firm reputations.
Demand for AFAs
While firms are inching toward the AI future, clients are moving more quickly—particularly where pricing is concerned—and they are ramping up expectations that firms adopt alternative pricing models.
Half of clients in a recent survey by legal technology company BigHand said they wanted greater pricing transparency by firms, but “outdated systems and slow adoption of structured legal pricing analytics put both client relationships and revenue at risk,” the survey said.
Nearly half also said demand is increasing for matter budgets and alternative fee agreements (AFAs). “Demand for AFAs continues to rise, but pricing models are only inching forward, with most firms still cautious,” the Big Hand survey said. “Clients are moving faster than firms in embracing flexible, value-based pricing. Those who hesitate risk margin erosion and losing mandates to more agile firms.”
BigHand’s data shows that law firms are most comfortable with AFAs that “are the strongest in predictable, standardized work.” Firms are far less likely to have “scaled these models to more complex or bespoke matters.” In the Best Law Firms survey, for instance, the most popular AFAs were flat fees, which are typically used for routine or standardized matters.
Cutting Associate Hours
More than 70% of firms responding to Best Law Firms said they offer AFAs. Taken another way, however, the figures show that more than a quarter of firms in the United States offer no alternative to the billable hour, and for the most part, what they do offer is limited to a few narrow options, particularly flat fees.
Will the number of AFA options increase with AI adoption? In a recent report on the Disco survey, Above the Law noted that AI’s power to perform tasks like document review in a far shorter timespan than associates means that firms are on the verge of losing the bottom of their billable-hour pyramid. The hundreds of hours an associate can bill for such work will need to be replaced if firms hope to maintain revenues and profits.
The solution, Above the Law posited, was to “begin value pricing specific tasks.” In doing so, firms can be “unmoored from hours that keep the revenue constant” the website wrote, adding that “clients will yelp about wanting to enjoy the fruits of AI efficiency, but at the end of the day they’ll suck up the cost of legal services like they always do.”
AI’s flaws, however, mean firms will require a coterie of associates for quality control—but not as many as they currently employ. “AI simply isn’t capable of replacing the broad range of judgment even the lowliest of associates provides,” Above the Law said. “But it can empower the lowliest of associates to cover the work previously handled by several associates.”
Credits for Experimentation
Some firms are preparing their associates for this future by cutting billable hour requirements and allowing them to experiment with AI tools. Ropes & Gray, for instance, recently announced that first-year associates can receive 400 hours of billable credit for time spent learning AI.
A member of the firm’s management committee said the firm wants “to enable early-career lawyers ‘to see the importance of this transformative technology, and also to empower them to have the time to spend to learn the tools,’ " Reuters reported. The firm generally sets a first-year billable hour requirement of 1,900 hours.
The move, a law firm consultant told Reuters, was an acknowledgement that AI is becoming a required part of practicing law and that its future would depend on lawyers who understood how to deploy the technology effectively.
The management committee member said the firm understood that some associates may be concerned that AI will replace them, Reuters reported. But "we are always going to have humans," the partner said.
The question remains, however, how many?
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David L. Brown is a legal affairs writer and consultant, who has served as head of editorial at ALM Media, editor-in-chief of The National Law Journal and Legal Times, and executive editor of The American Lawyer. He consults on thought leadership strategy and creates in-depth content for legal industry clients and works closely with Best Law Firms as senior content consultant.
