The Conversation Has Changed

Over the past year, AI in legal services has moved from novelty to necessity. The conversation among managing partners and IT directors has shifted from “Should we experiment with AI?” to “How do we integrate it without breaking what works?”

This briefing cuts through the hype to address what matters: what’s genuinely changing, what isn’t, and what practical steps UK firms should consider.

What’s Actually Changing

From Chatbots to Agents

The significant shift isn’t AI itself—it’s the move from conversational AI (tools that answer questions) to agentic AI (tools that complete tasks autonomously). An agentic system doesn’t just draft a contract clause when asked—it can review a document, identify issues, cross-reference against your precedent bank, and flag exceptions for human review.

This matters for pricing. The billable hour assumes human cognition is the bottleneck. When AI handles the throughput and humans handle the judgment, that assumption weakens. We’re not suggesting the billable hour disappears overnight—but the pressure to demonstrate value beyond hours logged is real and growing.

Client Expectations Are Shifting

In-house legal teams, particularly at larger corporates, are beginning to ask pointed questions: “If you’re using AI to accelerate research, why aren’t we seeing that reflected in fees?” This isn’t universal, but the direction of travel is clear. Firms that can articulate their value in terms of outcomes, risk management, and expertise—rather than effort—will be better positioned.

What Isn’t Changing (Yet)

The Accountability Requirement

AI can generate a contract, but it cannot be sued for negligence. In the UK’s regulated environment, the SRA and professional indemnity insurers still require a licensed solicitor to take responsibility for advice. This “accountability layer” isn’t a temporary obstacle—it’s a structural feature of legal services that AI doesn’t eliminate.

In fact, as AI-generated content increases in volume, professional oversight arguably becomes more valuable, not less. The question isn’t whether to replace human judgment, but how to deploy it more effectively.

The Limits of ‘Build Your Own’

There’s a tempting narrative that AI makes bespoke internal tools cheap to build, reducing dependence on software vendors. This is partially true—prototyping is dramatically faster. But maintaining production systems, ensuring security, managing integrations, and supporting users still requires infrastructure and expertise. Most firms that attempt to replace core platforms with homegrown alternatives discover this the hard way.

The more realistic picture: AI changes how you use software, not whether you need it. Robust document management, secure APIs, and reliable databases become more important as you deploy AI agents, not less.

Practical Considerations

The table below summarises the shift in emphasis, rather than a wholesale replacement:

Questions Worth Asking

For law firm leaders evaluating their technology strategy, we suggest focusing on these questions:

Infrastructure readiness: Can your current systems support AI agents that need to access, search, and act on your data? This typically means well-organised document management, secure APIs, and reliable integrations—not necessarily new platforms, but existing ones configured properly.

Data quality: AI is only as good as what it can access. Are your precedents, know-how, and matter history organised in ways that make them usable, or scattered across email archives and local drives?

Governance: Who reviews AI outputs before they reach clients? How are you documenting that oversight? The SRA will want answers, and so will your insurers.

Value articulation: When a client asks why they’re paying your rates if AI does the work, what’s your answer? The firms that thrive will be those that can clearly explain what human expertise adds—whether that’s judgment, relationships, or accountability.

Looking Ahead

The transition won’t happen overnight. Billable hours won’t vanish next quarter, and your document management system won’t become obsolete. But the firms that start preparing now—strengthening their infrastructure, organising their data, and thinking carefully about how they articulate value—will be better positioned as client expectations evolve.

At Quiss, we work with UK law firms to ensure their technology foundations are ready for what’s coming—not by chasing trends, but by getting the fundamentals right. If you’d like to discuss how your infrastructure measures up, we’re happy to have that conversation.