Claims that AI can “replace” lawyers are deeply unserious. Years into the AI hype cycle, the hallucinations continue to mount, the agents continue to fail at unacceptable rates, and former AI evangelists are acknowledging that they overestimated the technology. Whenever you see someone writing about how “thinking” AI is here, remember the industry is paying influencers upwards of half a million dollars to convince their audiences to use AI. As one AI industry insider put it, “Revolutions don’t need promo codes.”
Which is not to say AI isn’t a powerful technology that can significantly impact the legal industry. That’s exactly what happened at the Ad Astra Law Group, a six-lawyer shop in San Francisco. The firm didn’t embark on a half-cocked effort to layoff its lawyers in favor of robots, but when an eighth-year associate took another job, Ad Astra decided that instead of hiring and training a replacement — an expense (and a risk) — they would see if AI could help their remaining team stay ahead of the game.
When the dust settled, staffing costs were down 27 percent and profits were up. All while billing fewer hours. How does that work?
[Managing Partner] Katy [Young] acknowledges the counterintuitive economics: “It used to take two days to draft a complaint, now it takes me two and a half hours. So immediately, yes, there is an impact on my billing— I’m billing two and a half hours instead of eight hours.”
But she’s taking the long view. For Ad Astra’s core clientele — small and medium-sized businesses and individuals — the difference between a $1,500 complaint and a $5,000 complaint can determine whether they can afford to pursue a dispute at all.
Mere months later, clients were thrilled, referrals were up, and the firm had more flexibility to take on smaller matters that wouldn’t warrant the time and resources a human-only engagement would require.
A lot of the legal AI conversation focuses on Biglaw. Which makes sense, because that’s where you find firms built around throwing bodies at problems and with the resources to build out expensive AI capabilities. But the Ad Astra experience shows the potential benefits for small firms.
Young also reports better results because the time savings translate to more thorough filings produced under tight time pressure. This opens new pre-litigation strategy advantages. “That’s a 45-page complaint,” she said. “That looks like I already poured 10,000 bucks into it and we’re damn serious. I’m getting way better responses.”
It’s not science fiction, it’s a simple — if unusually powerful — productivity tool. Working with Legion, Ad Astra’s AI efforts focus in large part on solving “the blank page problem.” For those of us litigators who preferred the markup over the first draft, it doesn’t matter that AI isn’t going to write a perfect first draft. It matters that it produced a first draft ready for editing without costing the client hundreds of dollars and delaying the editing process by several days. That’s not a message that OpenAI or Anthropic would want to tell their investors, but AI doesn’t need to be perfect to be valuable.
Second-year associates are far from perfect, but we still hire them. And pay them a lot of money too.
The legal profession has spent the last few years engaged in a bizarre debate that essentially boils down to “will AI completely replace lawyers or is it totally useless?” The answer, obviously, is neither. AI makes certain tasks faster. It’s not going to argue your motion. It’s not going to spot the issue in a deposition that changes the case. But it can scan a complaint and crank out a first draft of interrogatories that a senior attorney can edit. And that’s not a mark of failure, because the junior’s draft was going to need heavy editing anyway.
It’s a matter of attitude. If lawyers approach AI like a junior that they would never trust to complete multiple, iterative tasks without interventionist supervision, then they’ll discover a powerful productivity tool. If they approach it as “GPTsus take the wheel,” they’ll end up getting sanctioned. Don’t be seduced by AI’s speed and projected confidence.
Maintain professional vigilance and you’ll be rewarded. No matter the size of the firm.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
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