Legal billing has always been an odd construct - a profession that charges for time rather than outcomes. AI is now making that model look untenable. I practised law for years (and never felt comfortable with the 6-minute billable unit).

The billable hour was never about value; it was about legibility. Clients understood hours even when they couldn't evaluate quality. AI collapses the time input dramatically. A first-cut contract review that took a junior lawyer four hours now takes four minutes. That is not a productivity gain for the firm. That is a revenue problem.

The legal profession is doing what it always does when threatened: arguing that AI lacks judgment, that nuance requires human expertise, that relationships matter. Some of that is true. But it is also true that a significant portion of legal work is pattern-matching and document processing. AI does that faster and more consistently than any associate. The firms that survive will be the ones that reframe the value proposition before the market does it for them. The ones waiting for the threat to pass will find it has already arrived.

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