Why AI Might Actually Create More Work for Lawyers

AI’s emergence is altering both how law firms deliver work and what clients and lawyers expect, according to Gary Wingins, chair of Lowenstein Sandler (a ~400‑lawyer firm focused on private capital). The hosts (Tracy Alloway and Joe Wisenthal) canvassed familiar anxieties — billable hours, lost grunt work, and rising automation — and Wingins framed AI’s impact as twofold: conventional process automation that reduces repetitive hours, and a qualitatively new function as a ‘thought partner’ that improves drafting, ideation and deal‑structuring from the outset. He gave concrete examples: a large trust‑document review that became ~70% cheaper using AI review plus a legal QC layer, and AI‑assisted patent drafting that clients say has materially improved applications; one client even reported a 4x jump in invention disclosures after adopting AI internally.

The conversation tracked practical adoption and unresolved economics. Wingins said Lowenstein uses Harvey (enterprise layer), Claude, Microsoft Copilot and other vendor tools; enterprise products matter for security, client privilege and retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG) playbooks tied to firm precedent. He warned that training a foundation model in‑house is implausible for most firms (citing large investments reported at peer firms), so customization and playbooks on top of existing models are the expected path. Insurers have shifted from forbidding AI to expecting its use; yet pricing remains unsettled — token‑based billing (Claude’s shift) may change costs and reveal the true economics behind today’s heavily subsidized, “all‑you‑can‑eat” enterprise offers. Hosts and guest agreed on opportunities and risks: AI can make some previously uneconomic matters viable (a Jevons effect), but it raises cultural and training challenges — how to teach junior lawyers without repetitive tasks, how to incentivize partners to contribute proprietary knowledge to shared systems, and how to avoid overreliance on models that can hallucinate. The net message: AI will be pervasive and productivity‑changing in law, but its ultimate effects on pricing, employment mix and professional training remain open and contested.