If there is one theme I’ve noticed in this month’s Orange Rag and in my many conversations beyond, it is this: legal technology has moved past the “what can it do?” phase and into the far more uncomfortable territory of “what does this change about us?”
Across law firms, in‑house teams and vendors, the conversation is no longer about whether generative AI works. The harder questions now sit at the intersection of value, judgment, accountability and trust, and they are forcing a rethink of some long‑held assumptions about how legal services are delivered and differentiated.
That tension is perhaps most visible in the evolving nature of client relationships. Efficiency gains are real, and the pressure they place on traditional billing models is undeniable. But if clients bring more work in‑house, they may lose the benefit of independent expert advice. Who is responsible for a recalibration? In an interview with Herbert Smith Freehill Kramer’s new chief AI officer Ilona Logvinova this month, here on page 23, she says: “It is not the clients’ responsibility to come to us, we need to give them optionality and creativity. We should go to them – the responsibility is on law firms to scope what is possible and what is optimal.”
Relationships are becoming more intentional, more data‑driven, and less forgiving of inefficiency. That was the topic of a breakfast Legal IT Insider hosted with Litera in New York this month, where we discussed the challenges and opportunities that AI opens up. You can read that on page 3.
This shift mirrors a broader pattern we’re seeing across the ecosystem. Adoption, for many organisations, is no longer the headline challenge. As several in‑house teams featured this month make clear, the real work begins after rollout: proving value in a way the business cares about, governing fast‑moving tools responsibly, and understanding how people are actually using AI day to day — not how vendors or dashboards say they should be using it.
Perhaps the most provocative undercurrent running through this issue is the quiet acknowledgement that AI is starting to expose organisational weaknesses rather than simply solve them. Poor data, fragmented systems, unclear ownership and under‑invested change management are no longer background issues. Our biggest story this month was ‘Vereins – The reckoning, and the GenAI problem.’ As DLA Piper announces that it is replacing its verein with a new global holding structure, firms are realising that AI is holding up a mirror to their organisational challenges.
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