Between June 2025 and February 2026, we brought together more than 80 senior knowledge management, innovation and pricing leaders at seven closed-door roundtables — in Chicago, London, Atlanta, New York, Washington DC, Sydney and Melbourne.
We set out to answer one question: how should law firms charge clients for legal technology, particularly AI? By our seventh roundtable, that question had quietly become the wrong one.
A clearer picture had emerged. For most firms, AI is no longer a line item. Procurement teams call direct tech billing “double dipping.” Outside counsel guidelines increasingly prohibit it outright. Outside of eDiscovery and virtual data rooms, the cost-recovery debate has largely ended. AI is becoming infrastructure — table stakes, like core IT — and the conversation has moved on.
What replaced it is harder. If firms can’t charge for the technology, how do they capture the value it creates? If efficiency gains threaten billable hours, how is that value articulated to partners, clients and the market?
Six shifts emerged from the conversations. Innovation leaders aren’t arguing about invoices anymore. They’re arguing about the operating model.
The firms pulling ahead are codifying expertise into structured workflows rather than relying on individual lawyers prompting AI tools. They’re rebuilding the client conversation around speed, certainty and quality rather than hours saved. They’re treating AI literacy as a talent and recruitment lever, not just a training exercise. And they’re asking a different question at renewal: not “do we need this tool?” but “does our operating model depend on this capability?”
The full report maps all six shifts in depth, with direct quotes from participants across all seven cities and a breakdown of how US, UK, European and Asia-Pacific markets are approaching these questions differently.
Download it here
The KM&I Leaders Roundtable Series is a closed-door discussion series convened by Legatics for senior KM, innovation, pricing and legal engineering professionals at large law firms. Each session runs under the Chatham House Rule.
