Legal Industry Declares AI Adoption Mandatory as Client Pressure Mounts
Alvin Lang
Apr 03, 2026 15:37
Top law firm executives say AI has shifted from experimental to essential, with clients now asking how firms use AI rather than if they use it.
The legal profession has crossed a threshold. AI tools are no longer pilot projects or innovation theater—they’re becoming table stakes for competitive law firms, according to senior leaders at two major practices.
Emma Dowden, Chief Operating Officer at Burges Salmon, and David Wakeling, Partner and Global Head of AI Advisory Practice at A&O Shearman, outlined the rapid shift at Harvey FORUM in London. Their message was blunt: clients have stopped asking whether firms use AI. They’re asking how.
From Experimentation to Expectation
Wakeling pinpointed his team’s first exposure to GPT-4 in a legal context as the moment everything changed. The technology’s capabilities weren’t the surprise—what mattered was recognizing this wasn’t a tool to test at the margins. It demanded serious integration from day one.
Dowden sees the operational reality clearly. “AI is no longer something firms can position as optional or experimental,” she noted, describing how it now affects service delivery, firm operations, and client evaluations of their advisors.
The technology cuts across three dimensions simultaneously: business models, daily practice, and client expectations. That last piece may matter most. When corporate legal departments start measuring outside counsel partly on AI sophistication, the competitive dynamics shift fast.
The Structural Hurdles
Law firm economics create friction. Partnership structures, annual profit cycles, and murky ROI calculations make long-term technology investment genuinely difficult. Add in senior partners who feel uncertain about technology they don’t fully grasp, plus associate-level anxiety about role displacement, and you’ve got organizational resistance on multiple fronts.
Firms making progress—Burges Salmon and A&O Shearman among them—are tackling both technical and human challenges. They’re moving past scattered experiments toward coordinated strategies with actual governance. Internal champions drive adoption. Investment flows to skills development at scale.
That means hiring beyond traditional legal talent. Developers, data specialists, and multidisciplinary teams now translate AI capability into functioning workflows.
Expertise Gets Redefined
The nature of legal value is shifting. Producing solid analysis still matters, obviously. But knowing how to work effectively with AI systems—guiding them, evaluating their output, integrating them into client delivery—is becoming a separate and marketable skill.
Neither executive claimed AI has replaced core legal work. But it’s changing how that work happens and how firms compete for mandates. The uncomfortable truth for holdouts: choosing not to engage grows harder to defend with each passing quarter.
For crypto and fintech companies seeking outside counsel, this trend matters directly. Legal advisors fluent in AI tools will likely deliver faster turnaround on regulatory filings, contract review, and compliance work—areas where speed often determines competitive advantage.
Image source: Shutterstock
