Artificial intelligence is now used by almost 90% of legal professionals in the U.K. and Ireland, creating friction with the profession's reliance on the billable hour. Clio's U.K. & Ireland Legal Insights Report 2026 indicates that among firms using AI, nearly 80% report handling more work without adding resources, while over 70% say costs have fallen as AI absorbs administrative tasks previously performed by support staff.
This shift is forcing firms to reassess how lawyers spend time and how services are priced. A&O Shearman has partnered with legal AI company Harvey to build agents for tasks such as reviewing loan agreements and analyzing regulatory filings. The firm states these tools complete in minutes work that previously took several hours. Slaughter and May has deployed Harvey across all practice areas this year for regulatory research and document analysis.
Nick Rowles-Davies, founder and CEO of London- and Dubai-based legal finance fund Lexolent, told CNBC that the economics of charging by the hour are becoming untenable when AI reduces drafting time from hours to seconds. He noted that routine work involving standard documents is an automatic process for AI, though complex legal work still requires human judgment to interpret output and determine client strategy.
Clio's report found that about one in five firms that have widely adopted AI report difficulty meeting billable-hour targets. A separate Deloitte survey suggests global senior legal leaders expect the share of work charged by the hour to drop from 72% to 44% over the next two to three years. Rowles-Davies warned that lawyers must also identify AI hallucinations, citing cases where attorneys were sanctioned for citing non-existent precedents in court briefs.
Mansoor Soomro, who leads the Future of Work Research Unit at Teesside University in Middlesbrough, England, said the billable hour is not disappearing overnight but is becoming harder to justify. He highlighted a change in how junior lawyers learn the trade. Traditionally, repetitive tasks like reviewing hundreds of documents and drafting contracts built foundational legal reasoning skills. As AI takes over these tasks, firms must intentionally replace those learning opportunities.
Jorge Bestard, head of EMEA at Harvey, told CNBC that a faster route to a draft does not automatically mean a faster route to competence. Francesca Bennetts, head of legal talent at A&O Shearman, said the firm is placing more value on curiosity and entrepreneurship. The firm is also building career paths in legal engineering and AI delivery that barely existed a few years ago. Bennetts stated that the need to develop exceptional lawyers remains, as they are the partners and experts of the future.
Soomro expects judgment to become disproportionately valuable, with lawyers spending more time challenging AI output and connecting multiple legal areas to solve complex problems. He predicted the future belongs to lawyers who can integrate diverse knowledge rather than those with narrow expertise.
Clio's data reveals a disconnect between actual schedules and preferences: more than half of legal professionals work evenings, yet only about a third wish to do so. Similarly, while nearly a quarter work weekends, just over one in ten would choose to. Joshua Lenon, Clio's New York-based lawyer-in-residence, said lawyers are telling the company their days are getting better as they recognize these tools are making work more effective.