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The billable hour is the foundational pricing unit of corporate legal services, a model built on the assumption that client cost tracks lawyer time. Artificial intelligence is compressing that time on routine work.
Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Citi have told their outside law firms that bills should fall because of it.
The message from the three banks is direct: technology has made routine legal work faster, and that efficiency should show up in what clients pay.
If AI reduces the hours a task consumes, the invoice should reflect fewer hours. The banks are not framing this as a request.
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