Artificial intelligence is becoming standard practice across the U.K. and Ireland, where nearly 90% of legal professionals now use it. As AI speeds up document review, drafting and administrative work, law firms face growing pressure to reconsider the billable hour, a long-standing feature of the profession.
According to Clio’s U.K. & Ireland Legal Insights Report 2026, nearly 80% of firms using AI say they can handle more work without adding resources, while more than 70% report lower costs as the technology takes over administrative tasks.
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AI Efficiency Challenges Traditional Pricing
AI is changing not only how legal work is done, but also how firms charge for it. When software reduces hours spent reviewing documents, drafting contracts and conducting research, the link between time spent and fees becomes harder to justify.
Major firms are already adopting the technology. A&O Shearman has worked with legal AI company Harvey to develop agents for reviewing loan agreements and analyzing regulatory filings, tasks the firm says can now take minutes rather than hours. Slaughter and May has also rolled out Harvey across all practice areas for regulatory research and document analysis.
“You can’t charge 16 hours for something that takes 16 seconds,” said Nick Rowles-Davies, chief executive of legal finance fund Lexolent, which operates in London and Dubai, speaking to CNBC.
Clio found that around one in five firms with widespread AI adoption are already struggling to meet billable-hour targets. Separately, a Deloitte survey found that senior legal leaders expect the share of work billed by the hour to fall from 72% to 44% over the next two to three years.
Routine work is particularly exposed. “If you’ve got standard documents and you’re just putting in detail, then clearly that’s an automatic process,” Rowles-Davies said.
Human Judgment Remains Essential
AI does not eliminate the need for legal expertise. Lawyers must verify generated material, challenge flawed assumptions and catch errors before they create professional risks.
“There have been a lot of cases where lawyers have been sanctioned for producing briefs before a court with cases that don’t exist,” Rowles-Davies said, referring to filings containing fabricated legal citations.
Joshua Lenon, Clio’s New York-based lawyer-in-residence, said legal professionals were reporting a more positive working experience with the tools. “Lawyers [are] telling us that their day is getting better,” he said. “People are really looking at these tools and saying, ‘This is making work better.’”
Mansoor Soomro, head of the Future of Work Research Unit at Teesside University in England, told CNBC that the billable hour would not disappear overnight, but was becoming harder to defend as AI compressed hours of work into minutes.
AI Is Changing How Junior Lawyers Train
The shift also affects how firms develop new talent. Reviewing documents, drafting contracts and researching case law have traditionally helped junior lawyers build practical skills and judgment. As AI takes on more of these tasks, firms must find new ways to provide that experience.
“A faster route to a draft does not automatically mean a faster route to competence,” said Jorge Bestard, Harvey’s head of EMEA, based in London.
A&O Shearman is placing greater emphasis on “curiosity and entrepreneurship,” according to Francesca Bennetts, the firm’s London-based head of legal talent. It is also developing career paths in legal engineering, product and AI delivery, roles that “barely existed a few years ago,” she told CNBC.
“The need to develop exceptional lawyers doesn’t go away,” Bennetts said. “They are the partners and experts of the future.”
Adaptability And Work-Life Balance
Soomro expects legal judgment to become “disproportionately valuable” as AI adoption grows. Lawyers will increasingly need to validate machine-generated work, challenge assumptions and turn complex legal issues into practical client advice. Professionals who can connect knowledge across disciplines may be better positioned to solve broader business problems.
“The future may therefore not belong to the lawyer who knows the most about one narrow area, but to the lawyer who knows how to connect multiple areas to solve a complex client problem,” Soomro said.
Whether AI improves lawyers’ working lives will depend on how firms use the time saved. Clio found that 51% of legal professionals work evenings, although only 32% would prefer to. Another 22% work weekends, compared with 11% who would choose to.
If firms use AI mainly to increase output, workloads may not ease. Changes to pricing, workflows and training could help turn efficiency gains into more manageable working conditions while preserving the expertise needed for high-quality legal advice.
