The legal profession has survived centuries of disruption. However, the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) is an altogether more pressing challenge, presenting a fundamental reordering of who – and what – does legal work. From billing models and hiring strategies to the very structure of a law firm, AI is no longer something on the horizon – it’s the here and now. But are firms ready for this new era?

This was the theme of a recent Totum Partners knowledge sharing session, where we were delighted to welcome lawyer turned legal tech venture capital investor Henry Goodwin and executive dean of The Dickson Poon School of Law at King’s College, Dan Hunter to share their expertise on AI’s imminent impact on the legal profession.

The three ages of AI

Hunter started by outlining how AI has evolved rapidly over the past three years, moving from a tool that can help individuals improve their efficiency to one which is profoundly changing the nature of work. Each shift has proved more disruptive than the last.

The first age of AI was the chatbot era, where people used LLMs like ChatGPT to answer specific questions. This era was about improving efficiencies and the quality of response. A year and half ago, this period ended with the creation of a new model from Open AI, ushering in the ‘agentic’ age.

“Agentic AI means you have a system that can plan as well as provide you with answers. It can work out how to do something and is connected to other tools, whether searching the web or your own document repository,” Hunter explained.

Three months ago, a new model called Claude Opus 4.5 was released. Designed for high-level reasoning, complex coding and long-running agentic tasks, it is the most advanced AI model to date, capable of staying on task for 30 hours.

“When agentic AI came out, we said things (in the legal profession) were going to change. When Claude Opus came out, we said it’s going to change profoundly. The entire nature of legal work is going to change,” said Hunter.

“I’ve worked with lots of firms and companies. Managing partners, lawyers and business services leaders have no idea what is about to hit them. Our job is to get people to a point where they understand the nature of the change hitting them,” he added.

The threat to law firms

The arrival of agentic AI means law firms can no longer treat AI as just an efficiency tool – it fundamentally threatens their billing and staffing models.

Our panellists discussed how some in-house legal teams are bypassing firms and working directly with legal AI platforms like Harvey and Legora to solve issues. Others are demanding firms itemise how they are achieving efficiencies through AI usage.

“The release of agentic models means we are starting to see an accelerated pace of change,” agreed Hunter.

“Legora and Harvey are about to implement Claude Opus 4.5 internally. This means people will be able to ask legal AI to give it an answer to a particular problem, for example an issue in an M&A deal. It will be able to work out what it has to do and the job of the lawyer will be to validate and check it,” he added.

One example from another sector is the buzz around the coming ‘SaaS-pocalypse’, which relates to the dramatic fall in market cap of software-as-a-service businesses recently. As AI becomes more advanced, could it replace accounting, analytics and project management software? Or, as the Guardian puts it – ‘why would you pay for bespoke accounting, sales analytics, logistics or project management software when you could just ask ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini to do it?’

“More than a trillion in market cap was wiped out in less than a week. The reason? A tiny bit of code in Claude code that allowed people to create their own wealth management software. While the market over-reacted, it is still a very scary period for SaaS businesses,” said Hunter.

Jobs and the future workforce

“A lot of our conversations are about trying to inject a sense of urgency into law firms. It’s not about shifting entire operating models in one swoop, but they do need to take steps in experimenting with different ways of working,” said Goodwin.

One way Goodwin and Hunter advocate this is for firms to create a ‘skunkworks’ model. Here, a parallel innovation practice can test AI interventions in a live environment, shadowing real work on a matter by matter basis before feeding back knowledge into the firm.

Another is to accept that the nature of legal work will change – and to build the right skills in your workforce to prepare for it.

“A big part of this is about breaking what you do in your jobs into tasks and activities. Some of the things you do in your job will be automated, but others won’t. That key conversation with a client about strategy and concerns for the next year – that will remain the same,” said Goodwin.

“The organisational model of the future will change. Currently, we’re a pyramid with associates feeding partners at the top. We’re moving to a pillar model, where it’s a bit less chunky at the bottom.

The model for the future will be a barbell one, with partners at the top as the trusted client interfacers. They’ll oversee the work. At the bottom, you’ll have people who are mostly caring and tending for AI agentic models. They’ll still be lawyers, but they will need very different skills,” said Hunter.

This new breed of lawyer will have a different disposition and outlook. Consequently, firms will need different recruitment styles to attract them, with practice groups shaped and sized very differently.

“Our metaphor for this is like going from being a fighter pilot to a drone operator. You still have the same end point, but technology is doing it. Your job is very different,” said Hunter.

Ultimately, AI is inevitable. Firms need to rethink their business models and how they recruit the next generation of lawyers. Above all, a mindset shift is required, with an openness to learning and trying different tools.

“There is a wonderful paper by an economics professor who analysed the last US census and the one 50 years before, looking for jobs that had disappeared. He found one: elevator operator,” said Hunter.

“AI is not going to take all our jobs, but it will change the nature of it. Disruption is here and firms need to bring their people on this journey so they can compete in this environment. Being prepared allows you to succeed and outperform your competitors,” he added.

To learn more about how Totum Partners is helping professional services firm deal with AI disruption and transformation and change, contact James Boyes, our Head of Practice – Advisory, Legal Operations, Innovation & Transformation at [email protected]

Key takeaways

• Law firms need to experiment with AI now, mapping their workflows and testing AI in live environments
• Tech disruption is exponential, not linear – early adopters will capture outsized advantages
• Lawyers and business services leaders of the future will have a very different skillset to today
• Succeeding in this era isn’t about being better than AI, it’s about being better at it than your competitors