On this episode of Useful Lawyers I spoke to Felix Riley, author of AI, Law and Why the Phone Stopped Ringing. Felix has spent the last while warning managing partners that AI isn’t another passing technology moment. His view is simple: law will never be the same again, and most firms are responding far too slowly.
This isn’t Excel
A lot of lawyers compare AI to Excel. Spreadsheets didn’t kill accountancy; they kicked off a boom. Felix doesn’t buy the comparison. Excel was a passive tool that a person picked up and used. AI is built to do the work itself. And the companies behind it, from Harvey to OpenAI and Anthropic, now launching their own legal products, need huge amounts of money to justify what they’ve spent. Legal work is an obvious target.
The triple threat
When Felix works with firms, he runs what he calls the triple threat exercise. Three questions:
What will your competitors do with AI?
What will the legal AI start-ups take from you?
What will your clients take in-house?
He says most sessions reach the same uncomfortable answer quickly: clients will soon only want the firm’s signature and its professional indemnity cover. That’s the wake-up moment. From there, the work is to rebuild the firm from first principles, working out where the judgement and knowledge sit that AI can’t replace, and accepting that some high-margin work is going to disappear.
For in-house teams, the third question is the interesting one. Felix’s point is that if a GC can buy the same tools their firms use, and the return is there, why wouldn’t they?
Bolting on tools isn’t enough
Felix compares adding a couple of AI tools to an existing workflow to putting a rocket engine in a car. It goes very fast in a straight line, but it can’t turn a corner. Firms tell him their new tools are creating bottlenecks. His answer: every firm is a legacy firm now, so ask what you’d build from scratch today.
This fits how I see it. We’ve moved from pre-AI to what I’d call the arbitrage stage, where firms do the same things faster with better tools. The next stage is AI-native, where every client has the same tools and information. Speed stops being an advantage at that point.
The emotional part
Felix makes a point I think gets missed. Most lawyers can accept the argument intellectually. The harder part is being ready emotionally for a firm that looks very different. Law has had a good run with a robust business model, and letting go of that certainty is hard. A good year is no comfort either; past profits say nothing about what’s coming.
His advice to junior lawyers: ask your firm what it’s doing about this. If you want a 20 or 30-year career, you have a right to know.
Why he’s still optimistic
Despite the warnings, Felix is upbeat about firms that act. Lawyers understand their clients and their industry better than most start-ups do. The back of his book sets out 17 business models firms could adopt, from knowledge platforms to fully automated services. His phrase for it: AI doesn’t have to happen to law. Law can happen to AI.
Find out more
Felix runs strategy sessions with firms and in-house teams through brilliant-thinking.com, alongside his partner Gayatri, who works on the people side of change. His book is AI, Law and Why the Phone Stopped Ringing.
