What I Learned At CES About Law Practice Management

A Deloitte-led panel predicts that AI will be everywhere — but invisible. What would this mean for legal?
The post What I Learned At CES About Law Practice Management appeared first on Above the Law.

As you can imagine, there are multiple sessions at CES that focus on the trends and the future of technology in the consumer product environment, as I previously reported. 

But a panel discussion on Tuesday offered a slightly different focus that got my attention.

First, it was put on by the Big 4 accounting firm, Deloitte. Deloitte is in the business of advising businesses in all areas, including technology. So, what Deloitte says about trends is relevant to businesses. Second, what Deloitte says businesses should be focused on can be especially important to law firms and in-house management. Indeed, law firms, in particular, are often slow to respond to trends, making the Deloitte report all the more important to them.

The presentation was based upon the 16th annual Deloitte Technology Report that actually came out in late 2024. But yesterday at CES, Deloitte hosted a blue ribbon panel discussion about the report and what it means. The panel was composed of Bill Briggs, Deloitte CTO; Amit Ahuja, VP Adobe; Deborah Golden, Deloitte CIO; David Randle, Amazon head of spatial computing; and Holly Walters, Toyota CIO. If any group is in the know about technology and its impact on business, this is it.

AI: Everything Everywhere All at Once

So what do Deloitte and the panel see coming down the pike in 2025, and how do I think the developments should impact law firm and in-house management?

First, as an overarching matter, Deloitte concludes that AI will be everywhere but invisible. Deloitte and the panel believe that more and more AI will be — and already is — woven into the daily fabric of our lives. We will all increasingly take it for granted, expect it to work, and assume it will perform quietly in the background. 

What does it mean for legal? Lawyers and legal professionals will come to the office (whether remote or not) with certain expectations about how things work and eliminate pain points. If the tools provided by law firms and in-house legal departments don’t meet those expectations, dissatisfaction and decreased performance will inevitably result. 

Lawyers and legal professionals also need to keep in mind the expectations of their clients, many of whom will also be using AI without fanfare, in the background and perhaps unknowingly. They will assume their lawyers will be using similar tools and that their interaction with their lawyers will be as frictionless as their own experiences. Lawyers will need to double down on their customers’ experience. 

As Briggs put it: “Information is moving toward intelligence. Interaction is moving toward simplicity.” Walters also put it well: Customers (for lawyers, clients)) don’t want to hear about what AI tool you’re using or how you use it in your business. They just want things to work. They just want their problems solved. Lesson for lawyers: Clients care less about what AI tool you are using or might use. They care about results. As Walters said, “One of my favorite clients used to say we need a lot less fingers and a lot more thumbs.”

The Big Six

The six specific trends, what I think the impact of those trends on the business side of law practice will, and what law practice management needs to consider, are as follows:

1. Spatial Computing. Just like CTA, the Deloitte panel sees spatial computing increasing because it can break down silos and create so many more ways to communicate within teams and with others. Spatial computing, says Briggs, is the physical and digital world coming together in ways that haven’t been possible or seen before.

As I noted before, spatial computing blurs the line between the real and digital worlds. Spatial computing will transform the way businesses train, the way they build facilities and work processes, and the way they sell and market products, says Ahuja. The panelists, in particular, all commented on how spital computing opens up new ways of training workers: surgeons, for example, can hone their skills in the digital world with no risk, reducing stress in real-world surgeries.

For lawyers and legal professionals, spatial computing could allow younger lawyers to do the same: hone their skills without risk and improve real-world performance. Clients will also be living in the spatial world and expect their lawyers to be there as well. The downside for legal is that much of what we do depends on what is real. Blurring the lines brings risks of misinterpretation of facts and people.

2. Refined Use of AI. Deloitte and the panel talked about businesses moving away from large language models to smaller models that use more limited internal data sets. We have seen this already with new NetDocuments tools that apply AI to internal documents and partnerships between vLex and iManage to do the same. Large models running in the cloud with small models running on the edge, as Briggs puts it. Law management needs to invest in these systems that enable them to use their own valuable internal data.

3. Emphasis On Hardware. For years, much of the investment discussions in legal and elsewhere has been on cloud computing and software. But to power the AI tools, firms will need sophisticated and more powerful hardware to make it all work. Law firms and in-house management will need to reinvest in hardware to enable their AI tools to work as they should.

4. The Need for IT Talent. For years, notes Deloitte, the trend has been to create lean IT departments or outsource IT altogether. But if businesses — law firms and in-house departments — are going to use AI as they should, they will need to beef up their IT talent and spending. The Deloitte report puts it this way: “As both traditional and generative AI capabilities grow, every phase of tech delivery could see a shift from human in charge to human in the loop.” This change will mean a new role and skill set for IT.

5. Scary Times for Cybersecurity. Quantum computing — a when, not an if — will pose significant security changes for all businesses and firms. Several panelists noted that cybercriminals may have already infiltrated internal processes and systems. They are patiently awaiting the development of quantum computing tools that will allow them to breach security protections and take control.

A big problem is that the significant risk does not yet have a timetable to become real. That fact makes the risk easy for businesses to ignore. Law firms have been notorious for lax cyber protections. It’s not clear if they understand the enormity of the risk or have the ability to take action in advance (most firms operate under a partner consensus model: Getting partners to agree to invest profits in cybersecurity for risks that haven’t matured yet may be difficult).

6. AI Embedded in Core Systems. According to Deloitte, AI will allow businesses to quickly retrieve and analyze key information about things like their clients, their costs, and revenue. For law firms to stay competitive, they will need to make investments in AI to maximize the use of internal data about their core business. Firms need to integrally embed AI in all their business processes.

The Future Is Here

As William Gibson so famously said: The future is here — it’s just not evenly distributed. Many of the trends identified and discussed by the panel are already impacting businesses. 

For many managers of law firms and in house legal departments, that fact means they are already behind. AI and its opportunities and challenges can’t be ignored; business as usual, particularly for legal, is no longer a panacea.

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Stephen Embry is a lawyer, speaker, blogger and writer. He publishes TechLaw Crossroads, a blog devoted to the examination of the tension between technology, the law, and the practice of law.