“When we first saw AFAs hit the market, it was totally client-driven. With this new shift, it could be law firm-driven, because their profitability is at stake,” said Barnes & Thornburg’s Cassie Vertovec, one of the authors of the study.
A new survey found that Am Law 200 firms expect to see an increase in alternative fee arrangements or modified billing as a result of generative AI. Still, the rising technology will likely deliver a greater challenge to the billable hour model in five years, rather than in the immediate future.
The survey, entitled the Legal Pricing & Project Management report and conducted by the Legal Value Network and the Blickstein Group, surveyed law firm legal pricing and project management professionals at 69 firms in the Am Law 200. More than half of the respondents were at firms that employed over 750 attorneys and earned over $750 million in revenues annually. Nearly half of the respondents, meanwhile, held C-suite titles.
