{"id":164449,"date":"2026-10-06T10:39:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-06T18:39:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/10\/06\/ai-can-never-give-lawyers-all-their-time-back\/"},"modified":"2026-10-06T10:39:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T18:39:09","slug":"ai-can-never-give-lawyers-all-their-time-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/10\/06\/ai-can-never-give-lawyers-all-their-time-back\/","title":{"rendered":"AI Can Never Give Lawyers All Their Time Back"},"content":{"rendered":"

8am spent its Kaleidoscope conference<\/a> in Las Vegas last week promising lawyers their time back. CEO Jeff Hughes opened with the company\u2019s \u201cAdmin Misery Index\u201d \u2014 1,600 lawyers surveyed, 73 percent calling busywork a substantial problem, \u201cat least 200 hours per year\u201d lost to it \u2014 and nearly everything after that was about returning those hours. Since it\u2019s 2026, you know the answer to getting that time back is in AI.<\/p>\n

With a couple weeks to reflect on this message, what stands out most is all the time AI can never give back. <\/p>\n

My personal experience with the conference underscored the problem. I arrived in Vegas \u2014 an ironic choice to place the 8am conference in a town where time has no meaning \u2014 having spent twenty-some consecutive hours awake. Over the next two nights, I managed to contract a nasty-yet-thankfully-short-lived spot of food poisoning that left me up most of that night, and the next night I left the closing party for a 12:30 a.m. red-eye. Most of that was self-inflicted, but none of it was delegable to AI.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a well-worn cliche that agents can\u2019t go to court for you, but that\u2019s really the tip of the iceberg for what they can\u2019t do. Perhaps it\u2019s better to think of AI as maximizing what you do with your non-delegable time. C. Northcote Parkinson wrote a 1955 piece in the Economist<\/em> arguing that work expands to fill the time available. So far that seems to be the fate of the AI economy. <\/p>\n

It was an earlier report by 8am itself that showed lawyers billing more time per matter than before even as AI use skyrocketed<\/a>. While AI skeptics will blame this on nervous lawyers burning more time to check against hallucinations than they would\u2019ve doing the research themselves \u2014 and caution may contribute some \u2014 the overwhelming contributor seems to be a combination of AI uncovering rabbit holes that lawyers wouldn\u2019t have thought of otherwise, and \u2014 more relevant to 8am \u2014 lawyers having time in their pockets to do lawyering that used to be tied up in practice management tasks.<\/p>\n

Moving tasks to the delegable column just moves time to the non-delegable tasks that used to get short-changed.<\/p>\n

While at the conference, I moderated a panel titled \u201cExpanding Into New Practice Areas,\u201d with Krystal Champlin-Gerage of RJH Consulting<\/a> and Tristian Shannon of the Law Offices of Giselle Rodriguez<\/a>. The topic, mixing business strategy and marketing, was intended as helpful content to the small and solo audience as opposed to a pitch for the 8am product. The fix for a firm looking to expand is partly technical. Champlin-Gerage encouraged lawyers to mine their own data to see where clients keep asking for help that the lawyers don\u2019t yet offer, which certainly requires software tracking unless you have Bob Cratchit working holidays to compile all your billing nuances by hand. However, the rest of the journey is more about people than software, as expanding firms need to build out a strong network of mentors willing to lend expertise as lawyers develop their new practice competence. \u201cI have a mentor for everything,\u201d Shannon said.<\/p>\n

But the unspoken reality looming over the whole conversation is that nobody can do all the work of identifying a business opportunity, spinning up the necessary competence, and getting off the ground if they don\u2019t have the time to commit. If administrative tasks eat up half the day, that\u2019s half a day of business development lost. A lawyer isn\u2019t getting time back. The time just moves to a new task that would never get accomplished without the time to build human relationships that AI can\u2019t manage.<\/p>\n

Niki Black of 8am \u2014 a columnist here at Above the Law \u2014 moderated a panel called \u201cThe Attorney\u2019s Guide to AI,\u201d that proved exactly how scattered the profession\u2019s experience with AI is in 2026. The panel, including Jared Correia of Red Cave Legal<\/a>, solo practitioner Bradley Clark<\/a>, and Smith.ai<\/a> CEO Suresh Khanna, set out to help lawyers elevate their AI chops. Clark described his approach to skills and agents, automating his practice and building out tools to get deeper insights on his motions before he files them, some of the audience were just looking for someone to tell them who this Claude guy is that everyone keeps talking about.<\/p>\n

The panel pivoted on the fly, backtracking to the basics: pick Claude or ChatGPT, talk to them in plain English, etc. That\u2019s the echo chamber we fall into hopscotching the country to these legal tech conferences. Vibes tell us that lawyers are beyond ChatGPT and ready to build out their agentic intake process, while in reality most lawyers are still a little confused by Clippy.<\/p>\n

When I talked to Hughes later, he suggested that we\u2019re still in an era where conferences should build AI training content around tracks, with material explicitly labeled for beginners and for the advanced. A great idea, but another reminder that the distance between \u201cwhich website\u201d and \u201corchestrating sub-agents\u201d isn\u2019t getting closed by labs releasing bigger models, but by humans putting in the hours. Non-delegable, human hours that they can only spare when something else is taken off their plate.<\/p>\n

We put on a live edition of Legaltech Week at the show, breaking down the key takeaways. As usual, I provided my less-than-shiny view of agentic AI. It\u2019s the great hope of the AI crowd, who desperately need users to build token infernos if they ever hope to monetize the technology into even a breakeven proposition, but for lawyers the supposed safety valve for a swarm of sub-agents is an empty promise. A partner who\u2019s going to sit down at the end and read 300 pages of agent audit logs? Let\u2019s be real. I\u2019ve said it before, but \u201cI\u2019ll keep you in the loop\u201d is something you say before blowing someone off \u2014 you should read \u201chuman in the loop\u201d the same way.<\/p>\n

This is the problem with framing AI as a time saver alone. The misanthropic investors behind this technology want it to replace human work altogether so they can finally snuff out humanity and see if Optimus Prime rises in its place, but the reality is that a lot of this work is still going to be human. The trick is moving the work that can be automated off of the lawyers so they can make the most of the work that can\u2019t be.<\/p>\n

And understanding that there will be time that can never be shunted off to a bot \u2014 at least not without a radical shift in the underlying technology<\/a> \u2014 changes how you think about AI. It ceases to have the snake oil quality of promising a future 2-hour work week, and becomes the technology that gives lawyers permission to get deeper on their matters or push into new fields.<\/p>\n

For a conference all about time, it\u2019s worth remembering what the 8am name change<\/a> was all about. Lawyers trying to stay ahead of their administrative misery tend to do that work before 8:00 a.m. and the company\u2019s name promises to supercharge that pre-8 a.m. work. But lawyers aren\u2019t the type of people who will take their newfound 7-8 a.m. freedom to lounge around. They\u2019re going to fill it with the human-only tasks that they always meant to do, but never had the time.<\/p>\n

And, yes, occasionally to take advantage of the non-delegable job of recovering from all-night nausea.<\/p>\n

8am covered my travel and lodging to attend Kaleidoscope.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

\"Headshot\"Joe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post AI Can Never Give Lawyers All Their Time Back<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

8am spent its Kaleidoscope conference<\/a> in Las Vegas last week promising lawyers their time back. CEO Jeff Hughes opened with the company\u2019s \u201cAdmin Misery Index\u201d \u2014 1,600 lawyers surveyed, 73 percent calling busywork a substantial problem, \u201cat least 200 hours per year\u201d lost to it \u2014 and nearly everything after that was about returning those hours. Since it\u2019s 2026, you know the answer to getting that time back is in AI.<\/p>\n

With a couple weeks to reflect on this message, what stands out most is all the time AI can never give back. <\/p>\n

My personal experience with the conference underscored the problem. I arrived in Vegas \u2014 an ironic choice to place the 8am conference in a town where time has no meaning \u2014 having spent twenty-some consecutive hours awake. Over the next two nights, I managed to contract a nasty-yet-thankfully-short-lived spot of food poisoning that left me up most of that night, and the next night I left the closing party for a 12:30 a.m. red-eye. Most of that was self-inflicted, but none of it was delegable to AI.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a well-worn cliche that agents can\u2019t go to court for you, but that\u2019s really the tip of the iceberg for what they can\u2019t do. Perhaps it\u2019s better to think of AI as maximizing what you do with your non-delegable time. C. Northcote Parkinson wrote a 1955 piece in the Economist<\/em> arguing that work expands to fill the time available. So far that seems to be the fate of the AI economy. <\/p>\n

It was an earlier report by 8am itself that showed lawyers billing more time per matter than before even as AI use skyrocketed<\/a>. While AI skeptics will blame this on nervous lawyers burning more time to check against hallucinations than they would\u2019ve doing the research themselves \u2014 and caution may contribute some \u2014 the overwhelming contributor seems to be a combination of AI uncovering rabbit holes that lawyers wouldn\u2019t have thought of otherwise, and \u2014 more relevant to 8am \u2014 lawyers having time in their pockets to do lawyering that used to be tied up in practice management tasks.<\/p>\n

Moving tasks to the delegable column just moves time to the non-delegable tasks that used to get short-changed.<\/p>\n

While at the conference, I moderated a panel titled \u201cExpanding Into New Practice Areas,\u201d with Krystal Champlin-Gerage of RJH Consulting<\/a> and Tristian Shannon of the Law Offices of Giselle Rodriguez<\/a>. The topic, mixing business strategy and marketing, was intended as helpful content to the small and solo audience as opposed to a pitch for the 8am product. The fix for a firm looking to expand is partly technical. Champlin-Gerage encouraged lawyers to mine their own data to see where clients keep asking for help that the lawyers don\u2019t yet offer, which certainly requires software tracking unless you have Bob Cratchit working holidays to compile all your billing nuances by hand. However, the rest of the journey is more about people than software, as expanding firms need to build out a strong network of mentors willing to lend expertise as lawyers develop their new practice competence. \u201cI have a mentor for everything,\u201d Shannon said.<\/p>\n

But the unspoken reality looming over the whole conversation is that nobody can do all the work of identifying a business opportunity, spinning up the necessary competence, and getting off the ground if they don\u2019t have the time to commit. If administrative tasks eat up half the day, that\u2019s half a day of business development lost. A lawyer isn\u2019t getting time back. The time just moves to a new task that would never get accomplished without the time to build human relationships that AI can\u2019t manage.<\/p>\n

Niki Black of 8am \u2014 a columnist here at Above the Law \u2014 moderated a panel called \u201cThe Attorney\u2019s Guide to AI,\u201d that proved exactly how scattered the profession\u2019s experience with AI is in 2026. The panel, including Jared Correia of Red Cave Legal<\/a>, solo practitioner Bradley Clark<\/a>, and Smith.ai<\/a> CEO Suresh Khanna, set out to help lawyers elevate their AI chops. Clark described his approach to skills and agents, automating his practice and building out tools to get deeper insights on his motions before he files them, some of the audience were just looking for someone to tell them who this Claude guy is that everyone keeps talking about.<\/p>\n

The panel pivoted on the fly, backtracking to the basics: pick Claude or ChatGPT, talk to them in plain English, etc. That\u2019s the echo chamber we fall into hopscotching the country to these legal tech conferences. Vibes tell us that lawyers are beyond ChatGPT and ready to build out their agentic intake process, while in reality most lawyers are still a little confused by Clippy.<\/p>\n

When I talked to Hughes later, he suggested that we\u2019re still in an era where conferences should build AI training content around tracks, with material explicitly labeled for beginners and for the advanced. A great idea, but another reminder that the distance between \u201cwhich website\u201d and \u201corchestrating sub-agents\u201d isn\u2019t getting closed by labs releasing bigger models, but by humans putting in the hours. Non-delegable, human hours that they can only spare when something else is taken off their plate.<\/p>\n

We put on a live edition of Legaltech Week at the show, breaking down the key takeaways. As usual, I provided my less-than-shiny view of agentic AI. It\u2019s the great hope of the AI crowd, who desperately need users to build token infernos if they ever hope to monetize the technology into even a breakeven proposition, but for lawyers the supposed safety valve for a swarm of sub-agents is an empty promise. A partner who\u2019s going to sit down at the end and read 300 pages of agent audit logs? Let\u2019s be real. I\u2019ve said it before, but \u201cI\u2019ll keep you in the loop\u201d is something you say before blowing someone off \u2014 you should read \u201chuman in the loop\u201d the same way.<\/p>\n

This is the problem with framing AI as a time saver alone. The misanthropic investors behind this technology want it to replace human work altogether so they can finally snuff out humanity and see if Optimus Prime rises in its place, but the reality is that a lot of this work is still going to be human. The trick is moving the work that can be automated off of the lawyers so they can make the most of the work that can\u2019t be.<\/p>\n

And understanding that there will be time that can never be shunted off to a bot \u2014 at least not without a radical shift in the underlying technology<\/a> \u2014 changes how you think about AI. It ceases to have the snake oil quality of promising a future 2-hour work week, and becomes the technology that gives lawyers permission to get deeper on their matters or push into new fields.<\/p>\n

For a conference all about time, it\u2019s worth remembering what the 8am name change<\/a> was all about. Lawyers trying to stay ahead of their administrative misery tend to do that work before 8:00 a.m. and the company\u2019s name promises to supercharge that pre-8 a.m. work. But lawyers aren\u2019t the type of people who will take their newfound 7-8 a.m. freedom to lounge around. They\u2019re going to fill it with the human-only tasks that they always meant to do, but never had the time.<\/p>\n

And, yes, occasionally to take advantage of the non-delegable job of recovering from all-night nausea.<\/p>\n

8am covered my travel and lodging to attend Kaleidoscope.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

\"Headshot\"Joe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post AI Can Never Give Lawyers All Their Time Back<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

8am spent its Kaleidoscope conference in Las Vegas last week promising lawyers their time back. CEO Jeff Hughes opened with the company\u2019s \u201cAdmin Misery Index\u201d \u2014 1,600 lawyers surveyed, 73 percent calling busywork a substantial problem, \u201cat least 200 hours per year\u201d lost to it \u2014 and nearly everything after that was about returning those […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":164441,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-164449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164449\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}