Guest Blogger: Donald Wochna

I am somewhat bemused by the hyper-sensitivity that the market seems to have for the impact of AI on the practice of law.  For example, last week, in response to Anthropic’s Claude announcing a plug in for attorneys, competing Legal service companies’ valuation plummeted, and the market reacted with fear and trepidation.  This reaction confirmed to many that AI will force lawyers to forego the billable hour and dramatically reduce the need for counsel in many cases

 While I agree that the billable hour model will not survive, I predict that AI iterations like Claude threaten only those legal professionals who cannot define the meaningful deliverables they offer during the life of an engagement.  For those of us who have always marketed a legal deliverable (versus our “expertise” and willingness to work hard} Claude appears able to assist in creating meaningful deliverables for each phase of an engagement.

For example, the description of the Claude Cowork legal plug in focuses upon repetitive deliverables (contracts, Non-disclosure Agreements, standard compliance documentation).  Many of these practice areas had already developed a template focused software environment that channeled the drafting of contracts to a selection of pre-approved clauses.  Indeed, most attorneys learn early in their career that a lot of the practice of law involves using documents from prior matters to update their content to reflect new facts and/or new law.

Focusing upon a deliverable, rather than the process of legal analysis underlying the deliverable, is a marketing feature that I have used for years.  I wanted to see how well Claude could analyze my fixed fee, phased engagement agreement with the rules of professional conduct.  I had already obtained a compliance opinion; but wanted to see how well Claude could identify the unique issues related to the manner in which attorneys may or may not share fee revenue with non-lawyers.

Because I am both an attorney (43 years) and a certified digital forensic examiner (CCFE, CMFE), my engagement letter agreements present the type of business relationship integrating legal and technical expertise in a matter.  I uploaded an anonymized version of my engagement agreement and asked Claude to analyze whether the terms and conditions satisfied the Rules of Professional Conduct for lawyers.  I also asked whether the structure of the revenue between my law firm and any third party that I may integrate into the phased solution would violate the rules.

Claude impressed me that it was able to identify the rules of professional conduct and identified the manner in which my structure satisfied those rules.  Of course, because it is AI, Claude framed its analysis as complementary, providing even more transparency to my clients than required, but it was helpful to see the manner in which Claude analyzed each professional obligation in light of my contract.

My conclusion is that AI is simply forcing attorneys to re-focus their marketing on the value they offer by providing one or more defined deliverables to clients at defined periods of time throughout the life of the engagement.  This is, really, no different from the marketing done by any service provider.