Rob Aberdein

Traditionally, law firms have scaled through people. More work meant more fee earners, more support staff and, inevitably, higher fixed costs. Growth was largely linear: to increase revenue, firms generally needed to increase headcount. AI begins to challenge that model.

Tasks such as document review, contract analysis, due diligence and legal research can increasingly be accelerated through intelligent tools. Work that once took hours may soon take minutes. That creates obvious efficiencies, but it also creates deeper strategic questions about how legal businesses are structured, priced and managed.

The opportunity is clear. Firms that embrace AI thoughtfully can improve speed, margin and client experience. They can remove friction from delivery and free up talented lawyers to focus on the work clients genuinely value: judgment, strategy, negotiation, creativity and relationship management. The risk, however, is more subtle and arguably more serious.

Firms that treat AI as simply another IT procurement exercise may miss the bigger picture entirely. This is not just about buying software licences or adopting the latest shiny tool. It is about business model redesign.

Clients are becoming more sophisticated buyers of legal services. Increasingly, they care less about how many hours were spent reaching an answer and more about the quality, speed and commercial usefulness of that answer. In truth, most clients are not purchasing time; they are purchasing outcomes, confidence and risk mitigation. If AI materially compresses delivery time, traditional pricing assumptions inevitably come under pressure.

That raises uncomfortable questions for partnership-led firms built around billable hours. Can firms continue charging in the same way if technology substantially reduces the time required to complete certain tasks? Can profitability be protected if clients expect efficiency gains to be shared rather than retained? And perhaps most importantly, how should firms train junior lawyers if technology absorbs much of the early-stage technical work that historically formed a critical part of professional development? These are leadership questions, not technical ones.

In my experience, the firms that will thrive are unlikely to be those with the biggest technology budgets or the most polished AI strategy papers. They will be the firms with the clearest strategic vision, the strongest leadership and the courage to challenge legacy thinking.

Scottish legal services have always adapted. From traditional partnerships to multidisciplinary businesses, the market has repeatedly evolved in response to changing client expectations, economic pressure and competitive disruption. AI feels less like a passing trend and more like the next major chapter in that evolution.
For lawyers, law firms and clients alike, the future is unlikely to be defined by human expertise or artificial intelligence in isolation. It will be shaped by those who combine both most effectively.

• Rob Aberdein is group managing director, Simpson & Marwick, and general counsel, Hoxton Wealth.
• This blog was originally featured in The Scotsman