That possibility sits at the center of a recent episode of AI Experience with Damien Riehl, a lawyer, technologist, and software developer working at the intersection of law and artificial intelligence. Near the end of the conversation, he poses a deceptively simple question: “What if legal work were cheap?”

The question matters beyond the future of law firms. If AI legal advice reduces the cost of legal services, people and businesses may seek help more often, firms may redesign how they charge, and more routine work may move directly into clients’ hands. Artificial intelligence in law could change demand as much as supply.

The most useful way to think about AI and access to justice is as an economic question: what happens when something scarce becomes easier to produce?

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AI Is Changing the Economics of Legal Work

The immediate effect of AI for lawyers is time compression. Generative systems are already being used for research, summarization, document review, and drafting. Thomson Reuters’ 2025 research found that GenAI use among legal professionals rose from 14% in 2024 to 26% in 2025. The efficiency expectations are substantial. In the 2025 Future of Professionals report, respondents expected AI to save professionals about five hours per week over the following year. Thomson Reuters estimated the potential annual value of those time savings at about $20 billion for the U.S. legal industry.

Those numbers are forecasts, not guaranteed savings for every firm. They still show why legal technology is becoming a business question as much as an operational one. If a law firm can produce comparable work in materially less time, its cost structure and pricing logic come under pressure. This is where legal AI changes the economics of professional services. The cost of legal services is partly shaped by the professional time required to produce an answer. Reduce those hours, and the economics of the service can change even when the expertise behind it remains valuable.

When 12 Hours of Work Becomes 90 Seconds

Riehl gives the episode’s sharpest illustration. He describes legal research that could previously require 12 hours and says specialized tools can complete comparable work in about a minute and a half. The significance lies in the compression of production time, not in assuming that every 12-hour assignment can now be completed in 90 seconds. That creates a difficult question for AI legal advice. If a client receives a useful answer faster, should the service be cheaper? Under hourly billing, fewer hours generally produce a lower invoice. Under a value-based model, speed can itself carry value when the client urgently needs certainty.

As Riehl puts it, “The best law firms in the world are decoupling time from value.”

That distinction matters. Artificial intelligence in law may reduce production time without reducing the value of the outcome. In some legal situations, getting a reliable answer today can be worth considerably more than getting it next week.

The Billable Hour Becomes Harder to Defend

The collision between the billable hour and AI creates an awkward economic incentive. A firm can invest in AI for lawyers, complete work faster, and then generate less revenue because it continues to charge solely for time. Clients already expect commercial models to evolve. Thomson Reuters’ 2026 legal report found that 71% of in-house legal professionals expect outside firms to change their commercial models as AI usage increases. Only 28% of law firms surveyed said they had changed their pricing structures in response to AI. That gap matters for the future of law firms. The cost of legal services will not fall automatically because a firm buys legal technology. Someone still has to decide how productivity gains are divided between the provider and the client.

There is also reason to resist predictions that hourly billing is finished. In a 2025 Georgetown Law faculty publication, Jonah Perlin argues that the billable hour could survive generative AI because law-firm economics depend on more than raw hours, including rates, discounts, and expenses. He also points to structural reasons that make the model difficult to dislodge. A more plausible outcome is that the billable hour and AI coexist while firms become more selective about where hourly billing makes sense. Matters with uncertain scope may remain time-based. Repeatable work is more likely to migrate toward alternative pricing.

From Hourly Billing to Value-Based Pricing

Flat fees, subscriptions, and success-based arrangements give firms another way to capture AI efficiency. When price is agreed in advance, reducing the time required can increase the firm’s margin while giving the client more predictable costs. The key question is where legal AI makes the scope repeatable enough to price an outcome instead of a block of professional time. Alternative delivery models already represent a significant market. Thomson Reuters estimated the alternative legal services provider market at $28.5 billion in its 2025 report and identified GenAI as a technology capable of streamlining processes and reducing costs.

For firms investing in AI for lawyers, pricing therefore belongs in the implementation discussion. Buying software without reconsidering how work is sold can leave the economic benefit trapped inside an older business model. The most consequential effect of affordable legal services may be demand creation.

Riehl frames the idea through Jevons Paradox: when efficiency lowers the effective cost of something, consumption can increase. Applied to legal services, the argument is intuitive. A person who would never spend $1,000 to ask a lawyer a question may ask far more questions if each interaction costs a small fraction of that amount. This changes how AI legal advice should be evaluated. The relevant question is not limited to how much existing work AI removes. Lower prices can unlock demand that previously never reached a law firm.

AI-assisted professionals may also be able to handle more matters with the same amount of human time. Together, these effects could expand the market for affordable legal services. That could mean more contracts reviewed before signing, more small disputes assessed before they escalate, and more people checking their rights before deciding whether formal representation is justified.

The Hidden Market for People Who Cannot Afford Lawyers

Demand for lower-cost guidance is visible today. In June 2026, the American Bar Association reported that its Free Legal Answers program had surpassed 500,000 questions answered since the virtual civil legal advice clinic launched in 2016. That figure does not measure the total justice gap. It does demonstrate sustained use of a service specifically designed to connect qualifying users with volunteer lawyers.

The World Justice Project’s 2025 review of justice technologies found that digital tools can generate cost savings, improve efficiency, empower users, and expand service coverage. It also warns that poorly designed systems can create new barriers or deepen existing exclusion. This is where AI and access to justice becomes more than a productivity argument. Affordable legal services matter most when they make previously uneconomic legal needs serviceable. The opportunity for legal technology is therefore larger than making existing clients cheaper to serve. It can expand the range of problems for which professional assistance is economically realistic.

AI Could Change Access to Justice

The promise of AI and access to justice rests partly on scale. Human lawyers have finite time. Digital systems can help them research, triage, draft, and explain information across a greater number of interactions. The World Justice Project’s 2025 research examined technologies ranging from legal information services to generative AI. Its conclusion is deliberately cautious: technology can improve the delivery of justice services, but technology alone will not close the justice gap. Implementation must account for people’s actual needs and for risks including exclusion, privacy, and due process.

That qualification is essential. Cheap AI legal advice that is unreliable does not improve access to justice. A credible model for affordable legal services may therefore be hybrid. AI can handle repetitive or information-heavy work, while qualified professionals remain responsible where judgment, representation, or significant consequences require human involvement. This approach also changes the role of legal AI. Its value is not limited to replacing units of lawyer time. It can help redistribute scarce professional attention toward the situations where that attention matters most.

From Emergency Service to Everyday Legal Advice

Lowering the cost of legal services could also change when people seek help.

Legal assistance is often treated as an escalation step because the expense has to be justified by the seriousness of the problem. If legal technology lowers the marginal cost of an initial consultation, legal advice can become more preventive. A small business could check a contract clause before signing. A tenant could clarify a notice before responding. A freelancer could assess a payment dispute before deciding whether to pursue it.

These examples capture the economic logic of AI and access to justice: lower friction can move legal assistance earlier in the decision process. That could become one of the most meaningful consequences of artificial intelligence in law. The impact of affordable legal services may be measured partly through modest interventions that prevent larger disputes from developing.

Clients May Start Doing More Legal Work Themselves

Cheaper production also changes who performs the work. Riehl makes the point directly:

‍“Lawyers’ competitors are their clients.”

The quote matters because it reframes competition. Companies that once sent routine questions directly to outside counsel can increasingly combine internal legal technology, company data, and AI systems to produce a first analysis themselves. Thomson Reuters reported in 2025 that corporate legal departments had moved faster than law firms in AI leadership during a six-month period studied in 2024. Its 2026 research adds another signal: 32% of in-house legal professionals said they were already reconsidering, or expected to reconsider within 12 months, relationships with firms that did not demonstrate clear AI-enabled value.

For the future of law firms, this changes the competitive baseline. A firm may increasingly compete with the client’s ability to complete part of the task internally. That is another reason the billable hour and AI cannot be treated only as a pricing issue. Legal AI also changes the boundary between outsourced legal work and self-service.

Data Becomes the Real Competitive Advantage

Access to a general-purpose AI model is relatively easy to replicate. High-quality legal data and organized institutional knowledge provide a more defensible advantage. A useful system needs relevant law, current authorities, and enough context to apply them correctly. It may also benefit from the accumulated knowledge a firm has developed through previous matters. AI for lawyers therefore becomes a data-management question as much as a model-selection question.

Riehl argues that firms should capture expertise that currently lives in lawyers’ heads and make it usable by AI systems. In his view, judgment about regulators, judges, negotiations, and legal strategy can increasingly be turned into artifacts that AI can work with. That changes the economics of legal technology again. The model itself can become commoditized. Well-maintained data and organized expertise are harder for a competitor, or a client, to reproduce.

What Will Clients Still Pay Lawyers For?

If AI legal advice becomes inexpensive, human legal work needs a clearer value proposition. Clients will still pay when a professional must stand behind an answer, negotiate with another party, represent them, understand business context, or exercise judgment under uncertainty. They may also pay for speed when the consequences of delay are high. Riehl asks the central question: “What value am I providing?”

Its importance goes beyond automation. The future of law firms depends less on defending tasks that machines can perform and more on identifying forms of expertise for which clients remain willing to pay.

Pressure from clients is already measurable. The 2026 Thomson Reuters report found that 32% of in-house legal professionals were reconsidering or expected to reconsider relationships with firms that failed to demonstrate clear AI-enabled value within the following 12 months. For AI for lawyers, the practical implication is that efficiency is moving toward baseline expectation. Differentiation increasingly depends on professional judgment, accountability, proprietary knowledge, and the ability to turn machine output into a defensible course of action.

Cheap Legal Advice Does Not Necessarily Mean Fewer Lawyers

It is tempting to assume that lower-cost legal AI must reduce employment. That conclusion ignores the possibility of market expansion. If affordable legal services bring new customers into the system, total demand can rise even as the cost of each interaction falls. Lawyers may spend less time producing routine documents and more time supervising systems, handling complex matters, or serving clients who previously could not justify professional fees. This is why the cost of legal services matters as much as technical capability. A large reduction in cost can create use cases that did not exist under traditional economics.

Recent research points toward a transition in how work is delivered. Thomson Reuters found legal GenAI adoption rising in 2025, while its 2026 research shows growing pressure from clients for firms to demonstrate AI-enabled value. Artificial intelligence in law can make individual tasks cheaper while increasing the number of situations in which legal expertise becomes economically accessible. That is the central economic possibility behind AI and access to justice.

Legal Abundance Could Reshape the Profession

The deepest impact of legal AI may ultimately be a new price point for legal help.

If the cost of legal services falls, clients can ask questions earlier. Small businesses can afford more preventive guidance. Individuals can gain access to affordable legal services for matters that previously sat below the economic threshold for hiring a lawyer. Law firms then face a set of commercial choices. They must decide how much AI efficiency to retain, how much to pass to clients, and how to price expertise that remains scarce. The tension between the billable hour and AI captures only the first stage of this shift. The larger question is what happens when legal technology turns legal assistance from a scarce professional service into something closer to an abundant resource.

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That is why the AI Experience conversation with Damien Riehl is worth hearing in full. The episode, What Good Is a Lawyer in the Age of AI?, examines the future of law firms from the inside, including pricing, client self-service, professional judgment, and the changing economics of AI for lawyers. The provocative question is not whether AI legal advice will become cheaper. The more consequential question is what people, businesses, and lawyers will do once it does.