As a former lawyer, a legal technology CEO, and a paying client of five major law firms, I see how legal services are built, sold, and experienced.

Recently, my wife and I sent three firms an RFP for personal legal work. One firm responded with a partner’s name, an associate’s name, an hourly rate, and a LinkedIn profile. That was the entire response from a Global 200 firm. It was one of the most embarrassing interactions I’ve been part of as a client.

Another firm sent a generic overview of the practice group.

The third responded with specific matters they had handled in the same area, attorneys matched to the work based on relevant experience, and pricing grounded in what similar engagements had cost. They clearly knew their clients, their experience, and their own people. They got hired.

I shared that story at ILTACON in August because it captures something the profession needs to confront. Firms have spent heavily on AI, but clients haven’t noticed.

 

The Client Experience Gap Is Wider Than Firms Think

I talk to general counsel, private equity buyers, and in-house leaders every day. I ask them the same question: has your relationship with outside counsel meaningfully improved because your firms adopted AI?

The answer, almost universally, is no. Their lives have not changed. Their lives have not improved because their firm uses AI. In fact, many in-house teams believe they have better access to AI tools than the firms they hire. They think they know more about the technology than their outside counsel does. And they do not believe the relationship has meaningfully shifted.

When we surveyed the legal community this summer, 85% of firms said they made AI investments because of client pressure. They invested in AI because they thought clients wanted it. But the clients driving that pressure have not noticed a difference.

Checking a Box Is Not a Strategy

The same survey revealed three numbers that tell a grim story for law firms and client experience.

Ninety-five percent of firms believe they have already placed their AI bets. Eighty-five percent invested because of perceived client pressure. Fifty-three percent invested because their competitors were investing.

Firms are pointing at each other. They bought what the firm across the street bought. Partnership groups leave one firm for another and demand the same tech stack follow them. None of that is a strategy. Those are actions taken to check a box.

The reality is that whatever AI a firm committed to 18 months ago is probably sitting at 10% usage today. Enterprise licenses for chat interfaces that sounded transformative in the pilot are collecting dust. The investments were real. The outcomes were not.

And when 60% of firms say their own data is what separates them from the competition, the follow-up question is more important than the answer:

How are you harnessing it? 

What technologies are you investing in to activate it? Or are you just chasing the next shiny object?

 

Clients Want Metrics, Outcomes, Proof

When a client asks a firm, “What do you do with AI?” and the answer is a product name, that’s not acceptable. Clients want metrics, outcomes, and proof that your service has gotten better.

At Litera, we hold ourselves to the same standard. Our R&D team has documented a 90x improvement in certain workflows, taking processes that once took 15 days down to four hours. We share those numbers openly because they are defensible and measurable. And even with those results, we are not done. No one in software today can claim they are.

If a firm cannot deliver actual metrics in an RFP, if a technology partner cannot show measurable return, the investment has not been used the right way. If you cannot measure it, you have not done it. You have just spent money.

 

What Separated the Firm That Got Hired

The firm that won my personal work did not win on price. They won because their response demonstrated something the other firms could not. They knew their clients. They knew their experience. They knew their people.

That kind of institutional knowledge does not come from a chatbot. It comes from years of deliberate investment in understanding the intersection of clients, matters, people, and capabilities. It comes from making that intelligence accessible to the lawyers doing the work, so when an opportunity arrives, the response reflects the firm’s depth, not just a partner’s LinkedIn page.

This is exactly where AI should be making a visible difference. Not in back-office efficiency that clients never see, but in how a client experiences a firm: the pitch, the RFP, the first phone call, the proactive outreach before a client knows they have a problem, the matter update that arrives without being asked for, and the budget grounded in data rather than guesswork.

 

The Gap Will Only Widen

Firms that operate the same way they did last year will continue to lose ground. Every year, the gap between firms that can demonstrate measurable return and firms that have just spent money will widen.

The firms that win are the ones that can prove to a client that their investment translated into something the client can see, feel, and measure. Better responsiveness, deeper knowledge, and a relationship that earns the next matter before it goes to pitch.

That is the test. Most firms are failing it in their earliest interactions. The RFP is the first place it shows.

As I said to many Global 200 leaders at ILTACON this summer: this is your moment. If you do not change, consider yourself going down.