Why Your Law Firm Needs an AI Strategy, Not Just a Subscription
By Vini Mauro, Marketing Director at GoVeyance
Choosing which AI tool to use in a law firm sounds like a critical strategic decision. Legal professionals can spend months evaluating different options, testing security frameworks, and comparing vendors and their product differentiation. While due diligence around client confidentiality and data privacy is mandatory, many people are missing a much bigger truth: the AI tool you choose will not be your firm’s competitive advantage. Your real advantage comes from the team using it.
Why AI Tools Could Become Commodities
A recent presentation by Benedict Evans, independent technology analyst and former partner at the VC company Andreessen Horowitz, argues that AI models are becoming increasingly commoditized, particularly for general-purpose use. According to him, major technology shifts follow a recognizable pattern: companies race to build the infrastructure, massive capital pours in, costs fall, and the industry eventually consolidates around a few capable, largely interchangeable providers. Once that happens, the technology supplier you choose stops setting you apart from your competitors, since they can all buy access to the exact same capabilities you can.
We saw this story unfold with cloud computing. A few years after the technology was introduced, costs dropped for users, and the growing market was dominated by only a few companies, with AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud controlling roughly two-thirds of it. Currently, what they offer to customers is pretty similar, with none of them providing a lasting competitive advantage to the businesses using them.
AI products are following the same trajectory. Large investments are leading to more access, lower prices, partly driven by Chinese providers like DeepSeek, and market consolidation. Some providers are already being squeezed out by that price pressure, and the next step, according to Evans’ prediction, is the flattening of differentiation between the companies still standing. If he is correct, the AI tool you rely on will stop being a strategic advantage, and just become infrastructure, like your office’s internet connection.
Everyone has broadband now, and a faster connection than the firm down the street doesn’t win you more clients or close deals faster on its own. What actually separates firms is what they do with that connection.
Taking The Next Step
Over the past few years, many legal firms have announced their “AI strategy” when what they actually executed was a procurement decision: buying licenses for one of the available AI tools. Real strategic differentiation begins after the procurement decision is made, especially as the features offered by suppliers become more and more similar. For a forward-thinking legal practice, some important questions to consider are:
- Proprietary Knowledge: How effectively are you leveraging your firm’s historical closing data, template libraries, and practice insights?
- Workflow Integration: How seamlessly is AI embedded into high-volume, time-sensitive processes like title reviews, document drafting, and client updates?
- Decision Velocity: Can your team turn around cleaner legal documentation and client updates faster?
Enabling Your Team
Giving every lawyer and paralegal an AI login does not automatically guarantee a surge in billable efficiency or client satisfaction.
McKinsey’s global AI survey, based on nearly 2,000 respondents across 105 countries, highlighted this gap across industries: while 88% of organizations now use AI in at least one business function, only 5.5% qualify as high performers capturing meaningful bottom-line impact.
Access alone rarely drives adoption, and the gap cannot be closed with a single training webinar. Staff need to learn which tasks are genuinely suited to AI and which still require human judgment, how to catch a hallucinated citation or a misread clause before it reaches a client, and how to fold these tools into the software and workflows they already use every day.
Firms also need a long-term plan for sharing best practices and updating staff qualifications as the tools evolve. Without that foundation, a firm ends up paying a (potentially considerable) monthly subscription for a glorified search engine and low-quality output.
Building Differentiation That Lasts
AI tools may not become true commodities. Some could turn out to be noticeably smarter, especially in niche applications, and tech companies are known for making it very hard for users to switch once they are set up in their software ecosystems.
Even if that happens, firms should still focus on what they are building that competitors cannot simply purchase for themselves. A better AI tool may improve performance, but software access alone will not create a true advantage. Real, lasting differentiation comes down to what your team builds on top of that technology, and how effectively your people execute with it every day.
Sources: Benedict Evans, “AI eats the world,” May 2026, ben-evans.com; McKinsey & Company, “The State of AI: Global Survey 2025,” November 2025, mckinsey.com; Silicon Canals, “China’s DeepSeek triggers global AI price war as tech giants slash API costs,” 2025, siliconcanals.com.