Not Futuristic: Big Law Clones Star Partners, Then Sell Subscriptions for Access to Their Services
The perfect storm of cost-efficiency, changing client demand, ramped-up competition and AI is dooming the billable hour in professional services , ranging from management consulting to law. Emerging models to replace that are struggling to be born. One could be the introduction of fixed-fee subscriptions for services. And one possible version of that, already gone live, is cloning the partners. At New Jersey mid-sized law firm Vorys , 19 partners have been replicated using AI. Mostly for right now those twins are for internal use. Instead of the time-consuming back-and-forth by associates on assignment with partners, the assistants can simply activate the twin. That would cover everything from typical strategy with examples to nuances of style. It isn't much of a leap in a sector driven by Profits Per Equity Partner to push cloning to the next level. That would be developing the specs to construct the model so that it can be positioned and packaged for fixed-fee...