AI Won’t Automatically Make Legal Services Cheaper

Despite widespread predictions that artificial intelligence (AI) will transform legal services and expand access to justice, advanced AI will not, by default, help consumers achieve desired legal outcomes at lower costs. Three bottlenecks stand between AI capability advances and more accessible legal services.

First, unauthorized practice of law regulations and entity-based restrictions may prevent consumers from accessing AI capabilities and deter experimentation in how legal services are delivered. Second, the adversarial structure of American litigation means that when both parties adopt productivity-enhancing technologies, competitive equilibria simply shift upward. The history of discovery digitization is instructive: Rather than reducing costs, parties exploited the explosion of digital documents to impose greater burdens on opponents. Third, even where AI dramatically reduces the cost of legal tasks, the speed of human decision-makers—judges resolving disputes, lawyers understanding contracts—places an upper limit on acceleration without sacrificing adequate oversight.

The legal industry’s response will determine whether AI improves access and efficiency or merely makes producing legal work cheaper without improving the outcomes clients actually care about. This report surveys reforms addressing each bottleneck, including regulatory sandboxes, judicial case management innovations, and expanding arbitration options.

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