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'When an AI system can review thousands of contracts in minutes rather than weeks, draft complex documents in seconds rather than hours or generate strategic analyses near-instantaneously, the time component becomes almost meaningless. More fundamentally, as AI handles routine cognitive work, the remaining human contribution shifts toward judgment, creativity and relationship management—the value of which bears little relationship to time expended.

The economic absurdity becomes clear when we consider that firms adopting AI most successfully would paradoxically see revenue collapse under hourly billing, even as they deliver superior results more efficiently. This misalignment between value creation and revenue generation makes the billable hour’s demise inevitable.

Clients have always chafed at the fact that they get stuck with the training costs for junior-level people when what they really want are the insights from that analysis from the more senior people. Now they can say to firms, “Sorry, we aren’t shelling out hundreds of dollars a day for a junior person’s time.”'

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