E109: Zohar Fisher on AI, the Future of Lawyers & the End of Hourly Billing(?)

I am of the opinion that the legal profession, I'm not talking about litigators, commercial lawyers will not exist in five years time, max 10 years.

But I think in five years time, they won't exist.

If they do exist, it'll be very, very few.

And their work will be very, very, very, very, very, very different than what it is today.

primarily because of ai at the same time i'm excited because i feel like the fact that i was able to recognize that today is an opportunity do you think i'm insane

i strongly agree with what you said and i strongly disagree the attorneys the sole practitioners or the small law firms have a huge advantage which is adaptability, innovation, and speed.

Okay, so I think you agree partly with my doomsday scenario.

How much time do you think we have left? Like my wife thinks I'm crazy, but I basically told her that I think I need to retire in five years.

I think I need to stockpile enough money to be able to retire.

Working on the assumption that I just won't be able to get work as I get work today in five years time and I'll need to do something else.

So I want to contradict that.

I want to contradict that.

For example, let's take a random attorney like Yitzi.

You're a great guy, some may say.

They're going to stay with you and stick with you, not just because of the legal jargon and the legal representation you're providing, because of who you are in Yes, I agree that there are a lot of authorities, which are not you, Itzy, that are going to have to retire or change their course of action in a couple of years.

I would predict that five years is a good estimate.

There are practice fields which are not changing in this space, mostly family law and stuff like that, but there are a lot of changes.

I wrote...

a blog post about why I hate hourly fees.

And I think that there's no longer a justification for them.

At the same time, as we, you know, see ourselves moving into more of a consigliere role where you're an AI whisperer, the AI is doing 90% of the work, it could be that it's going to have the reverse effect.

Do you think?

I think that everything to do with the fees are changing.

And it's interesting because there are a lot of attorneys who are terrified by the change of tariff and legal fees.

And it's not a major change.