Law firm commentary argues that workflow redesign — not AI purchasing — is the critical factor in capturing technology value
A commentary piece published on Law.com makes the case that law firms are systematically misallocating their AI (artificial intelligence) investment by prioritising product selection over workflow redesign. The argument, drawing on a McKinsey survey of nearly 2,000 organisations across major industries, is that companies which had fundamentally redesigned their workflows were nearly three times more likely to capture meaningful EBIT (earnings before interest and tax — a measure of operating profit) impact from technology investment than those that had not. The author identifies a pattern familiar from earlier waves of legal technology — including legal research tools, document management systems, e-discovery, and knowledge management platforms — where firms that bought first and asked questions later captured a fraction of the available value. The same dynamic, the commentary argues, is now playing out with generative AI: firms are responding to client pressure to reduce costs by increasing technology budgets and running pilots, then selecting tools based on what peer firms are doing rather than internal workflow analysis. The practical prescription offered is to 'map before buying' — diagnosing how work actually flows through a firm before selecting tools to automate or augment individual steps. The commentary frames this as the central strategic divide in the current phase of legal AI adoption: firms that redesign workflows will capture disproportionate value; those that simply layer AI onto existing processes will not. No specific firms, tools, or transaction contexts were named beyond the general industry observation.
Why this matters
The McKinsey finding cited — that workflow redesign is the single most important predictor of technology value capture — has direct implications for how law firms structure their AI investment decisions and how in-house legal teams evaluate their outside counsel's technology capabilities. For trainees and junior lawyers, this shifts the conversation from 'which tools does your firm use' to 'how has your firm changed the way work is done' — a more commercially sophisticated question that partners and clients are increasingly asking. The commentary also reinforces a trend visible across multiple recent briefings: that AI adoption in legal practice is moving from an early-adopter phase into a normalisation phase where differentiation comes from implementation quality rather than tool selection.
On the Ground
A trainee involved in an AI governance or legal technology project would be assisting with AI governance policy drafting — setting out the firm's permitted uses of generative AI tools — and preparing vendor due diligence questionnaires to assess the security, data handling, and contractual terms of AI product providers the firm is evaluating.
Interview prep
Soundbite
Firms that redesign workflows around AI capture three times the value of those that simply buy tools and pilot them — implementation quality is now the differentiator.
Question you might get
“If a client asked you how your firm uses AI to reduce the cost of legal services, how would you distinguish between genuine workflow transformation and simply using AI tools on top of existing processes?”
Full answer
A Law.com commentary drawing on McKinsey research argues that law firms' current approach to AI investment — running pilots based on peer benchmarking and then selecting tools — captures only a fraction of the available value because firms are not redesigning underlying workflows. The McKinsey data shows that workflow redesign is the single strongest predictor of EBIT impact from technology investment across nearly 2,000 organisations. For commercial lawyers, this matters because clients are increasingly asking whether their law firms are genuinely more efficient — not just better-tooled — and the answer depends on whether internal processes have changed. The wider trend is that generative AI is entering a 'second wave' of legal adoption where superficial deployment is no longer sufficient and firms face real competitive consequences from implementation failures. This suggests that law firms investing in legal operations and process design roles alongside AI purchasing will outperform those that do not.
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