Where professional services is heading, and what it means for your firm.

The routine layer is disappearing

Research, first drafts, the early pass on a document. Increasingly done by AI. It's already happening, and the largest firms are moving first.

When routine work gets cheaper, a firm's value shifts to what's left: the judgement and experience a machine can't replace.

Clients are starting to pay for expertise, not process

Routine work and expert judgement used to be bundled, billed as one. As clients see what AI can do, they're asking a sharper question: what exactly are we paying for?

The firms that thrive will have a confident answer. Their value sits in judgement and relationships. The routine work runs underneath.

The trap most firms fall into

Most firms buy a tool. A licence, a pilot, a memo telling everyone to use it. Six months later, adoption's patchy and nothing's changed.

The technology was rarely the issue. The missing step is the one everyone skips: understanding how the firm works before deciding where AI belongs.

The biggest firms are building their own

Spending hundreds of millions, designed around exactly how their best people work. Everyone else needs a smarter route to the same edge: AI that works around what already makes your firm different, not just what makes it faster.

Why this is hard inside a firm

A firm doesn't change by A firm doesn't change by decree. You can't mandate a partner. Change starts with the people who want it and spreads from there. Force it top down and it stalls.

And the harder question few are asking: if AI does the work juniors learn on, how does a firm grow its next generation? Worth being deliberate about, not a reason to wait.