Yesterday, the Legal Transformation Network (LTN) and Legora co-hosted a seminar that sparked fresh thinking about how AI is reshaping legal practice.
Legora opened with a strategic overview of AI’s role in the legal sector and proposed four possible scenarios for the industry:
A Rising Tide: All firms adapt to AI at roughly the same pace, raising the baseline quality of legal work. The industry becomes AI-enabled, but competitive positioning remains relatively stable.
Mid-Market Mayhem: Highly replaceable, commoditized legal work is disrupted first. AI-forward firms win market share, while top-tier firms remain buffered by reputation and complex mandates.
Power Law Premium: Expertise becomes exponentially more valuable. Firms that invest early in building AI foundations see profitability soar, while laggards struggle to keep clients.
Segment Separation: New market segments emerge as firms tailor AI to enhance services and recapture lost work, creating win–win outcomes for both clients and providers.
What makes this framework compelling is that none of these scenarios are mutually exclusive. We may well see elements of all four playing out simultaneously, depending on practice areas and client expectations.
The discussion also moved beyond scenarios to practical applications. Legora demonstrated how its solution now integrates directly with Word. Key features include automatic comparison of contract revisions with clear summaries, and seamless linking of templates, such as term sheets, to transaction documents. The focus is now on supporting workflows that ensure information flows accurately across a sequence of activities.nother theme that resurfaced was Legal Engineering. VQ was recognized back in 2011 for its work on Legal Knowledge Engineering with the launch of VQ Legal, and the concept is once again gaining relevance. As we enter the era of AI-enabled services, the ability to combine legal expertise with structured logic and technical design is emerging as a key differentiator.
The presenters Leonard Schrei and Robin Moe together with Helena Hallgarn, VQ, and Ann Björk, Betula Parters