In my previous blog, I ended with a simple but uncomfortable question.
If we are no longer selling time, and we cannot reliably price value, what exactly is it that clients are paying for?
My answer is this: judgement.
Or, to use a label that may appear in future articles, JaaS – Judgement as a Service.
JaaS is a dreadful acronym, so I’m going to call it Jazz.
Not because lawyers should start playing saxophones, but because I think the profession is entering a new era in which judgement becomes the primary thing clients are buying.
There’s a story about a celebrated jazz musician who, after a brilliant performance, was told: “I’d give my life to play like that.”
His reply?
“I did.”
Nobody was paying for the performance itself. They were paying for the years of experience, practice, mistakes and learning that made it possible.
Law is not so very different.
Clients don’t wake up wanting contracts, reports or correspondence. Those things matter only because they contribute to something the client actually wants: a transaction completed, a dispute resolved, a risk avoided, regulatory approval obtained or a good night’s sleep.
What clients are really buying is informed judgement.
They are buying a lawyer’s ability to identify what matters, distinguish genuine risk from theoretical risk, and decide when to fight, settle, accelerate or wait. They are buying confidence that somebody experienced has looked at their situation and reached a sound conclusion.
Judgement encompasses expertise, technical knowledge, commercial awareness, experience, emotional intelligence and professional courage. It is the accumulated product of an entire career.
Which is why AI creates such an interesting challenge.
AI can draft, analyse and summarise. It can complete in minutes work that once took hours.
What it cannot do is assume responsibility for the outcome. It cannot look a client in the eye and say, “Having considered everything, this is what I would do.”
At least not yet.
Indeed, there is a strong argument that the more information AI generates, the more valuable human judgement becomes. When clients are drowning in information, clarity becomes a premium product.
The problem, however, is that judgement is far harder to price than time.
How much is it worth to avoid a £10 million mistake?
To complete an acquisition before a competitor?
To secure planning permission six months earlier than expected?
To sleep properly the night before a trial?
Clients often have a clearer view of those answers than law firms do.
For decades, the billable hour allowed us to avoid these conversations. AI is removing that luxury. It is forcing firms to think much harder about what they actually sell.
If I’m right, the future of legal services will be less about selling time and more about selling Jazz: Judgement as a Service.
And that leads to a further challenge.
Even if we accept that judgement is the product, how do we translate something so nuanced and valuable into a pricing process that is consistent, scalable and commercially effective across an entire law firm?
That’s the question I’ll turn to in Part 4.
Because while AI has helped expose the problem, it may also help us solve it.