AI Billing Transparency Tells a Story That’s Good for Law Firms

“But that would just lead clients to ask for cost savings.”

This wasn’t the reaction we were expecting when my head of legal operations and I began making the argument that law firms should report their artificial intelligence use in legal billing.

Our interest wasn’t primarily to identify cost savings. The conventional billing codes weren’t built to track AI use—and in a world where AI deployment is new, diffuse, and evolving, that alone seemed like a gap worth closing.

Our interest was largely technological. We wanted to understand how AI was being used, including the ways it creates value that doesn’t translate into fewer hours billed.

When we raised this with the cohort of our regular, go-to law firms, the response was encouraging. The relationship partners were unabashed: Yes, we’re using AI. We’re still figuring it out, but we’re doing it. Tell us what you want to see.

We were delighted that so many of our firms saw it that way. But once the request moved beyond our relationship partners, we also encountered something else: a preference for opacity while firms “figure it out” and an instinct to give clients the Heisman before they ask too many questions about billing—or worse, ask for savings.

That instinct is understandable. But it’s mistaken—not just because clients deserve to understand what they’re paying for. That’s a first-order principle. The deeper point is that law firms should want AI transparency because it serves their own interests. Rather than seeing conversations with clients about AI as a trap door for discount discussions, they should be understood as an open door for a discussion about value.

Firms’ Narrative Opportunity

If law firms are worried that clients will reduce AI transparency to a simple demand for savings, the answer isn’t less information. It’s more—and better.

Opacity cedes the narrative to the client’s imagination, which will default to the simplest story: You’re using AI to do things faster and cheaper, but you’re charging us as if you didn’t save time.

But, of course, that’s not the whole story. And it’s not even the story that clients want. We are especially interested in our firms using AI to enrich the nature of their legal services—not to just do deposition summaries faster, but to surface new arguments or frameworks for persuasion. It’s more than turning around an issues list faster; it’s drawing on larger data sets for crafting compromises or even drawing on negotiation psychology to unpack a counterparty’s veiled concerns. That’s not about savings, but it sure is about value.

That’s a story worth telling. But you can’t tell it without data.

The firms that track AI use and communicate that to the client can say: Here’s where we created efficiency savings, and here’s where we delivered strategic depth that wasn’t possible before. The firms that don’t track it are left with general assertions and anecdotes. In a competitive market, reporting beats an anecdote.

The Internal Benefit

Transparency isn’t just for clients. It serves the firm itself.

Which lawyers are using AI effectively? Which practice groups are finding new applications? Where are the gaps between what’s available and what’s being deployed? These are questions firm leadership should want to answer—and can’t without data.

Opacity also hides information from the partnership. A firm that can’t see its own AI usage patterns can’t identify best practices, train effectively, or allocate resources intelligently. The black box faces both outward and inward.

The Convergence Moment

This is a golden moment for alignment inside law firms—and an increasingly overdue one.

Marketing has long wanted to tell a story about innovation. Leadership wants to demonstrate value and justify rates. But billing departments have historically operated as a back-office function—administrative, conservative, largely unchanged. I have long believed that the deficiencies of law firm billing are the lead anchor on everything else—tethering the market position that firm leadership seeks, undercutting marketing’s innovation story, and corroding the client experience.

That dynamic needs to evolve. And AI may be the catalyst.

With data on AI use, marketing can move beyond vague claims of “innovation” to specific demonstrations of value. Leadership can justify premium rates with evidence of premium service. And billing—finally—becomes a strategic function, not merely a collections operation.

This is where the 21st century finally arrives in the billing department. The firms that recognize this will find that marketing, IT, leadership, and even billing are suddenly pulling in the same direction—perhaps for the first time.

The alternative is what we have now: Firm branding says “we’re innovative,” clients say “prove it,” and the billing data tells no story at all.

The Competitive Reality

Clients are beginning to ask about AI in requests for proposals. Not all clients—but as RFPs and AI use both proliferate, they will converge there, with the biggest assignments at stake. Those questions—whether in RFPs or pitch meetings—will only become more pointed and more specific. How are you using AI? Where? With what results?

The firms that have been tracking AI use will have answers. They’ll be able to demonstrate that they’re adapting, investing, and delivering value in new ways. That transparency will read as confidence. And it will give in-house teams not just data, but education.

The firms that don’t have data will still have website pages with luminous dots connected by lines suggesting…something, but little to show.

In a competitive market, that difference matters. The choice isn’t really between transparency and opacity. It’s between owning your story and hoping no one asks for details.

Own Your Story

To be sure, transparency feels risky, especially when you’re still figuring things out. It’s a human, and especially lawyerly, instinct to want to wait, hold back, and try to maximize optionality. But opacity has its own risks. And they compound over time.

Firms that embrace AI transparency won’t just satisfy client curiosity. They’ll build internal capability, sharpen their competitive positioning, and demonstrate the kind of partnership sophisticated clients expect.

Those leading in AI already know this. For some, AI leadership—and owning that narrative—is their path up the rankings. For others, it will secure their leadership in a dynamic market.

Firms in the please-don’t-ask-questions cohort may find that opacity forestalls discussion but invites doubt. Clients want and deserve a window into firms’ AI use. Increasingly, that window will reveal the winners in legal’s AI age.

Columnist Eric Dodson Greenberg is executive vice president, general counsel, and corporate secretary of Cox Media Group. Eric writes about leadership, legal operations, and the intersection of law and AI for Bloomberg Law’s Good Counsel column.

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