Building Value Through AI in Litigation Goes Beyond Hours Saved

Law firms adopting artificial intelligence tools rapidly and successfully are discovering that deploying the technology is only half the equation. The other half is proving that it creates value.

This requires moving beyond mere time savings to demonstrate multidimensional impact—how speed can reduce risk exposure, how quality improvements prevent problems, and how freed-up capacity enables strategic services that previously weren’t economically viable.

Firms that master this value proposition will transform AI tools into a competitive differentiator that strengthens client relationships and justifies premium positioning.

Moving Beyond Efficiency

When AI only reduces task time without redefining and repricing value, firms and clients miss opportunities and exacerbate the tension around how legal services are valued and compensated: the billable hour.

Without proactive conversations about value, clients often default to requests for discounts rather than discussions about enhanced outcomes. This “efficiency spiral”—where the perception of improved productivity leads to price pressure rather than value recalibration—leaves parties focused on cost reduction instead of the significant benefits that AI enables.

Firm leadership needs proof that technology investment elevates service rather than just pushing up overhead and pushing down compensation. Such proof can lead clients to prioritize better judgment, proactively identify risk, and show a strategic capacity for complex analysis.

Parties can then ask questions beyond “Did AI reduce the time it took to complete this task,” including:

• “Did AI enable insights we couldn’t have surfaced otherwise?”
• “Did AI enable the spotting of patterns across matters that revealed emerging trends?”
• “Did AI allow for the early detection of strategic risks?”
• “Did AI free capacity to provide preventive advice that strengthens positioning in future matters?”

The true measurement of value requires moving beyond “hours saved” to “outcomes enhanced.” Let’s consider some examples of the AI value proposition and approaches to measuring the same.

Day One Advantage

Quick and comprehensive early case assessment translates to better risk mitigation and managing, emphasizing value over simply saving costs. AI can analyze new pleadings, prior matters, and other organizational knowledge to identify key issues, flag potential risks, surface relevant precedent, and compress what might have spanned several days (and not been economically feasible) into same-day execution.

These workflows reduce lawyer ramp-up time, position outside counsel to identify and leverage strategic advantages from the outset, and free capacity across multiple matters for higher-value strategic work.

Measurement Approach: Track cycle time improvements, quality indicators (such as time to resolution and accuracy of early case assessment), and efficiency gains. Outside counsel can present value through operational dashboards that emphasize risk mitigation and outcomes, with cost efficiency as a secondary benefit.

Proactive Litigation Intelligence

When AI frees capacity, firms can reinvest in proactive services that deliver value. Consider litigation portfolio risk assessment—analyzing client matters to identify patterns, emerging risks, and strategic opportunities. Without AI, comprehensive portfolio review often demands too many hours to be economically feasible at any regular cadence, if at all.

However, AI can analyze multiple matters simultaneously, identifying litigation trends, jurisdictional patterns, and early warning signals. Analysis might reveal discovery disputes concentrating in specific courts, similar fact patterns emerging across matters, or shifts in judicial treatment of particular issues. Outside counsel then reviews and validates these trends and develops strategic recommendations in a fraction of the traditional time.

This capability enables adjusted litigation strategies, development of alternative legal theories, and proactive client counseling. The value includes avoiding unfavorable precedent in pending matters and stronger strategic positioning in subsequent cases—transforming the relationship from case-by-case representation to comprehensive litigation counsel.

Measurement Approach: Track investment hours, strategic adjustments made, improved outcomes in subsequent matters, and relationship indicators. The framework calculates return in business outcomes: risks identified early, strategies adjusted proactively, relationship evolution from reactive representation to strategic partnership.

Meaningful Value Frameworks

Effective value measurement tracks three dimensions: operational excellence (cycle time improvements, quality indicators, efficiency gains), strategic capacity (hours freed by automation, hours invested in strategic work, reinvestment rate), and business outcomes (new work generated, preventive value, client satisfaction and scope expansion, with clear attribution to AI-enabled capacity).

It requires access to quality data, as well as the ability to present the results in a meaningful and comprehensible format. Data sources include practice management systems, time and billing systems, AI tool activity logs, and court dockets.

Output and presentation can take the form of real-time dashboards in secure portals for continuous visibility, monthly updates integrating brief impact highlights, comprehensive reports that connect value to specific examples leading with outcomes rather than cost, and interactive workshops transforming reporting into collaborative innovation discussions. In the absence of these, even basic tracking through enhanced spreadsheets can deliver meaningful measurements.

The human element can’t be overlooked. Any measurement framework will require cross-functional value teams—combining lawyers, data analysts, innovation specialists, and client service professionals—to translate technical metrics into business narratives, create client-facing materials, and integrate the AI value proposition into the ongoing relationship.

Looking Ahead

The efficiency paradox forces a choice: Continue billing by the hour while AI makes work faster and cheaper or redefine value around what clients actually want—better strategic counsel, earlier risk identification, and proactive partnership.

Multidimensional measurement proves that AI delivers all three when firms systematically track how speed reduces exposure, how quality prevents problems, and how freed capacity enables strategic services that transform relationships.

The conversation isn’t about replacing billable hours. It’s about expanding what legal counsel can deliver. That’s the value worth measuring, and the competitive advantage worth building.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg Industry Group, Inc., the publisher of Bloomberg Law, Bloomberg Tax, and Bloomberg Government, or its owners.

Author Information

Christopher Valente is a partner and commercial litigator at K&L Gates and co-leads the firm’s artificial intelligence solutions group.

Marlene Gebauer is a litigation practice support lawyer at K&L Gates and a member of the firm’s AI solutions group.

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