AI is changing the economics of legal work. That much is clear. What is less clear is how law firms should price work when the inputs, effort, and delivery model are also shifting.

There is a lot of noise around whether AI is saving lawyers time. It is an important question, although it is difficult to answer properly without knowing exactly what lawyers put into AI tools, what comes out, and how that changes the real work done on a matter. That level of analysis is important, but it is not the most immediate commercial issue for most firms.

The more pressing question is simpler. If firms want to give clients greater certainty, why are so many still pricing matters through broad ranges and loose assumptions?

The awkward gap between AI value and pricing

BigHand’s 2026 Pricing and Budgeting Trends Analysis captures the tension well. The report finds that ‘AI is changing how legal work gets delivered faster than firms are changing how they price it.’ It also shows that operational progress is moving ahead of pricing maturity: ‘reduced manual/repetitive work has risen from 28% to 31% this year’, while ‘only 29% of firms have changed how they price AI-augmented work, and only 20% report any improvement in pricing accuracy or consistency.’…

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