Company Hands Law Firm Hiring Over To AI Bot - What Could Possibly Go Wrong? - Above the Law

Hiring outside counsel has shifted from informal networks to efficiency-driven benchmarking, ROI calculations, and detailed billing guidelines. These changes give clients stronger justification for legal budgets to boards, allow previously excluded firms to compete, and reduce overall legal costs. Despite these improvements, one Chief Legal Officer plans to extend the efficiency approach by turning law firm hiring over to AI. Revolut, a fintech company focused on simplifying money management through accounts and spending cards, announced scrapping its traditional law firm panel in favor of an AI-assisted system. The move signals a further automation of legal procurement decisions beyond cost controls and performance metrics.

"Hiring outside counsel used to be a function of handshakes and law school connections. To some extent, it still is. But over the past several years, the in-house legal function went through the same "efficiency expert" transformation that hit other industries decades earlier. Now there's benchmarking, and ROI calculations, and arcane billing guidelines to make sure outside counsel expend a lot of time and energy to clarify exactly how they spend their time and energy."

"Clients have a more defensible case to justify their budgets to the board, firms previously locked out of the old lawyer network can find themselves winning business, and all this new efficiency drastically drives down legal costs. Well, two out of three ain't bad. But one Chief Legal Officer just announced on LinkedIn that his company is going to take this cold efficiency drive to another level by turning over law firm hiring to AI."

"Revolut is a company whose "global mission is for every person and business to do all things money - spending, saving, investing, borrowing, managing, and more - in just a few taps." That's not particularly clear, but the company takes a customer's salary and puts it in an account and issues spending cards. That would make you think they're a bank, though the website clarifies in small print that "Revolut is not a bank.""

"Tom Hambrett, Revolut's Chief Legal Officer, formerly of Herbert Smith Freehills, announced that the company is scrapping the traditional law firm panel in favor of an AI-assisted system: "We're replacing our static panel with Rev""

Read at Above the Law