[roenxi]

And for a thought experiment - if a lawyer controls the pace of their work, why work at any reasonable speed? They could take the client's money and go picnic or something then put in 20 minutes at the end of the day.

Something is forcing them to put in long hours. It's the market.

[jedberg]

Because they have ethics rules to only bill for hours actually worked. If they did that, they would only get paid for 20 minutes of work.

[roenxi]

Huh? Obviously. The example was that they do 20 minutes of work. Of course they bill for 20 minutes.

It'd be a line item: "I worked for 20 minutes. Pay me lots of money". Similar principle to locksmiths when they walk over, do a few seconds of work and charge a hundred bucks. If a lawyer uses the same principle and works for 20 minutes they could target $10k/day.

That isn't a plan that'd work, but if "their interests" were the thing controlling how many hours they worked then that'd be what they would do. They're going to be forced to use AI by the same influences that make them work for full days.

[HyperL0gi]

That’s a supply and demand issue. If there were more clients than lawyers, I can totally see a reality where they speed things up because now in one week they can work on 20 cases instead of 2, thus 10x more money, but as you said, it doesn't seem to be the reality of the market.

edit: tldr; it does not seem in their best interests to be more efficient at this point