In this episode, Aurelia and Chris talk about venture capital firms' growing interest in AI-native legal services, whether it's well founded and whether AI-native legal services really will be the end of traditional law firms.
Their conversation predominantly hangs off "Death of the Billable Hour: Legal's $900B AI repricing" article by Ethan Batraski (General Partner at Venrock) which recently created a bit of a stir amongst lawyers.
- (00:00) - Introduction & TL;DR
(01:08) - VCs' growing interest in AI native legal services(03:35) - "The Death of the Billable Hour"(06:23) - Can law firms do fixed fees?(08:11) - Regulation & law firm ownership in the US v UK(09:54) - law firm barriers to adopting AI(14:48) - The economics of AI-native law firms(18:25) - Does AI-native enable SaaS-level margins and scale?(23:24) - consumer legal services(28:08) - Why does "The Death of the Billable Hour" article still resonate?(31:05) - Wrap up
Links:
- Y Combinator - Request for Startups (Summer 2025)
- Death of the Billable Hour by Ethan Batraski
- Watch on YouTube