AI, Client Behaviour And The Shifts Impacting The Legal World At The Moment

A few years ago when people used to do futures-type presentations about the legal world, there were a range of themes that would usually come up.

Technology, client expectations, pricing pressure, flexibility, competition, all of that sort of thing.

Now, frankly the centrepiece is AI.

AI is now being adopted and implemented into all parts of life, but also into legal practice and into the way we work, in ways that are unprecedented.

From our perspective, that is not a trend that is going to reverse.

It is simply not going away.

Adoption and implementation of AI in legal practice will keep happening more and more over time, and it will get deeper into what we do as lawyers.

Consumer Behaviour Is Changing

The other big thing happening at the moment is a profound change in consumer behaviour, and from that, client behaviour.

Because AI is increasingly in everything we do, consumers are using AI in advanced forms to deal with with legal issues first themselves that, in the past, they might never have been able to afford to take to a lawyer.

Traditionally, a very large part of the population has not been able to afford legal services.

Whether you put that at 70, 80 or 90 per cent, the point is the same. A lot of people have long been priced out of the market for legal help.

AI is now sitting in between that gap and the lawyer.

Consumers are using AI for legal issues and problems to either circumvent lawyers altogether or to change the way they interact with lawyers if they do become clients.

Client Behaviour Is Changing With It

That consumer behaviour then affects client behaviour.

The client has now already scoped out the problem on AI before they even get to the lawyer.

The results may be limited. They may not be complete. They may not be right in every respect.

But good enough can be often enough for consumers and clients, that are price as well as time sensitive.

So at the least the client will increasingly come more prepared to lawyers.

They will either want the lawyer to do the more advanced work, or they will want the lawyer to validate the opinion they have already formed in relation to the matter.

This is not entirely new.

It is very similar to what happened when the internet came in and people cobbled documents together off the internet, sent them to lawyers, and then expected the lawyer to proceed with that.

AI is the next version of that, except much more powerful and much more embedded in everyday behaviour and in quite a lot of cases now sufficient for the lawyer to no longer to be consulted.

Big Tech Is Taking An Interest In Law

Another interesting issue is AI driven big tech platforms.

More and more, the big players in tech - OpenAI, Google, Anthropic and others are using AI to move into legal-type work, or at least legal information in substance, in a way that they were reluctant to do before.

The line between legal information and legal advice is becoming blurred as big tech makes clear that it is only legal information not advice, but for a cash strapped consumer that line is just not visible.

And because a lot of people who cannot afford lawyers, want quick and effective preliminary guidance that is good enough to act upon, these platforms are becoming very, very useful to people, more than lawyers.

That is true in private individual matters, and it is also increasingly true in business and company settings as well.

So for the first time in a long time, we are seeing big tech actually take an interest in law.

Legal Tech Is Becoming More Serious

On top of that, the legal tech that has been developing over the past decade in the form of innovation is now consolidating at a far greater rate because of AI.

That market is getting bigger, more serious and more real.

There are obvious examples of that in the market already.

So this is no longer just background noise or niche experimentation.

These are real markets, real products and real commercial pressures all leveraging the use of increasingly advanced AI.

The Rise Of Agentic AI

On top of all of that at the moment, we also have the rise of agentic AI, which has added another layer again to the above.

The use of agents is proliferating, and agent-to-agent AI in legal services is proliferating at a rate of knots that will continue to develop.

The Growing Divide In AI Adoption

The other big shift we are seeing is a growing divide in AI adoption.

There are lawyers who are using AI and people who are not.

There are also lawyers who are evangelical about it and those who are deniers about it.

This is resulting in lawyers who are becoming AI-literate and AI-competent, and those who are still burying their heads in the sand.

That distinction and divide matters.

There is clearly first-mover advantage here for people who are AI-savvy, who can use the products, who understand where they are useful and where they are not.

However there is also risk, obviously, because when mistakes happen they can be very big mistakes, with huge professional, ethical, financial and reputational consequences, as we have seen with the hallucination cases and other examples of misuse.

Literacy, Competence And Judgment

So this is not about blind enthusiasm. It is about literacy, competence and judgment when using AI.

At the same time, it is concerning that there is a growing divide among practitioners who are still telling themselves that this will not affect them, or that it will not take work away from them, or that they do not really need to understand it, or even worse, that they are too scared to use it and make up their own mind about what is good and bad about it at this point in time.

One thing is certain though.

AI will continue to get better and better.

And AI is not just a tool.

It is really a system and an environment that is going to change everything we do, not just in law but more broadly.

What Solo Lawyers Need To Watch

So if you are watching where things are heading into 2026 and beyond, the key things to watch are consumer behaviour, client behaviour, what the big tech platforms are doing, how generative AI develops, how agentic AI develops, and how quickly the divide widens between practitioners who can work with this and practitioners who cannot.

Those are not side issues anymore.

They are central.

If you are serious about your practice, this is not something to watch from the sidelines.

We work directly with solo lawyers through our Solo Law Practice Tune-Up - a practical review of your structure, positioning, systems and direction in light of what is actually happening in the market.

We also have a range of tools, guides and webinars for lawyers who want to get on top of this properly.

Details are on www.paulippolito.com.au