It’s extraordinary how quickly businesses are starting to adopt GPT technology to get a competitive edge. Professional services such as lawyers, accountants, consultants, actuaries will need to move fast if they are not going to be left behind. Much of the grunt work done by these firms, work that is typically charged out at pretty high fee rates and done by entry level staff, can now be done faster by AI tools and, as technology advances and improves exponentially, better and a great deal cheaper. In London, Mishcon de Reya have recently advertised for a Legal Prompt Engineer which is interesting not least in terms of how rapidly they’ve moved.
How then are the current fee levels going to hold up? Will the introduction of AI tools such as ChatGPT and now Bing with Chat finally start to deliver lower fees? Professional services have been notoriously resistant to downward pressure on fees but if a good legal prompt, especially when done in conjunction with an upload of key case documents, can deliver the sort of analysis in seconds traditionally done by junior lawyers in days, there’s some hope for buyers of legal services. It won’t stop senior lawyers charging a fortune but it may reduce billings from junior staff.
At vCAIO we can’t see professional services using the existing pyramidal structures of seniors supported by a broad base of lower tier professionals much longer because it won’t only be the lawyers who are using AI – their clients will be using AI too which means a lot of what they are currently paying for will be available to them directly from their own desktops. Once businesses master the use of prompts they’ll start to ask their professional advisers how much they rely on prompts to deliver the services they are paying for. This ultimately could lead to a reduction in the number of low and mid tier professionals whilst potentially enhancing fee rates for the most able senior partners. The days of charging huge fees for hours of work by junior staff could be coming to an end. Afterall, what is the hourly rate for ChatGPT?
It’s currently 19 cents and is available 24/7.