A&O Shearman Commits $1.1B in Lawyer Hours to AI; Scholar Lists 6 Capabilities That Decide Success
jkubicki · x · 2026-11-05
Law firm A&O Shearman has committed roughly $1.1B to AI development—mostly in time: every practice must put at least 3% of its billable hours into building AI tools for its own area of law. Legal scholar jkubicki applauds the move (while joking about competing 'phantom AI spend' announcements) but argues the hours are the easy part; what matters is whether people spending them have the right capabilities. His 'AI-Era Lawyer Capability Model' lists six: legal judgment (who trains associates to judge AI output when they no longer write drafts?), commercial judgment (are partners paid for novel pricing/services?), workflow orchestration (redesign the work, not just the tools), technical fluency (practice-built tools beat generic ones, per A&O's own four-year lesson), evidence & defensibility (a lawyer must explain misses and fix the system), and translation (the bottleneck is lawyers who can bridge lawyers, data scientists, and developers).
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