The cost-center problem: Simon Khinda on what corporate clients actually want from AI in law
The cost-center problem: Simon Khinda on what corporate clients actually want from AI in law
There's a phrase Simon Khinda uses that you don't usually hear from a managing partner.
"Law firms cannot be cost centers to clients."
Simon runs the corporate, M&A, and international practice at Bridge Law LLP, a boutique law firm in California. Super Lawyers has him in the top 2.5% of attorneys in the state. That’s not the most interesting thing about him. The most interesting thing is that he has a working theory of what a modern law firm actually is, and the IT department is at the center of it.
What IT figured out, and law firms haven't
"IT departments went through this issue, right? IT used to be viewed as a cost center. Now the reframing is that IT is a profit center because it helps the business. Law firms cannot be cost centers to clients. They need to find a way to add value to their client so that their client is making money."
It's a small reframe with very large consequences.
If the firm is a cost center, the lawyer is the friction. The role of the lawyer with this mindset becomes identifying a blocker quickly, with defensible reasoning. The lawyer is the bill on the desk that the CFO frowns at.
If the firm is a profit center, the lawyer needs to have the same commercial mindset as the business owner. The lawyer needs to help the deal get to yes faster.
"If it's illegal, that's different. It's a hard no," Simon says. "But ultimately, a client is trying to find a solution for a customer of theirs that they are trying to serve. They need their lawyer to be able to be in that same commercial mindset, and say let's get there as a partner and do it."
Staying ahead of the times
Simon is careful with the word "modern." He doesn't think keeping pace is enough.
"The expectation now, that we set for ourselves and clients feel this, is that we are no longer moving with the times. There's no more of this being with the times. You need to be ahead of the times."
Simon's view on whether technology is important to a modern firm is brief. "You can't get away from it."
He sketches the trajectory at speed: the internet, then computers, then mobile, each at a pace that felt fast in its moment. AI is moving faster than any of them. "I don't think it is possible for any business, frankly, to survive if they are not evolving and trying, as much as they can, to either get ahead of it or at least keep pace."
Buying the way a corporate lawyer buys
When Bridge Law went looking, Simon ran the selection the way a corporate lawyer would run any procurement.
"Just like buying a car, you have a need. You know there are clearly multiple solutions out there. For us it was simply: let's try a few. Traditional ones, solutions large firms have developed, and then platforms like Lucio."
He had used a different product earlier and watched the category evolve. "Timing is everything. This (Lucio) was the product that frankly was doing the best job."
Zero to Something
Simon uses Lucio himself, and he has made sure his juniors and his support staff use it too. He breaks the use down into three things: a sounding board, a research tool and a starting point for drafting.
He is direct about what it is and isn't. "Am I personally using it to draft a full agreement for me? No, obviously not. But small repetitive tasks that I still find myself doing, it's taking those off my plate. Standard reviews of agreements that cross our desk regularly. Review of an NDA. Putting together an LOI. Clause review, clause drafting, etc."
The phrase he keeps coming back to is going from "zero to something." A lawyer takes a blank page and a prompt and turns it into a working draft fast.
"No one says this product replaces the lawyer. But it definitely makes the lawyer more efficient and gives them a strong base from which to start."
The new client clock
Two things change once a firm uses Lucio seriously.
The first is quality. Simon won't say AI is better than an attorney, but he will say the model knows more than a junior associate or a paralegal at the start of a task. "It will certainly know more than a junior associate or a paralegal. So I suppose it absolutely improves quality there."
The second is turnaround time, and this one is structural.
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