Will is one of the most prolific voices in legal tech today - and a voice that often dovetails with General Legal's fundamental worldview: you don't need to raise $500M to build great software for legal professionals. Relatedly, selling billions of dollars of software to overpaid lawyers doesn't necessarily mean you will change anything about the delivery of legal services or the client's experience. You need to actually be incentivized to do that. Thrilled and honored to be collaborating, @willchen500! More to come soon ;)

“We’ve brought in a specialist” is how a quick question gets its own budget.

the new twitter ratio - when you make a bold prediction (like outside spend on trad law firms is about to collapse despite a banner year) and more people bookmark it than like it so they can dunk on you in a year or two if you're wrong. respect it honestly, see you guys in 2028!

Spend on outside counsel is on the verge of collapsing. In its wake clients will still need to know what is market. Data flywheels will matter more than ever for the next two to four years, while Big Law focuses on margins to pay for their second homes. xitter.cf/ReutersLegal/status/21…

Closing a $30k contract shouldn’t come with a $12k legal bill.

Why doesn’t Big Law reward speed or client satisfaction?

We got flying cars before we got Big Law to quote a fixed fee.

Outside counsel: “We identified 23 issues.” GC: “Which ones should we actually negotiate?” Outside counsel: “Happy to schedule a call.”

Big Law has a strange AI problem: the better it works, the harder the invoice is to explain.

another AI law firm begged one of our clients to take a quid pro quo where client buys a subscription for $100k of legal services and law firm buys services worth like $1M from client. client GC was like "their service sucks but I am gonna buy, shelf the subscription for 10x ROI"

A senior lawyer knowing which five clauses matter is worth more than a junior lawyer changing all fifty.

Flat fees turn “we should automate this” from an innovation committee discussion into a financial necessity.

I started questioning outdated legal workflows well before ChatGPT. When I arrived at law school, I wondered why lawyers were paid so much for processes that technology could help streamline. This was an obvious issue well before the AI revolution.

I want to build a legal AI agent that automatically appears in a founder's Slack whenever someone types “we probably don't need a lawyer for this.”

The most interesting AI-native law firms won't look like smaller versions of Big Law. They'll look like companies that figured out how to deliver legal services without making every customer learn how a law firm operates.

Not trying to sound like a dick, but have you ever worked at a law firm? This is obviously what the partners are going to do, esp if it's a great associate the client is willing to pay more for. I imagine partners will be more pro-AI wrt shit associates whose time they write down

At some point, two AI agents are going to negotiate a contract, agree on everything, and then wait three days for their humans to schedule a call.

Flat fees make law firms pay for their own inefficiency. You can see why this is controversial.