I went to a closed-door retreat for top lawyers. The message was clear: Don't fear AI — use it. (www.businessinsider.com)

At a closed-door TLTF Summit in Austin, Big Law leaders, legal-tech builders and ethicists delivered a blunt message: don’t fear generative AI—adopt and operationalize it. The retreat made clear that clients now expect measurable cost savings and transparency about tools, training and security, transforming AI from a verboten experiment to a procurement priority. Law firms face structural headwinds—partnership profit distributions that limit long-term tech investment, a billable‑hour model that disincentivizes efficiency, strict confidentiality requirements and fragmented purchasing — all of which shape how quickly and safely firms can deploy AI. The practical implications discussed were concrete and technical: firms are buying licenses, standing up task forces, coaching partners, and policing “shadow IT,” while confronting procurement, client security audits and ethical constraints. Funding models are contested—pass costs to clients, absorb them, or use outside capital via MSOs (managed services organizations), a dual‑entity workaround that lets investors own a nonlegal back-office vendor despite rules against nonlawyer firm ownership. Staffing models may shift (fewer junior hires, a “diamond” or rectangular pyramid with a bulge of experienced mid‑levels), and billing may move to fixed fees or share‑of‑savings to preserve revenue. The summit framed AI as an industry reshaper — boosting efficiency but forcing hard choices about governance, liability and what remains uniquely human in legal work.