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Law firms as software providers, Part III of III · 10 October 2025

How about law firms becoming software providers (instead of being replaced by them)? Part III

Where agentic AI and a curated, lawyer-directed skeleton meet, and the two kinds of law firm that come out of it.

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What it argues

The closing essay describes the shape of the thing: probabilistic capability held inside deterministic workflows, with curation and fencing acting, in the author's image, as the skeleton that gives the magic muscle something to pull against.

It sketches two archetypes that will coexist rather than compete. The traditional firm that automates part of its work while keeping the professional pyramid intact. And the agile, subscription-priced firm built on agentic workflows, delivering risk assessments and policy work at a speed the hourly model cannot reach.

Its final claim is the one that became our practice: the advantage is not the model, it is a lawyer directing proprietary, reusable components that a client cannot assemble alone.

This is our summary, not the article. The full text stays with the original publisher. Read it there.

The four claims
  • 01Curation and constraint are what make a creative system useful, not a limitation on it
  • 02Agentic workflows let a task balance exploration against a goal, closer to improvisation inside a structure than to free generation
  • 03Two firm archetypes emerge: self-hosted automation, and a hybrid software-and-services firm on subscription pricing
  • 04Durable advantage comes from lawyer-curated, reusable components clients cannot replicate on their own
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