What Changes When Intelligence Becomes Cheap?

Mark Alcazar opened our recent Law Firm Profitability group session, “AI Agents for Law Firms,” with this question (See session recording here.) The evidence shows that AI is able to handle large parts of what law firms do. A significant portion of the cognitive scaffolding for legal work, including routine drafting and document formatting, is already handled at near-zero cost. Your judgment and your client relationships are not going anywhere, but the production layer around them is another matter.

Most of the law firms I speak with are using AI for narrow, low-stakes tasks, if at all. The session I hosted with Mark Alcazar and John Fitzpatrick from Apex Velocity Catalysts was designed to change that. Everything they showed was live. Tools they are building and using in their own work today. What those demonstrations showed is worth your attention.

Building Without a Developer

The first thing they demonstrated was how fast something useful can be built without a software developer. Mark built a working new-matter intake form in roughly five minutes using Claude Cowork. He wrote a detailed prompt describing what the form should do, and Claude returned working HTML: a form that populates a table and exports to a spreadsheet. Not production-ready, but a great starting point. The distance between “we need a tool for this” and “here is a working prototype” is now measured in minutes, not months. Cost and technical complexity used to keep custom tools out of reach, but both have dropped considerably.

Improving the Output

The second thing they showed was how to improve the AI’s output. Most of you are already using Claude or ChatGPT for some part of your work, and the output quality varies based almost entirely on how the prompt is written. Two techniques made an immediate difference. The first is context: a bare prompt like “draft an engagement letter” returns something generic. Adding jurisdiction, matter type, client background, and the purpose of the letter produces something that resembles actual work your firm would do. The second is more interesting. Instruct the model to create a scoring rubric, score its own output against it, and iterate until it meets a defined threshold. In the demonstration, Claude scored its first draft at 86 out of 100 and kept improving. The mechanism works, and the results are noticeably better.

Agents vs. General AI

The third area was the distinction between general AI and purpose-built agents. General AI is versatile but unfocused. An agent is built for a single defined workflow, such as your NDA process or conflict check. Because the scope is narrower and the instructions are specific, agents are measurably more reliable for the workflows they support. John demonstrated a full NDA workflow: intake, drafting, multi-agent review, negotiation with version tracking, client approval, and e-signature integration. Early indicators from firms adopting this kind of focused approach suggest the gains come precisely from that focus. One workflow done reliably outperforms a broad tool used inconsistently.

Before You Deploy

Before any of this goes into practice, certain things need to be settled deliberately.

What can the AI do without human approval? That is a decision your firm has to make deliberately, not by default. Mark’s own agent is instructed never to send an email on his behalf, even though it is technically capable of doing so. He set that limit, the system did not.

How does AI-generated work get verified before it reaches a client? Whether that is a second agent reviewing against a rubric, or a structured checklist process, the principle is the same: one step produces, another step evaluates.

Where is your client data going? Consumer versions of Claude and ChatGPT carry different protections than enterprise accounts. If your firm is using consumer tools for client-related work, that needs to be resolved before any other adoption decision.

Where to Begin

On the question of where to begin: every firm has what Mark called “drag.” It is the repetitive, error-prone work that consumes time without generating strategic value. It is spread across every role and usually invisible because everyone is too busy doing it to examine it. The exercise is simple. Identify the drag and put a number on it: hourly rate multiplied by time spent each week. Prioritize based on what automation would recover.

Then pick one workflow and make it work before touching anything else. Forward-thinking firms are not trying to transform everything at once. They are proving value in one place and expanding from there.

Colin Cameron is President of Profits for Partners and founder of the Law Firm Profitability group on LinkedIn. The session was presented by Mark Alcazar and John Fitzpatrick of Apex Velocity Catalysts.

Legal Management Update – March 2026

I’m pleased to present my new Legal Management Update for your reading enjoyment. See here. The purpose of the newsletter is to alert you to current developments affecting how law firms are governed, priced, staffed, and run.

Let me know what you think. It’s still a work in progress, so I’d really appreciate any comments you may have for improvements, etc.

Rethinking the COO Role in Law Firms

Law firms have always been led by lawyers. The senior partner was often both rainmaker and chief administrator, managing everything from finances to facilities. That model worked when the business of law was simpler and the competition was local. It no longer fits the complexity of today’s legal market.

It is time to rethink what this role should entail and who is best suited for it.

The Role of the COO

The main role of a COO in a law firm is to run the firm’s business operations. Partners’ time is best spent practicing law and building client relationships. Someone must ensure that the business runs efficiently behind the scenes.

The COO position includes creating the systems and discipline that enable partners to focus on client work. A strong COO connects the dots between finance, operations, people, and strategy. This relieves partners of this task and helps execute the firm’s goals.

The New Skills Required

The skill set for today’s COO has changed. Now legal COOs must be fluent in both management skills and technology. They must understand automation and AI applications that can streamline workflows and improve decision-making.

Strong COOs now act as translators between business strategy and operational execution. They can analyze profitability at the matter and client level. They can interpret financial and operational data to guide strategic investments. And they can communicate these insights to lawyers in ways that lead to action.

The most effective COOs combine four abilities:

Operational discipline to ensure the firm’s core systems run smoothly.
Financial literacy to create budgets and new pricing models.
Technology fluency to identify where automation and AI create leverage.
Leadership credibility to influence senior lawyers without authority based on title.

These abilities rarely come from the traditional legal path. That is why many of the most successful COOs in professional services come from finance, consulting, or technology backgrounds.

Why Some Firms Struggle to Empower the COO

Even when firms hire a capable COO, many fail to use the role effectively. In some partnerships, operations managers are limited to managing facilities, HR, or IT. This limits the COO’s ability to execute. Without clear authority, the role becomes reactive rather than strategic.

Empowering a COO requires the managing partner and the executive committee to treat the role as part of firm leadership, not support staff. The COO should sit at the table where strategic and financial decisions are made, with access to the same data and accountability.

The COO and Change Management

Law firms face rising cost pressures and technology-driven disruption. These challenges cannot be solved through individual effort or incremental change. They require systemic thinking, the kind that a professional COO brings.

A forward-looking COO can lead firmwide initiatives in areas such as:

Redesigning work allocation models that improve leverage and profitability.
Introducing firm-level KPIs and dashboards to measure performance in real time.
Managing AI adoption projects across practice groups.
Building training programs that develop “business of law” concepts among lawyers.

The goal is to help the Managing Partner execute on the firm’s strategic plan. The COO becomes the connection that links strategy with day-to-day execution. COOs can also take on many of the regular duties of the Managing Partner so that they can focus on higher-level firm strategy and leadership objectives.

What Law Firms Should Do Next

Every firm should begin by asking a simple question: What is our COO actually accountable for? If the answer sounds administrative rather than strategic, the firm may be missing an opportunity.

The next step is to align the COO’s role with measurable outcomes. Examples include improvement in profit per partner or percentage of work automated. These are results that move the firm forward and justify the investment in senior operational leadership.

Closing Thoughts

The modern law firm operates more like a business than a traditional partnership. Rethinking the COO role involves giving COOs more authority and accountability to give the firm a strategic advantage. This can also lead to non-lawyer COOs becoming CEOs or recruiting non-lawyer CEOs from other industries. Given the immense changes happening in the legal industry today, high-end professional management in law firms is becoming a must-have in order to succeed.