Goodbye Support Boomers, Hello AI….?

New research by BigHand has found that just over four in ten of surveyed law firms expect between 21% and 40% of ‘support staff to retire within the next five years’. But will AI help to replace their allotted tasks? In short is this: goodbye support boomers, hello AI?

It’s a new take on the task replacement challenge, with most of the focus at present on the most junior lawyers facing task absorption from AI.

But, it could also work the other way – at least for those in support roles, albeit in a different direction. I.e. it’s not that AI is replacing older support staff as such, it’s that when a whole cadre of experienced folks from the Baby Boomer generation depart, will law firms seek to handle some of their tasks with AI, rather than hire in lots of new, young support talent?

AL put this question to BigHand’s Ben Jennings, Global Director – Workflow Product Management.

‘The data speaks for itself: when support isn’t readily accessible, lawyers increasingly take on admin work themselves. That’s not just inefficient, it risks eroding the visibility into support needs entirely. If tasks aren’t being captured in a structured way there’s no opportunity to delegate them, whether to a support team member or, in future, to AI.

‘Even if the long-term goal is to automate certain tasks with AI, the first step is still the same – capturing the request in a way that allows someone (or something) to process it effectively.

‘It’ll be far easier to triage and re-route tasks from a unified queue than to ask lawyers to choose between sending requests to a person or to ‘the robots’ via a different interface… and there’ll be no prizes for guessing which one they choose.’

*AL illustration of how it might look….*

In short, whether the owners of law firms, i.e. the equity partners, seek to manage some aspects of their support costs with AI, or hire in new staff, the challenge is that as experienced people leave their roles – taking with them the ability to handle often essential tasks for the business – then lawyers who delay acting on this change (and who should be doing billable work) will need to take up the slack. And that’s bad for business.

The survey also found that:

‘Misplaced administrative burden: Nearly one-third (31%) of firms now report an increased reliance on lawyers to handle administrative tasks, interfering with billable hours and profitability.
Low-visibility restructuring: Despite 90% of firms restructuring or introducing new support team models within the last year and 56% planning further changes, only half (51%) have implemented workflow management technology to provide accurate productivity data and inform these decisions.
Centralization delivers clear value: 70% of firms that have centralized support teams report multiple operational benefits, including improved lawyer productivity (25%), efficiency gains (25%), and cost savings (24%).’

The bit about lawyers now taking on even more admin tasks – even before we factor in staff losses due to generational demographic changes – underlines the problem. Lawyers should be lawyering, not doing admin.

And again we come back to the AI task replacement point. Is the best way to handle these admin tasks, whether that is CRM work, timesheets, or matter pricing, to name a few, to bring in more automation (whether AI-based or not), or hire more support staff just as more experienced people are leaving the firm as part of the great Boomer migration to the sunny uplands of retirement?

Or maybe a mix of the two…? And at what ratio do tasks get shared out between AI and human support? Is there even a realistic plan for how to move forward from here?

To be continued….

You can find the report here.

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