In mid-2026, to call a law firm AI-first, or even AI-native, seems out of step with present day reality. Which major law firm is not using AI throughout its practice groups? Which firms don’t have any lawyers that are doing legal work with LLMs in a way that is ‘AI-native’?
When the first New Model Law Firms, or NewMods for short, arrived, such as Covenant and Crosby, back in the faraway days of 2025, it perhaps made sense to call such legal businesses ‘AI-first’, given their apparent head start on the broad use of LLMs.
As Covenant’s CEO, Jen Berrent, told Artificial Lawyer back then: ‘We started on the basis that AI exists, and if that’s the case, how would you build a law firm today?’
But, as noted, AI is now being used by the vast majority of major law firms, and in multiple ways, from simple needs such as summarising and formatting, to drafting and review, to legal research, to even tapping a firm’s collective knowledge to leverage its judgment layer.
Thus today, many lawyers in Big Law – and across the sector – will indeed first begin a piece of work with running some aspects of that matter through an AI system via their desktop, just as they would open a Word doc, or log into their time system. AI may then play a part in that work all the way through to completion – and even afterwards when key data is extracted for future use.
So, to say Covenant is ‘AI-first’, but that for example, global law firm Kirkland & Ellis is not, seems strange these days. Both use AI, both have skilled lawyers. Both use a mix of LLMs and human brains to complete the task for the clients.
But, we also can see very quickly that these are legal businesses of very different types. So, what’s going on? What is actually different?
What a NewMod Actually Is
A NewMod, or New Model law firm, is not special because it uses AI and lawyers together. Nor because its lawyers may choose to deploy one of the many AI tools at their disposal at the start of a matter.
A NewMod is special because of their business model.
It is the business model that is fundamentally different. Not the tools – as they may be the same or equivalent as used by any other legal provider. And not the lawyers – as where do NewMod lawyers come from? They come from major law firms and inhouse roles.
How is the business model ‘new’?
It’s different because of several very distinct reasons:
- The NewMod does not bill for time. Time is not a container or indicator of value as far as this legal business is concerned.
- It is also not primarily selling the reputation of individual lawyers, nor like some ALSPs outsourcing staff to a client. It’s coming to market as a complete legal offering, albeit often focused on particular practice areas or client types.
- Pricing aims to be fixed fee, i.e. a fee is scoped out, or in many cases it’s immediately clear to the client what the total cost will be. So there is price certainty.
- Those prices tend to be far lower than those asked for in the bills of major traditional law firms.
- AI is never a hinderance to this business, instead it always supports it. Where a time-based law firm will inevitably run into a commercial conflict with AI’s acceleration of work, a NewMod embraces that acceleration. In fact, the acceleration is in their interest, moreover it supports lower prices for the clients.
- Efficiency gains are shared with the clients – and that is always a key factor.
- NewMods also tend to believe that price competition is a good thing. Most traditional law firms will steer any conversation with clients away from pricing and towards a much more nebulous discussion about ‘value’.
- In short, the NewMods are approaching the legal business world with the Jeff Bezos motto: ‘Your margin is my opportunity.’ And that truly is a break with the past. Big Law, although tiered and with price ranges, has always sought not to go down that road, if it can be avoided.
- A NewMod also usually has a literally different structure. In the US they use MSOs, where there is a law firm and a tech company in a connected entity. The tech company part can also receive external investment. In the UK, with its very open system for law firm structures, there are many different ways of organising the business.
- NewMods also tend not to have ‘partners’ or a ‘partnership’, although there is, like all organisations, the specialisation of roles.
We could also look at the career path inside a NewMod – although it’s early days there. A NewMod employee could also in theory take equity inside the business even at a junior level, as could happen in a tech startup.
In short, a New Model law firm is just that, a law firm that operates with a new business approach. Today, it’s not that they use AI that makes them different, it’s that when AI is combined with their organisational structure, economic system, and Go-to-Market strategy, they truly are different to ‘traditional law firms’.
Eventually, perhaps in 10 years, NewMods will become so developed and so large that they may not seem ‘new’ any longer. But, even then they will still be different to most Big Law firms. Only perhaps once major firms restructure to be like NewMods will the term lose currency. And that seems many years away.
For now, NewMods are exactly what they say they are: a new model for legal business.
Richard Tromans, Founder, Artificial Lawyer, Sept 2026.
P.S. this is not a criticism of those who use ‘AI-first’, AL just feels like the time has come to move beyond it.
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