[CLE-Eligible] The Business of Law + AI: Who Gets Paid When Work Gets Cheap

​Join Ed Walters, VP Legal Innovation + Strategy at Clio, at Fiola Mare for a working lunch and a candid look at how AI is rewriting law firm economics and why mid-sized firms are better positioned than anyone to win the next decade.

​SESSION DESCRIPTION

​For decades, the economics of a law firm rested on a simple equation: hours worked times rate billed, leveraged across associates. AI is quietly dismantling that equation.

​When due diligence takes an hour instead of a week, when research and first drafts arrive in minutes, the questions get uncomfortable fast. What do you bill? How do partners get compensated when leverage stops working the way it used to? And how do you train the next generation of lawyers when clients won't pay for the work that used to do the training?

​Over lunch at Fiola Mare, Ed Walters, VP of Legal Innovation & Strategy at Clio, founder of Fastcase, and Georgetown Law professor, will make the case that mid-sized firms are the ones best positioned to benefit. As large firms move further up market, there's room to take share and to reach an enormous latent market of clients who have never been able to afford legal help at all.

​Bring your hardest questions. This is a small room, and it's built for conversation.

​WHAT YOU'LL TAKE AWAY

• ​What to do when billable hours become billable minutes: pricing and strategy moves that protect profitability instead of eroding it.

• ​How AI changes firm economics: the effect on the leverage model, partner compensation, and competitive positioning.

• ​How to train associates in an AI-first firm: when discovery, research, and drafting are automated, where does professional development come from?

• ​How to reach the latent market for legal services: the largest untapped opportunity in the profession, and why the window is closing before venture capital gets there first.

• ​1 Hour of CLE Credit

​AGENDA

​1:00 p.m. — Lunch, arrival, and networking

​1:30 p.m. — Presentation and discussion with Ed Walters

​2:30 p.m. — Clio Work Demo

​3:00 p.m. — Close

​SPEAKER

​Ed Walters

​VP, Legal Innovation & Strategy, Clio · Washington, DC

​Ed Walters leads Clio's legal innovation work with global law firms and corporate legal departments, and serves as the internal advocate for how Clio Work and Vincent by Clio subscribers shape the product roadmap. Across 30 years in legal, he built the largest legal database in history — more than 1 billion structured documents across 110 countries — and holds nine U.S. legal tech patents. He was CEO and co-founder of Fastcase and later Chief Strategy Officer at vLex. He teaches as a Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago Law School and an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown Law.