Global law firm leaders are confronting a strategic revolution built on AI and human connection

The 18th Annual Sandpiper Partners Global Law Firm Leaders Conference, hosted at Clifford Chance in London, left attendees with a clear and urgent message: the era of incremental change is over. The legal world is in the midst of a profound transformation, driven by the dual forces of sophisticated client demands and the increasing availability of legal technology and AI tools.

The sessions, led by law firm managing partners, corporate general counsels, and technology innovation leaders within law firms, moved past theoretical debates and focused on the practical realities of survival and growth. Joel Wirchin, Senior Director, Legal Strategy at Williams Lea joined a prestigious lineup of top industry innovators on a panel focused on AI and the practice of law, which explored the profound impact of AI and how tech-enabled support services, powered by AI, can transform law firm operations in areas such as billing compliance and workflow efficiency. Across all sessions, the consensus was clear: law firms are no longer just there to provide legal advice to their clients; they must evolve into strategic, data-driven, and deeply human-centric partners.

Here are the key takeaways from the conference:

Clients demand radical transparency and strategic value

The opening panel on “What Clients Want” set the tone for the entire conference, challenging firms to fundamentally rethink their value proposition. The message from the panel of law firm clients was unanimous: subject-matter expertise is now just a given. What clients value today is a strategic partner who understands their business so deeply that they can proactively offer commercial judgement and challenge existing processes.

One general counsel on the panel explained the new expectation: “If you can’t give us a broader perspective than simply narrating the law, then you are lost and you’re not going to succeed. What I want… is the feedback. And I also want to know what other people in my industry are doing.”

This desire for partnership marks a definitive shift away from the traditional client development model. Clients are frustrated by firms “chasing the transactions” and instead seek deep, long-term alignment. As one panelist from a consultancy firm noted, 71% of general counsels in their recent survey said cross-selling had “no impact or a negative impact on their buying decision”. The value is found “in the spaces between those transactions, where the magic happens”, which represent the crucial, yet often overlooked, relationship-building and value-creation opportunities that exist outside of direct, formal interactions.

AI is a strategic revolution, not just a technology upgrade

No topic dominated the day more than artificial intelligence. The panel on AI and the practice of law highlighted that AI has moved from a future concept to a present-day operational reality.

Joel Wirchin shared instant poll results from a recent Sandpiper Partners’  law firm leaders conference in New York that underscores this rapid adoption:

• 59% of lawyers surveyed said they are actively using AI.
• Only 3% reported that their firm prohibits the use of AI.
• 75% of firms report they have already adopted a formal AI policy.
• 70% of firms said leveraging technology for better client and business development is a leading priority.

The panel discussion moved beyond the “what tool have you bought” conversation to focus on strategic implementation. One speaker, a partner and innovation leader at an international law firm described their firm’s “buy and build approach”, which included developing a secure, internal generative AI tool. The adoption statistics were staggering: “We have had over 90% of the firm use it on an average basis. We have 2,000 users a month, and we have 2,700 people in our firm. We reached our millionth prompt this month.”

Crucially, the same panelist emphasised that AI’s value is not just in timesaving, but in value creation. They explained that their AI-powered tool improves output quality—helping lawyers spot subtle risks or synthesize complex analysis—while also delivering major efficiencies. She cited a complex document review where AI was used to perform the initial analysis and cull the data set. This allowed the legal team to bypass thousands of irrelevant documents and focus only on the most critical files, dramatically reducing manual (and billable) review to achieve a direct “50% cost saving for our clients.”

Looking ahead, Joel Wirchin opined that the biggest transformation will be in the business operations of the firm itself: “I think it’s going to be in administrative services, in operational services, and in the important world of billing… tech and AI based billing systems can radically change the way in which firms are generating revenue, reducing write offs, [and eliminating] inefficiencies that are holding the firm’s back .”

Leadership is about curiosity and human connection

With AI poised to automate the more formulaic type of work, the “Leadership and Strategy” panel explored what truly differentiates a firm: its people. Panelists, all senior leaders from top global law firms, agreed that to build a high-performance culture, law firm leaders must move beyond financial metrics and invest in the human and culture side.

This requires a new leadership mindset built on curiosity and empathy—skills that are often underdeveloped in the legal profession. As one of the speakers candidly observed: “I tend to find that lots of people… are experts on how bad our junior people are at learning, and I think most of us are actually unconscious of how poor we have become at teaching.”

Another speaker argued that this curiosity is the antidote to the “uniform set of metrics” that drive performance in global firms. They noted the challenge of managing colleagues globally, stressing that leaders must understand the local culture and an individual’s journey, not just their quarterly figures, and practicing “micro-courtesies”, which is knowing things such as “where they commute from, or whether someone likes dogs or cats…is the “glue that holds us all together.” The payoff?  Practicing this curiosity internally makes it “easier to have relationship conversations with your clients” because the team’s “vocabulary and your curiosity” have already been broadened. Their plea extends to the “weird, obnoxious hubris” of using the term “non-lawyer,” they added that defining critical colleagues who work in other roles, such as support services, in the firm as “not us” is a fundamental failure of this same human-centric leadership.

The war for talent is reshaping the workplace

The intense war for talent is reshaping the legal workplace, and the firms competing for talent on just salary are finding it challenging. As one leader explained, they simply “can’t, and we won’t, compete with economics that are on the table in London.” This admission forces a critical shift: if firms cannot attract talent with high wages, they must compete on culture, opportunity, and a compelling sense of purpose. As a law firm partner on the war for talent panel emphasized, “Trying to build a culture where people actually want to stay with you is really easy if you genuinely want to invest in them at a human level… if your people feel engaged on a day-to-day basis…that’s gold.”

Demystifying private equity investment

The discussion on private equity (PE) sought to dispel the myths surrounding external investment. Panelists argued that the legal sector is “the largest and most fragmented professional services market in the world” and is therefore a prime candidate for consolidation and investment, just as accountancy and consulting were before it.

The panel directly addressed the common misconception that private equity investment is short-term or hostile. A speaker, representing a leading private equity firm argued this view is “totally the opposite” of the truth, clarifying that the fear “things will be done to them” is misplaced.

He explained that PE investors are not looking to “run law firms”; they are “backing a management team” they trust. Their role is to provide strategic “challenge, and… investment”—supplying the capital needed to accelerate the firm’s existing strategy, fund new technology like AI, and pursue the M&A and talent acquisition required to stay competitive.

This view was strongly supported by a leader from a PE-backed firm. He confirmed that the investment was not a takeover, but an acceleration of their existing strategy. He emphasized that the management team is still “running our business” and “making our own decisions,” but now has the capital and strategic “challenge” needed to fund the technology and talent acquisition to compete at a pace they could not achieve organically.

The future is global but focused

The panel on global strategy perfectly captured the pressures explored throughout the day. The consensus was that the traditional “full-service firm” model is under immense strain. With AI automating repetitive and lower value legal tasks and talent demanding more than just money, leaders are being forced to define their core value. As one speaker put it, “There is work that you cannot do in a profitable way… you have to focus on… high-value work.”

This strategic focus redefines the very purpose of growth. It is no longer just about following clients; it’s about talent. One international managing partner offered a compelling perspective: “We really work for the younger partners… we think we owe this to the younger people.” He explained that by “growing and moving into markets,” the firm is fulfilling its core duty to offer “better opportunities for the new generation.”

This brought the conference full circle. In an era of disruptive technology and intense competition, the future law firm will survive not by being all things to all clients, but by being a focused, strategic, and inspiring place for the best people to build their careers.

Learn more about how Williams Lea can help law firms boost efficiency within their legal support services and evolve for the future here.