Billable Hours: The Last Castle Against The Algorithmic Tide

The Washington legal market has reached a peculiar impasse: the machines are faster, but the humans are pricier. For decades, the business model of the elite firm relied on the slow, deliberate act of typing a memo. Now that a neural net can draft a contract in the time it takes a junior associate to pour a coffee, one might expect a corresponding drop in the invoice. Instead, the industry has doubled down on the mystique of the minute.