The AI Restructuring
September/October 2026
The profession's next shape—from the billable hour to access to justice.
September/October 2026
Introducing the September/October 2026 Issue
Every few decades, the legal profession is told it is being remade. This time the pressure runs deeper: as clients rebuild themselves around artificial intelligence, they are reshaping not only how legal work is priced and delivered, but who does it—and who counts as a provider of legal services at all. This issue traces that restructuring from the top of the market to the bottom by looking at AI within the profession and history.
Law in the Era of AI
To understand where AI takes the law, watch what it's doing to clients first. The corporate "AI factory" is bearing down on law firms—pressuring the billable hour and splintering the one-stop-shop into new shapes—even as human judgment remains the one thing expected to endure.
Expanding on Law in the Era of AI with Bjarne P. Tellmann
Examining the legal profession within the long arc of history provides a window into its future. "If you look at it, the history of the general counsel is actually in some ways the history of how companies have adapted to risk and opportunity throughout history," Bjarne P. Tellman says in this Q&A around his new book.
A Bridge or Substitute for Justice
The deepest restructuring of legal work may be happening where there are no paying clients at all. Around the world, AI is redefining who delivers legal help—and whether that closes the justice gap or builds a two-tier system, human lawyers for some and machines for the rest, remains unsettled.
The Unfolding of a New Era
We keep calling this "the AI era"—but historians of technology know that every generation is sure its own machines are the turning point. Whether AI marks a true break with the past or merely the newest revolution we've declared too soon is a question best answered by looking to those who study the past.
Redesigning 19th-Century Institutions for 21st-Century Problems
For fifty years, Richard Susskind has told a skeptical profession that technology would remake it—and watched much of it come true. As he reissues his 1996 book "The Future of Law," he weighs whether AI is finally the rupture he foresaw, what becomes of the billable hour and the associate pyramid, and whether AI can finally do what he has long argued technology should: widen access to justice for the billions still shut out.
