A recent Above the Law column takes a provocative stance on legal AI: the old way of measuring return on investment is dead. The piece argues that the conventional ROI framework no longer captures the value or cost of AI tools in legal practice, given how quickly the technology and its use cases are evolving.
Yet the column stops short of offering a replacement. It acknowledges that the AI landscape keeps shifting, which makes any fixed metric suspect, but it also notes that the underlying question of ROI remains open. In other words, the old answer is gone, but no new consensus has taken its place.
For law firms and legal departments, the takeaway is one of uncertainty. The piece does not provide a new formula or framework; instead, it frames the current moment as a transitional one, where the metrics that once guided investment decisions are no longer reliable, and the next standard has yet to be defined.