When Clients Stop Paying Outside Experts, Providers Lose Their Reason To Exist
In-house lawyers at real estate investment firm Alturas Capital Partners once sent most of their lease work to outside counsel. With generative AI, they now handle it internally, saving the firm hundreds of thousands of dollars and compressing lease work that previously stalled for weeks. MIT Sloan Management Review reports that Wall Street banks have pushed large law firms to cut fees for the same reason.
The saving at Alturas Capital Partners is money that simply stops leaving the building, and the same amount is revenue that never arrives at the firm that used to bill it. Authors Jose Parra-Moyano, Karl Schmedders, Olivier Laplace and Benjamin Torben-Nielsen argue that providers selling expertise alone are exposed, and point to improving unit economics, being easier to buy from, and carrying the client's quality-assurance burden.
Source: MIT Sloan Management Review · September 29, 2026