Ford's General Counsel just told law firms they're losing the AI race...to their own clients.

Steven Croley runs legal at Ford. Former Latham partner. He made the case in Bloomberg Law.

His point: Ford's in-house team, running AI agents across its legal work, is now generating efficiencies faster than its Big Law firms.

And he asked the question GCs are all thinking....why do the rate hikes keep coming with no AI savings to show for them?

So Ford rewards the firms that innovate and pulls back from the laggards.

More work in-house. More matters to the firms that deliver.

This is the client keeping score. In public.

I get why this is hard. The billable hour pays you for the exact hours your client now wants gone.

The system was built to resist the efficiency they're demanding. Seeing the trap doesn't get you out of it.

It was never only about the tools. Firms buy them and don't CHANGE how they work. That's most of the gap.

It just became a revenue problem.

You can't raise rates on work your client just learned to do itself.

The market is splitting into a K shaped trajectory.

A few firms on the upward leg of the K went all in early.

The firms on the downward leg are still deciding if this tech will really deliver.

If I'm honest, the slow ones don't all make it.

Treat this as the wake-up call and you keep the work. Sit on it, and your clients build the workaround.

Your clients are grading how you deliver with AI.

How will you like the grade?