Sept. 23, 2026 — When generative artificial intelligence (GAI) is the associate, the lawyer may bill for no more than the time spent even if it is less than an unassisted lawyer would need.

As State Bar of Wisconsin Ethics Counsel Sarah E. Peterson wrote in 2024, “The central message regarding the intersection of ethics and GAI is this: Lawyers’ core ethical responsibilities are unchanged, just as they were unchanged with the introduction of the use of computers and the internet in the practice of law.”^[1]

Since then, only the capabilities of GAI, which “promises to make time-based metrics much less attractive,”^[2] have changed, increasing time savings.

Surveys and articles from the last three years have set GAI savings to lawyers’ work as reducing billable hours by 12% to 57%.^[3]

“[T]he billable hour creates ethical risks,” Daniel J. Siegel, a nationally recognized expert on ethics and technology, wrote last summer. “Now that artificial intelligence has entered the picture, those risks have increased.”^[4]

Work 15 Minutes, Bill 15 Minutes

The American Bar Association (ABA) Rule of Professional Conduct 1.5 sets the required standard of a fee that is reasonable, based on eight factors.

Under the rule, the lawyer also must communicate to the client, preferably in writing, the fee, expense reimbursement, and the scope of representation soon after starting representation.

Increased use of GAI inspired the ABA to release Formal Opinion 512 in 2024, which acknowledges that GAI may increase the speed in which a lawyer can produce legal services.

But the lawyer doesn’t get to bill based on human speed if GAI did the work faster.

“If a lawyer uses a GAI tool to draft a pleading and expends 15 minutes to input the relevant information into the GAI program, the lawyer may charge for the 15 minutes as well as for the time the lawyer expends to review the resulting draft for accuracy and completeness,” the ABA formal opinion explained.

Even with a flat fee, the rate cannot be the same with or without using GAI. Withholding the time savings would be unreasonable under the rule, the formal opinion said.

Nor can the lawyer try to recoup some of that income by creating a GAI surcharge. The program is overhead, the formal opinion said, unless the client needs a unique GAI program for the client’s work.

“[I]t goes without saying,” the District of Columbia Bar’s Ethics Opinion 388 said in 2024 quoting from the ABA Formal Ethics Opinion 93-379 in 1993, “that a lawyer who has undertaken to bill on an hourly basis is never justified in charging a client for hours not actually expended.”

This rule is the same as it was before computers. If a lawyer spent significant time researching a legal issue for one client, the lawyer doesn’t get to bill a second client the same time for the ability to answer the same question faster, the D.C. Bar opinion explained.

Florida Bar Ethics Opinion 24-1 says it this way:

“Though [GAI] programs may make a lawyer’s work more efficient, this increase in efficiency must not result in falsely inflated claims of time.

“In the alternative, lawyers may want to consider adopting contingent fee arrangements or flat billing rates for specific services so that the benefits of increased efficiency accrue to the lawyer and client alike.”

‘Economies … Inure to the Benefit of the Client’

“In the mid-1970s, lawyers lamented the loss of billable time because of the savings from computers and computerized legal research,” wrote Jeffrey D. Woolf, an assistant general counsel at the Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers.^[5]

“But the lawyers learned to pass the cost savings on to clients and instead billed for time doing more substantive work.”^[6]

Time savings from remote hearings during the pandemic yielded similar cost savings for clients.^[7]

In 1993, the ABA clarified the ethical issues of billing when the temptations included working on matters for other clients while flying on business or the fortunate timing of waiting in court for appearances for three clients.

The lawyer couldn’t bill each client for the full time, ABA Formal Opinion 93-379 specified.

“A lawyer who spends four hours of time on behalf of three clients has not earned twelve billable hours. A lawyer who flies for six hours for one client, while working for five hours on behalf of another, has not earned eleven billable hours.”

The formal opinion described what general overhead includes — the cost of maintaining a library, malpractice insurance, and rent — none of which may be a separate billing line item.

Any in-house services, such as copies, computer research, or on-site meals, the lawyer may bill at no greater than at cost.

“[I]t is impermissible for a lawyer to create an additional source of profit for the law firm beyond that which is contained in the provision of professional services themselves,” the opinion summarizes.

“The lawyer’s stock in trade is the sale of legal services, not photocopy paper, tuna fish sandwiches, computer time or messenger services.”

But a lawyer also has the duty “to expedite the legal process” by operating efficiently.

“[T]he economies associated with the result must inure to the benefit of the client, not give rise to an opportunity to bill a client phantom hours.”

That 1993 formal opinion has new application today.

“AI impacts every billing model. It compresses time, which impacts every traditional pricing practice,” Siegel said.^[8]

And sophisticated clients, the ones most likely to have firms on retainer and pay by the hour, know that GAI means efficiency, for their lawyers and for their in-house counsel.

Is the Billable Hour Dead?

Since at least 2002, lawyers have been predicting, perhaps gleefully, that the billable hour is terminally ill. Scott Turow, a lawyer and author of legal thrillers, highlighted in the August 2007 ABA Journal, “The Billable Hour Must Die.”^[9]

Billing arrangements other than by the hour, however, require the skill to estimate the amount of effort the legal matter will involve. That’s not insurmountable. It could be a trap for the unwary.

Ethical temptations remain. “Every fee structure, whether it is hourly, flat fee, contingency, subscription, or hybrid, has its own set of incentives,” Siegel advised.

“And those incentives, in turn, create pressure points that intersect directly with a lawyer’s ethical obligations.”^[10]

“Flat fees and subscriptions can reward speed and restraint rather than encourage thoroughness,” Siegel elaborated.

“Contingent fee arrangements can tilt counseling toward the lawyer’s preferred risk profile or encourage case selection that quietly narrows access to justice.”

Hybrid and value billing may be too complicated for the client to understand.

“AI heightens these tensions by compressing time by tempting firms to monetize what clients cannot readily see,” Siegel summarized.^[11]

“[U]nder the billable hour model, spending less time reduces revenue,” wrote two Oklahoma authors, including a former director of the Oklahoma Bar Association Management Assistance Program.

“Lawyers who use AI would then make less money. But under other fee arrangements (e.g., contingency fee, flat fee, success fee, subscription fee), spending less time increases profits. Lawyers who use AI should make more money.”^[12]

And, Siegel reminds us, “AI still requires human supervision.”^[13]

“[I]t would be reasonable for a lawyer who bills on an hourly basis to charge for the time spent in creating the prompt to the AI program and thereafter to charge for the time spent in editing, revising, or correcting the AI work product,” Woolf advised.^[14]

As the Oklahoma ethics experts put it, “[w]ith some applications, the lawyer’s work may shift to less time doing initial drafting and more time invested in citation checking and proofreading.”^[15]

‘Get Weekends Back’

“For those who use trusted tools built by lawyers for lawyers … the choice is clear: lawyers can improve quality, get weekends back and make more money.”^[16]

The history of technology has not reduced work but only the type and manual difficulty of the work to be done. Lawyers will keep busy.

That additional time may — perhaps must — go toward client development or into deeper, more interesting work for existing clients.

It could also offer opportunities to increase access to justice through more reduced-fee and limited scope representations, or free time for more pro bono cases.

Ethics Watch is a monthly article that tracks ethics trends and developments nationwide. It is NOT reviewed or written by the State Bar of Wisconsin’s ethics counsel attorneys, who write Ethical Dilemmas.

Endnotes

[1] Sarah E. Peterson, Ethical Dilemma: Ethical Considerations When Using Generative Artificial Intelligence, Wis. Law., Oct. 2024, at 29. ^

[2] Jordan Furlong, Long Live the Billable Hour Must Die!, Substack, Aug. 14, 2026, https://jordanfurlong.substack.com/p/long-live-the-billable-hour-must (last visited Sept. 10, 2026). ^

[3] James Andrew Calloway & Mark A. Robertson, Value Billing in an Age of Artificial Intelligence, Law Prac., Sept./Oct. 2025, at 10. ^

[4] Daniel J. Siegel, AI Amplifies Risks Across Every Billing Fee Model, Law Prac. July/Aug. 2026, at 2. ^

[5] Jeffrey D. Woolf, The Ethics of Generative AI and Legal Billing, 106 Mass. L. Rev. 3, 6 (Feb. 2026). ^

[6] Id. at 6. ^

[7] Id. at 6 – 7. ^

[8] Siegel, supra note 4, at 2. ^

[9] Calloway, supra note 3, at 7 – 8 (referencing Scott Turow, The Billable Hour Must Die, ABA J., Aug. 2007, at 32 – 37. ^

[10] Siegel, supra note 4, at 2. ^

[11] Id. at 6. ^

[12] Calloway, supra note 3, at 11. ^

[13] Siegel, supra note 4, at 3. ^

[14] Woolf, supra note 5, at 4. ^

[15] Calloway, supra note 3, at 8. ^

[16] Id. at 11. ^