Firms Are Activating AI Tools — But Not Measuring Whether Lawyers Actually Use Them

BARBRI Professional Education published "Driving Change and ROI: Uniting Three Teams to Lead Law Firms into the Future" on August 6, based on in-depth interviews with ten leaders across nine firms ranging from global Am Law 100 partnerships to tech-enabled operators. The finding that will sting mid-sized firm leaders most: almost no firm interviewed could identify which lawyers had actually changed the way they work — only which ones had activated a tool. The report describes the management pattern across firms of every size as either "too many cooks in the kitchen" or "nobody," and concludes that the billable hour remains the most stubborn structural barrier to AI adoption, a problem training alone cannot solve. For mid-sized firms operating without dedicated innovation, L&D, and KM teams, the coordination gap is even sharper: tool deployment is only the first step, and the firms that will lead by 2030 are those that connect activation to measurable behavioral change through aligned incentives and competency frameworks.