Is the billable hour about to become a thing of the past?
It seems inevitable, at least for lawyers and other professional-services firms, because as artificial-intelligence capabilities accelerate, the fundamental logic of charging for time spent rather than value delivered is becoming increasingly untenable.
The billable hour as the fundamental unit of business for professional services is so
widespread that it’s difficult to remember that it is a fairly recent innovation, becoming prevalent in the 1960s and 1970s. Before that, many lawyers and other professionals billed for outcomes achieved or services rendered, not for time.
Many say the seed for the billable hour was planted in the early 1900s by a young lawyer named Reginald Heber Smith, who implemented a time-tracking system for lawyers during his tenure as counsel to the Boston Legal Aid Society, which provided legal services to the poor. He wanted lawyers to track how they were spending their time, not for billing purposes but to find ways to improve the efficiency of the team, which had a limited budget….
Could AI make billable hours obsolete?https://t.co/E0lvwETo3p
— Bob Pickard (@BobPickard) December 5, 2025
"Widespread AI adoption could render the billable hour obsolete, a business expert argued. Lawyers, public relations pros, and consultants are outsourcing more work to bots, so the logic of charging for time —… pic.twitter.com/nEok6qU1v2