'Everyone should be AI fluent': Peter Duffy on the tech bets reshaping Big Law

If AI isn’t at the top of your law firm’s agenda, Peter Duffy suggests you may already be behind.

Duffy is the founder of legal tech consultancy Titans and advises large law firms on their biggest AI decisions. From his vantage point, the market has moved rapidly in the past year as firms have shifted “from dipping their toes in the water” with pilots to “trying to embed AI in everything they do.”

Speaking on The Non-Billable Podcast, Duffy says firms are making a strategic bet that AI will indeed transform the industry in the way many predict, and they should position themselves accordingly.

At the top end of the market, Harvey and Legora have emerged as clear frontrunners. For a CIO making a multi-year investment, their deep funding gives them an edge at a moment when the stakes are high.

“You are betting that AI is already having a huge impact on the industry and will continue to do so - and you’re betting on being able to deliver that change,” he says.

Adoption is everything

For the legal tech companies, Duffy argues that the real moat - at least for now - is not proprietary data or legal-specific LLMs, but how well a tool fits the way lawyers actually work.

“Marginal gains make the world of difference,” he says. When lawyers are extremely time poor and the value of their time is high, “every extra step, every extra click just starts to kill adoption.”

That focus on workflow fit - alongside governance and support - is what separates the vendors that are “law firm ready” from those that aren’t.

Anthropic’s new legal tool launch rattled legal data stocks, but Duffy describes the market reaction as “knee-jerk and overblown.” If he were running an RFP today, he says, the product “would absolutely not be in the top 10.”

He also cautions firms against trying to outbuild venture-backed AI companies. Competing with teams of engineers “working six days a week, 12 hours a day” is “very hard.” Pouring resources into building an in-house tool, he warns, is “a very easy way to burn a lot of money.”

So what should firms prioritise instead?

“Make sure your entire workforce is AI fluent,” Duffy says.

“Every single knowledge worker needs to be up-skilled and aware of how to apply AI. It must be done. It’s an easy bet that will definitely pay off.”

Listen to the full conversation with Peter Duffy on The Non-Billable Podcast.