The billable hour is finally repricing

Automation compressed the time required for routine legal work so dramatically that hourly billing started to punish efficiency — the faster the firm, the less it earned.

The response is a slow but real shift toward fixed-fee and outcome-based pricing for commoditized matters, with hourly rates reserved for genuinely bespoke work.

Signal: any professional-services model priced by time spent is exposed when the time collapses. Reprice around value.