Editor’s Note: This is an article reposted from Gani AI CEO and Co-Founder Bintang Hidayanto’s LinkedIn.

History is full of massive turning points. The wheel, combustion engine, flight, electricity, internet. Each time, the world takes a leap and never looks back.

Now we are going through another one. AI. Soon, we may look back at the world before AI with nostalgia, the same way my generation does when talking about the internet.

What does this mean for law as a business? After 15 years as a lawyer and building a firm from the ground up, here’s what I think.

(1) Being a great lawyer will mean something entirely different.

It used to be about regurtitation of knowledge. Back in the day, partners were praised for being able to recite the exact clause of a statute word for word. That was the party trick. The new party trick? Beating AI at it. Good luck with that. The real game now is strategy, judgment, execution. The best lawyers won’t be the ones who can regurgitate legal text but the ones who know how to apply it, navigate human behavior (and AI behavior!), make judgment calls, and stand for something.

(2) AI will be the great equalizer.

Will AI kill junior lawyers? Absolutely not. It will empower them. The ones who adapt will gain skills and experience at a speed that was impossible before. AI will level the playing field, making knowledge and efficiency accessible to anyone who embraces it. What AI will kill are the late adopters and the naysayers.

(3) Legal careers will evolve.

AI will finally break the rigid mold of what a lawyer should look like. Working moms, digital nomads, people who never cared about the old-school firm culture, AI will enable them to compete on equal footing with the Loro Piana-wearing hotshots.

(4) Access to legal services will change forever.

Saying I will call my lawyer was, and still is, a power move. AI is about to change that. It will no longer be a privilege reserved for a few. Digital platforms will allow lawyers to deliver services seamlessly, integrating with fintech to offer flexible payment options. Pay Later, Pay Now Half, Pay in Five Months, Pay with a Credit Card, Pay with PayPal, Pay with a Digital Wallet, Pay with Bitcoin, whatever. Legal services won’t be locked behind outdated billing practices, and costs will go down, not because quality is reduced, but because inefficiencies are eliminated.

(5) Law will return to its roots.

Before law firms became industrialized machines, people went to lawyers the way they would go to a trusted friend. That’s why they were called counsel. AI will make this model viable again. The bloated multi-jurisdictional deal teams of today, one ultra-senior partner shaking hands, three slightly less senior partners looking serious in meetings and making empty promises, two exhausted senior associates running the entire deal, and fifteen juniors acting as human steroids, will be streamlined. AI will cut the excess while delivering the same results. And if you don’t believe that, why are you using AI to write your LinkedIn posts?

(6) The mega-firm model will unravel.

The hypergrowth law firms that rode the wave of US and European global expansion in the 90s will have to rethink their purpose. Institutional prestige and sheer headcount will no longer be enough. AI will challenge the need for massive teams grinding out billable hours, and firms that fail to adapt will find themselves obsolete.

(7) Legal work will be arbitraged – cross border will be demystified.

AI will dismantle traditional barriers. A legal operator in one country will produce the work while a licensed verifier signs off on it. Even the most complex cross border legal work will scale faster, cheaper, and globally, while maintaining high quality, thanks to AI.

(8) PPP will soar.

Less politics, lower costs, maybe less revenue, but definitely more profit.

This isn’t the end of law. It’s the end of law business as we know it. AI won’t kill legal work. It will strip away everything except what actually matters. Judgment, strategy, execution, human skills.