Last week, I had the opportunity to spend time with Cain Elliott, Chief Legal Futurist at Filevine. Our conversation was both inspiring and jarring. He walked into the room and asked a question that every law firm, lawyer, and law school should be asking: “are you ready to get your shit wrecked?!?”
The pace of change in legal technology, AI, and client expectations is accelerating so quickly that if your head isn't spinning a little, you might not be paying close enough attention.
Cain rolled through new technology, advances in AI, in a lecture that felt like it was dancing around the meaning of what it means to be alive.
When I left, I thought about not only the technology but the practical. What is one to do?
Here’s the truth: agility isn't a nice-to-have anymore. It's the make-or-break factor in whether your firm thrives in the next five years or fades into irrelevance. And yes, that’s a bold statement. But it’s rooted in a clear and growing reality: small, agile teams with a clear eye on the future will be the ones riding this next wave. Everyone else? They risk being caught flat-footed, buried under their own legacy systems, bloated org charts, and outdated assumptions about what a law firm is and what clients want.
The AI Tidal Wave Isn’t Coming — It’s Here
Legal professionals have always operated in complex environments. But AI is turning complexity into exponential unpredictability. Generative AI isn’t just a better search engine, it’s beginning to displace tasks we once believed were solely the domain of human intellect. Drafting documents, analyzing case law, summarizing depositions, even predicting outcomes based on fact patterns: AI is starting to do these things faster, cheaper, and in some cases, more reliably. And it is only going to get better.
Filevine and other legal tech platforms are racing to integrate AI not just as an add-on, but as a foundational layer in everything from intake to case management to billing. And that's just the beginning. Law firms used to compete on reputation, experience, or specialization. Increasingly, they’ll compete on how well they harness and deploy AI within their workflows.
The takeaway? This isn't a someday problem. The firms who are experimenting with, integrating, and refining their use of AI today are the ones who will dominate tomorrow. The cost of inaction is irrelevance.
Why Big Can Be a Bug
Traditionally, scale has been a strength. The big firms won the biggest clients, could hire the best talent, and had resources to burn. But in this environment, size can be a bug, not a feature.
Large firms often struggle with change. Their technology is entrenched. Their processes are rigid. Their decision-making is layered and slow. This creates a perfect storm for paralysis just when nimbleness is needed most. Innovation isn’t just about technology, it’s about culture and people. And culture change is notoriously difficult in big institutions.
By contrast, small and mid-sized firms, if they’re willing to be bold, are perfectly positioned to outmaneuver their larger competitors. They can test, adapt, and implement new solutions in weeks, not years. They can rewrite job descriptions and workflows overnight. They can prioritize learning and unlearning. Most importantly, they can move fast without waiting for committee approval.
Think of these firms as speedboats in a sea of aircraft carriers. When the storm of technological disruption hits, it won’t be the biggest boats that survive, it’ll be the ones that can turn quickly.
The New Role Every Firm Needs: Futurist
During my conversation with Cain Elliott, I realized something that hadn’t quite crystallized for me before: every law firm needs a futurist. Not necessarily someone with that title (though why not?), but someone whose job is to look five years ahead while everyone else is looking five inches in front of their face.
This role isn’t about tech implementation. It’s about strategic vision. It’s about scanning the horizon, mapping emerging trends, and helping the firm make proactive decisions instead of reactive ones. It’s someone constantly asking:
Futurists ask uncomfortable questions. They challenge sacred cows. They drag conversations out of the comfort of the present into the ambiguity of the future. And that’s exactly what makes them so valuable.
Most firms are too focused on what’s on their desk to think about what’s coming down the pipeline. A futurist creates the space for that higher-level thinking—and ensures the firm doesn’t wake up five years from now wondering what went wrong.
Agility Isn’t Just About Technology
It’s tempting to define agility purely in terms of tools and platforms. But true agility is cultural. It’s about mindset. It's about a firm's willingness to question how things have always been done. It’s about how decisions are made, how quickly teams can act, and how open leadership is to experimentation.
Here are a few hallmarks of an agile firm:
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Rapid decision-making: Bureaucracy is the enemy of speed. Agile firms empower people to make decisions at the edge.
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Iteration over perfection: Rather than spending months perfecting a new system, agile firms launch a pilot, gather feedback, and refine.
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Cross-functional teams: Silos slow things down. Agile firms bring together legal, ops, tech, and client service to co-create solutions.
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Client-centric focus: Agile firms don't chase shiny objects—they build systems and services that solve real client problems.
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Psychological safety: Innovation requires risk. People need to feel safe to fail fast and share unconventional ideas.
If your firm doesn’t look like this yet, don’t worry. It’s not about being perfect—it’s about being intentional. And it starts with leadership.
Five Ways to Get More Agile Right Now
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Designate a Futurist (Even Informally)
Identify someone inside your firm who is naturally curious about where things are headed. Give them time, space, and a voice to explore the future of your practice and industry.
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Run a Tech Audit
Inventory the tools you're using. Which ones are outdated? Which workflows are being held together with duct tape? Where could AI make a measurable impact?
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Launch a Micro-Pilot
Choose one area—like intake or billing—and test a new tool or workflow. Measure its impact, then refine and scale.
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Hold a “Future Day”
Block a half-day each quarter for your team to explore emerging trends, demo new tools, and discuss client demands that haven’t surfaced yet. Make it fun. Make it future-focused. Involve your younger team members. They are digital natives.
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Build an Experimentation Culture
Celebrate learning. Reward initiative. Make it clear that being on the leading edge matters to your firm’s identity and success.
The Risk of Doing Nothing
It’s easy to wait. To tell yourself the tools aren’t ready, or that your clients don’t care about AI, or that you’ll implement changes next year when things slow down. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: this rate of change is the slowest it will ever be.
The firms that will lead the next generation of legal practice aren’t waiting for the dust to settle. They’re building, testing, learning, and pivoting right now. They're treating agility as a strategic advantage, not a buzzword.
And when the dust clears, they’ll be the ones standing.
Conclusion: The Future Belongs to the Fast
If you’re running a small or mid-sized firm, now is your moment. You don’t have to out-spend the big players. You just have to out-learn them. Out-innovate them. Out-agile them.
Invest in a futurist. Empower your people. Run your practice like a startup, not a bureaucracy. Because the future of law isn’t about who’s biggest, it’s about who can move quickly and ride the wave that is upon us.
And in this age of AI, boldness starts with speed.
