# From Bolt-On to Built-In: AI by Design Most firms are using AI to do the same things faster. But the real opportunity — the one that will actually differentiate firms — is using it to rethink how they deliver services altogether. - Category: Product - Published: 27 Apr 2026 - Authors: Lauren Ziegelaar - Canonical URL: /updates/ai-by-design ## Content Most firms are using AI to do the same things faster. But the real opportunity we see is teams using AI to rethink how they deliver services altogether. The question we put to our prospective clients is are you using AI to do your existing work faster, or are you using it to rethink what your work could look like? The most common pattern we see is a team looking at their current process and asking: which of these steps can AI help with? Maybe it's the drafting, maybe it's the review, maybe it's the research. They identify a few steps in the workflow, apply some tooling, and pick up some efficiency. That's a completely logical place to start, and we don't want to dismiss it, because it is valuable, and it's often how a team builds the confidence and familiarity to go further. However, the impact you can have with this approach is self-limiting. You're still designing around a process that was built for a world without AI. You're optimising the old model, not imagining the new one. What we find interesting and fun, and where we think the real opportunity lies, is when we flip the question. Instead of "how do we do this process faster?", we ask: "if we were designing this service from scratch, for clients who live in an AI-enabled world, what would it look like?" **AI has become table-stakes** At the top end of the market, having AI tools is no longer a differentiator. Clients expect it. Large firms are running Harvey, Legora, and a dozen other tools, and quite quickly, having these tools is no longer setting you apart. What starts to matter is what you do with it. How you've configured it to reflect the way your team actually thinks. What judgement you've built in, what your unique perspective looks like, how your particular expertise shapes the output. The differentiation isn't the technology, it's how deeply you've woven your firm's identity and capability into the way the technology works. This is why the "bolt-on" approach is limiting. If you're using AI as a layer on top of your existing process, you're not really injecting what makes your team unique into the work. You're just running the same process with a faster engine. Anyone else with the same tool gets the same engine. The firms that will stand out are the ones that have done the harder, more interesting work of thinking through their service offering end-to-end, and asking how AI can reshape it, not just accelerate it. ## What this looks like in practice We love working with clients not just wanting a specific process automated, but wanting to genuinely rethink what their service looks like. Often we do start with something more contained, like a particular workflow, or a specific task and it's a way to build trust and learn together. But the relationship deepens when we start to ask: what is the service you're delivering to your clients, and how would you design that if AI was native to it? This is a service design question that requires understanding your clients deeply, what they really value, what concerns they have, what they wish was different about how legal services work for them. The teams who will do this well aren't necessarily the ones with the most sophisticated technology stack. They're the ones who know their clients well enough to design for them. Who are having honest conversations about what AI means for the relationship, for fees, for risk, for quality. These teams have genuine view on what they're trying to achieve for the people they serve and how AI enables that.