News24 | Rob Green | AI isn’t crushing SA lawyers. Top partners now earn up to R24m

Rob Green believes a golden era is starting in the legal profession, driven, paradoxically, by the very technology that was supposed to destroy it.

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I was wrong.

For years, I believed the narrative. I read what felt like a thousand articles predicting the decline of the legal profession: AI would replace junior lawyers and solo consultancies, and alternative legal service providers would hollow out the traditional firm, and the billable hour would die a slow, painful death, taking partner earnings with it. I spent the better part of a decade telling lawyers at conferences to prepare for a new world with fewer opportunities and shrinking remuneration.

With the full weight of our 13 years of African legal market data and 24 years of remuneration intelligence behind me, I now believe we are witnessing the beginning of a golden era in the legal profession.

Not a gentle recovery. Not a holding pattern. A genuine, structural expansion in the value, volume, and earning power of legal work – driven, paradoxically, by the very technology that was supposed to destroy it.

Unambiguous numbers

In the US, large law firms posted revenue growth of nearly 12% in the first half of 2026, with billable hours rising more than 4%, not falling. The Am Law 100 – the 100 biggest law firms in the US – generated approximately $158.3 billion in gross revenue in 2025, with profit growth of around 13%. Globally, law firm revenue is growing at a 7.9% compound annual rate and is projected to exceed $1 trillion by 2033. Half of all legal professionals surveyed report revenue gains of 6% to 20% directly attributable to AI adoption.

Here in South Africa, our data tells the same story at the top.

The GRM Group recently released its thirteenth Legal Remuneration Report for South Africa.

It showed that equity partner medians are growing (on average) at 7%. General counsel compensation is growing at 11%, the fastest rate of any role we track.

The 90th percentile equity partner in South Africa now earns R23.9 million. The ceiling has never been higher.

Practice-area premiums of 15% to 30% above the level median for banking, energy, and competition lawyers are compounding year on year, meaning a well-positioned specialist at senior associate level in Johannesburg earns a full salary band more than a generalist peer – a gap worth R300 000 to R400 000 in absolute terms.

What apocalypse?

It turns out that AI does not replace lawyers. It replaces tasks. And when you make a valuable service cheaper and faster to deliver, you do not get less of it. You get more.

Economists call this the Jevons Paradox – the observation that efficiency improvements expand consumption rather than contract it.

Legal AI reduces time spent on routine drafting and research by 30% to 60%, but rather than shrinking the pie, it expands the total volume of addressable legal work.

Firms are closing more deals, taking on matters they would previously have turned away on cost grounds, and serving clients who could never have afforded the hourly rate.

AI will also create litigation at a scale we have not yet fully appreciated. Generative AI will not be reliably accurate for years, perhaps a decade. Every AI-generated contract with a flawed clause, every automated compliance report that misses a regulatory change, every algorithm that produces a biased outcome generates legal work. Data privacy enforcement under the Protection of Personal Information Act alone has already created a permanent specialism.

Add AI governance, cybersecurity incident response, and cross-border data regulation, and the disputes pipeline is deeper than it has been in a generation.

The billable hour isn’t dying

The real shift is not about hours; it is about value

The billable hour is not dying; it is being displaced. Time-based billing now represents less than 60% of revenue at leading practices. Matter-based pricing, success fees, fixed fees, and retainer models are expanding rapidly.

And here is the key insight: when you stop charging for time and start charging for outcomes, the lawyer who closes a R500 million deal doesn’t earn less because AI helped draft the documents faster. They earn more because the fee is now anchored to the value they created, not the hours they spent.

This is why our data shows that relationship-driven roles – equity partners, general counsel, directors – are growing at 7% to 11%, while execution roles grow at 1% to 3%. The market is repricing the value of the lawyer on the deal, but note that this will shift constantly, although I am not yet ready to call “dynamic pricing” the future for law firms.

Communication skills, client relationships, the ability to advise, to genuinely connect and understand your client, to negotiate, mediate and originate, these are now the most valuable commodities in the profession. Not research speed. Not drafting volume. Judgement, trust, and the ability to pick up the phone and truly listen.

And here’s the part no one is talking about: Small firms win too.

For years, the big four consultancies – Deloitte, EY, KPMG, and PwC – have threatened to eat the law firms’ lunch, amassing thousands of lawyers globally and encroaching on advisory, compliance and transactional work.

But AI levels the playing field in the other direction. A five-partner firm in Sandton with the right AI tools can now produce the volume of a 20-person team. An SME practice in Cape Town can run contract review, due diligence and regulatory research at a speed and quality that five years ago required Big Five infrastructure (including Arthur Andersen, which collapsed in 2002).

The technology that was meant to concentrate power in the hands of the largest players is actually distributing it. Those with an appetite for hard work, a genuine client relationship, and the willingness to adopt the tools will find themselves busier and more profitable than ever.

Law firms will increasingly look less like libraries and more like investment banks – lean, analytical, deal-driven operations where teams of data analysts work alongside lawyers who have moved deep into advisory, mediation, and strategic counsel.

Junior lawyers will not disappear; they will be redeployed into higher-value work earlier in their careers. And the profession as a whole will be busier because AI is not replacing the need for legal judgement; it is multiplying the number of situations that require it. Everyone will be busier. Everyone will be richer.

GRM publishes its legal remuneration report every year because I believe data should drive decisions, not fear.

The data shows that the lawyers who invest in a defensible specialism, build genuine client relationships, and embrace technology as a force multiplier – whether they sit in a Big Five partnership or a three-person boutique – are entering one of the most financially rewarding periods in the history of the profession.

The golden era is not coming. It is here. And I’ve never been so happy to be wrong.

Rob Green is CEO of the GRM Group.

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