Indian Law Firms: AI Impact on Legal Fees and Client Billing Practices

Indian law firms are already using artificial intelligence (AI) and clients have started asking for their bills to reflect that. At a panel in New Delhi on August 17, Hyundai Motor India's General Counsel Amitabh Lal Das said that law firms should bill fewer hours once AI lets them finish research faster. Das said he had, in his own experience, been charged research fees disproportionate to the advice produced and that he expected AI adoption to bring down companies' external legal spending generally.The instinct behind cutting the bill because the work got faster is understandable. It is also the wrong place to start. A blanket discount treats every hour of AI-assisted work as equally cheapened, when the truth is closer to what Senior Advocate Chander Uday Singh raised at the same panel: generative tools occasionally invent case law that was never delivered and shape answers around what the questioner wants to hear rather than what the law actually holds, a tendency juniors are least equipped to catch. The real answer to Das's demand does not sit in a percentage knocked off in an invoice. It sits inside every firm's own time-sheets.Das's concern is the saving created by faster research. Singh's concern is what happens between an AI-generated answer and the advice an advocate is actually prepared to sign. Neither position is wrong, but taken alone, each creates a problem: Das's view gives a client no basis for sizing the discount it wants and Singh's view leaves a firm treat