Clients use AI to replace external consultants, MIT reports

Clients are using generative AI to bring legal and analytical work in-house, according to a 29 September 2026 article in MIT Sloan Review. Alturas Capital Partners, a real estate investment firm, now uses AI to handle leasing work previously performed by external lawyers, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars, the article reports.

The shift: lower costs for replicable work

Generative AI has reduced the cost of producing legal documents, market analyses, creative assets, and software when an internal team can replicate the work with AI tools, according to the MIT Sloan Review article. The shift mirrors the 1990s, when advances in communication and software made it economical to outsource back-office work, the article notes.

Client pressure on fees

Wall Street banks have asked large law firms to reduce their fees because of AI, according to the MIT Sloan Review article. The article does not specify which banks or firms, nor does it report whether any firms have complied or what timeline applies.

How established providers are responding

Several professional service firms have built AI products to retain clients, the article documents. A&O Shearman worked with legal AI firm Harvey to develop AI agents that distill the reasoning of senior lawyers for tasks such as antitrust filing analysis and credit documentation review, available by subscription. Thomson Reuters launched CoCounsel Legal, an AI legal research product built on the Westlaw platform, which contains decades of curated case law, 35 million legal classifications, and the ongoing work of more than 650 attorney editors.

WPP developed WPP Open, an agentic marketing platform drawing on 30 years of data from the world's longest-running brand equity study and behavioral research frameworks from Ogilvy. Moody's built AI agents that perform analyses automatically and deliver results directly into Microsoft applications such as Excel, via Microsoft Copilot.

What this means for consultants

The documented examples show that cost savings are measurable and that clients are willing to bring work in-house when AI tools make it feasible. Consultants and professional service providers must demonstrate value through proprietary data, quality assurance, or cost efficiency when clients can replicate parts of the work internally.

The MIT Sloan Review article does not quantify how much consulting or legal work has moved in-house across industries, nor does it compare the quality or error rates of AI-generated work to output from professionals.