After the billable hour.

One piece a week on AI commercialization for professional services firms. What’s working, what isn’t, where margin is moving.

Shawn Yeager

June 9, 2026

Efficiency Is the On-Ramp, Not the Destination

A $5.6B legal AI vendor’s own customers report winning new work and moving to fixed fees. The efficiency story is real. It’s also only the on-ramp.

June 2, 2026

What the Billable Hour Was Hiding

For decades the hour bundled execution and judgment into one number, and nobody had to pull them apart. AI changed that, and most firms still can’t say how much of their rate is which.

May 26, 2026

Your Clients Are Building What You Sell

When your client builds the work you used to sell them, you can’t out-invest them or compete on price. You change what you sell, or you lose the account.

May 19, 2026

Outcome Pricing Captures the Upside. Hourly Pricing Doesn’t.

Clients expect AI to cut your costs. But 100% would pay more for advisory that generates more value. The question is which side of that equation you’re on.

May 12, 2026

What Your Clients Are Saying About AI — When You’re Not in the Room

Your clients have opinions about your firm’s AI capability. They’re sharing those opinions with everyone except you.

May 5, 2026

Your Team Won’t Cannibalize Their Own Work

Asking your senior people to identify what AI can replace is asking them to flag parts of their own job that might disappear. That conversation needs a different structure.

Not sure where to start? See where your firm stands — 8 minutes, no account required.

April 28, 2026

The Music Industry Made This Mistake. Your Firm Is About to Make It Again.

Labels fought streaming. Banks missed the shift to fast, cheap digital payments. Enterprise software vendors treated cloud as cheaper hosting. The same pattern is playing out in professional services right now.

April 21, 2026

What 'Sellable AI Offerings’ Actually Look Like

Most firms know they need new AI-driven services. Few know what a finished offering looks like — the brief, the pricing, the delivery model, the first client conversation.

April 14, 2026

Sequoia Just Put a Trillion-Dollar Bounty on Your Business

Sequoia Capital told its portfolio companies that the next trillion-dollar company won’t sell software. It will sell the work professional services firms do now.

April 7, 2026

The 6% Problem

You’ve seen the McKinsey stat. 88% of organizations adopted AI. Only 6% see real earnings. Here’s the question that separates them.

March 31, 2026

You Already Know. Here’s Why You Haven’t Acted.

The managing partners furthest along in thinking about AI are often the most stuck. There’s a reason for that.

March 24, 2026

You’ve Done the Margin Math. Now What?

Every managing partner knows AI compresses billable hours. Almost none have operationalized the obvious answer: change what you sell.

March 17, 2026

AI Adoption Is Not AI Strategy

March 10, 2026

I’ve Commercialized Five Technology Cycles. Here’s the Pattern.

New writing, weekly.

On AI commercialization for professional services.