Law360 (June 26, 2026, 1:57 PM EDT) -- Legora's move to a consumption-based pricing model could spur other legal tech companies to follow suit and charge for usage, but experts say that any benefit for law firms won't be automatic or immediate.

Earlier this week, the Swedish legal artificial intelligence company rolled out a new pricing model for its new Agent Pro product, charging organizations based on usage rather than a flat-fee model that charges a subscription fee per user.

The move is part of a larger trend among AI companies. General AI tools, such as Cursor and Lovable, as well as some of the foundational AI model providers themselves, have transitioned since 2024 and 2025 to consumption-based pricing to protect their bottom lines from skyrocketing infrastructure costs.

AI models run tokens, which are units of data. While the baseline price for processing AI tokens has decreased in recent years, total spending on AI usage has skyrocketed due, in part, to new agentic AI workflows that require more tokens. Gartner estimates that AI spending will jump 44% year-over-year to $2.52 trillion in 2026.

This is referred to as the Jevons effect, an economic principle where technological efficiency improvements lead to an increase in total consumption.

As Legora pivots to new pricing, Harvey and Thomson Reuters have taken a different approach by creating their AI models to serve users on a subscription fee basis rather than paying tokens to foundation AI model providers.

Developing internal AI models enables legal tech companies to offer predictable flat pricing but requires heavy upfront investment. Consumption pricing is easier for legal tech vendors, because it aligns directly with pay-as-you-go external model costs.

"Consumption pricing has been in the air for months," Elgar Weijtmans, head of technology and AI at HVG Law, EY's Dutch strategic partner firm, told Law360 Pulse. "In the corridors at conferences, almost every vendor hinted they were moving the same way, none of them keen to be the first to say it aloud."

Weijtmans expects that Legora's move may influence others in the market to follow suit.

Law firms are used to paying flat fees for AI tools, such as Microsoft Copilot, allowing them to budget around a set cost each month.

That said, consumption-based pricing is not a completely new model. Law firms that developed their own internal AI tools on foundational models already pay based on usage. And most major e-discovery platforms have spent years charging for a different type of consumption — data usage and storage.

The difference is that law firms often pass the cost of e-discovery to clients, raising questions about whether clients will be charged new AI fees for outside counsel usage.

In the case of HVG Law, the firm is locked into a multiyear flat-fee contract with the legal AI platform Zeno. With a flat-fee contract, Weijtmans said the vendor is now basically subsidizing the firm's consumption for the remainder of the contract, which can be an issue for the vendor.

"A flat fee cannot fund a vendor through rising usage without someone absorbing the loss, and a model that quietly bleeds the supplier is not a foundation either side should want to build on," Weijtmans says.

The impact of consumption pricing might depend on the firm's size. Prayan Pradhan, a recruitment specialist focusing on law firms and legal tech at E-Resourcing Ltd., says that larger firms could face more challenges due to tendencies to have higher caseloads and usage.

"It will also streamline how firms utilize the platform and make you reconsider using it only when you need to," Pradhan says. "Firms will need someone who understands the workflow to be able to identify what parts of the business are critical and would benefit using AI vs what parts are a 'nice to have.'"

Consumption pricing could be a tough pill for some law firms to swallow now, but Weijtmans says that vendors who charge usage rather than headcount might eventually be more incentivized to help law firms with adoption.

Change management is one of the biggest challenges in law firms deploying pricey AI tools, and consumption-based pricing could improve that.

"Price pressure now forces the same firms to optimize for cost and speed, which in AI are tightly coupled," Weijtmans says.

--Additional reporting by Marialuisa Taddia. Editing by Nicole Bleier.

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