New from Brilliant Thinking Press
Six Minutes
AI, Law & Why The Phone Stopped Ringing
What happens when six hours of legal work takes six minutes?
Legal artificial intelligence is usually discussed as a technology story. Six Minutes looks at the business underneath it: what clients will buy, what law firms can charge and what happens when the client can do more of the work itself.
The book
The technology is moving quickly. The business model beneath it may not survive unchanged.
For decades, law firms have sold expertise through time. What happens when work that once took six hours can be done in six minutes?
Who owns the saving? What becomes of the junior work that both generated profit and trained future partners? How do firms charge for judgement when less visible labour is required to produce it? And what happens when the client has the technology, people and confidence to do more of the work itself?
Six Minutes follows those questions into pricing, leverage, training, insourcing and the different business models law firms might build next.
It is written for the people responsible for the future of legal services, and for anyone interested in what happens when technology changes the economics of a profession.
“AI does not have to replace the lawyer. It only has to perform enough of the labour to make the old economic structure difficult to defend.”
The questions
This is not a book about which AI tool to buy.
What happens to the billable hour when time stops being a reliable measure of value?
Who should benefit when artificial intelligence makes legal work faster?
What happens to leverage when less junior labour is required?
How will future partners acquire judgement if the work that trained them disappears?
What happens when a law firm’s largest client becomes capable of doing the work itself?
Which business models could preserve expertise, responsibility and profit?
What will clients still need lawyers for?
Why might the phone simply ring less?
Six Minutes does not pretend that there is one inevitable future for law. It examines the economic pressures, follows the consequences and asks what firms might choose to become.
Who should read it
For managing partners, law-firm leaders, partners, general counsel, legal-operations teams, legal-technology companies and anyone responsible for deciding what comes next.
The author
Felix Riley
Keynote Speaker and Moonshot Strategist
Felix Riley helps teams rediscover the ambition they had when they first started out. His work explores why intelligent, successful people gradually lower their sights, accept invisible limits and forget how boldly they once thought.
A former BBC comedy writer, entrepreneur and Global Executive, Felix has built and sold a financial trading business, negotiated in Zambia and published two financial thrillers with Penguin.
He writes Six Minutes as a commercially curious outsider, asking questions about the future of law that he hopes will be useful to a profession facing profound change.
What legal leaders say about Felix’s work
These comments refer to Felix Riley’s speaking and strategic work with legal organisations. They are not reviews of Six Minutes.
“Having seen Felix speak at a conference, I immediately wanted to include him in our senior leadership team offsite. This was a key event to develop our firm strategy, in particular in light of AI developments. Felix's passion to help businesses think better, understanding of the legal sector, explanation of how to brainstorm effectively and drive to get beyond 'good enough' ideas was extremely effective and enabled our team to develop our thinking and plans far beyond what we would have achieved without him. I would have no hesitation in recommending Felix.”
“His talk engaged the audience brilliantly. It was full of energy, warmth and practical inspiration and we have already had a lot of great feedback from our attendees. I would wholeheartedly recommend him to anyone who is looking for inspiration and help in thinking more brilliantly.”
“We invited Felix to deliver a talk and facilitated workshop for our partnership in November 2025. I can honestly say it was the seed that got everything started. I'd been circling our long-term direction for a while, and in one session Felix gave us the momentum and clarity. He has a real gift for reading a room — he got a group of busy, naturally sceptical lawyers fully engaged, asking the right questions, and thinking bigger about where the firm could be by 2030. He pushed us, kept it energetic and practical, and the output fed directly into what has become our 2026-2030 strategy. If you want someone who can genuinely shift the thinking in the room and leave you with something you can act on, Felix is your man. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend him.”
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What happens when the work changes faster than the firm?
Six Minutes follows that question from the billable hour to the client that no longer needs to call.