Odd Lots · Monday, July 13, 2026
Gary Wingins sees the Jevons Paradox at play in the legal field, where AI's cost reduction for services like reviewing trust agreements makes previously uneconomical cases or deals viable. This increased accessibility could lead to more legal work overall, despite lower per-unit costs.
“So I think that the Deevins paradox applies to legal In the example I gave you with the client who had thousands of trust agreements that needs to be reviewed. When we gave them the first quote, we didn't say we didn't want to do it. The client said, at that price, we're not going to do it because the risk, the downside risk isn't high enough to justify the price. But when the price came down by seventy percent, they said, oh yeah, at that price, we'll do it. So at and let's just use fake numbers. Ten million dollars they said, no, we're not going to do it, and we had our revenue was zero. When it came down to three million, they said, that's worth it, and we had three million of revenue.”
“So that's the Deevins paradox in action. Over the past twenty five years, E Discovery has ballooned the cost of litigation. To your point, right, Electronic electronic discovery run amok has has made it virtually impossible to bring a sophisticated litigation for under a few million dollars in legal fees and in just the discovery expenses alone, or millions of dollars. If we can bring say two million of discovery costs down to two hundred thousand, it does change the calculus for both on this.”