Nearly every major law firm—even those once deemed untouchable—has lost a high-profile partner to a competitor.

Each move presents unique communications challenges to the losing firm, but the issues are generally in the same universe. Now, law firms have to think about an entirely different set of risks tied to an entirely new type of departure: the star partner who joins or launches an AI-native startup. The narrative comes down to something like: "I left because AI lets me serve clients faster, cheaper, and more efficiently than a traditional law firm." It's a compelling headline to both legal and lay audiences. It builds on a trend and calls attention to the traditional firm’s operations and its own use of technology.  And it requires a response.

Shape the narrative

“Define the narrative before events define it for you” is a well-known PR adage. It’s helpful advice if you know what kind of events could hit you. Sometimes you don’t. But the impact of AI is an issue that any firm can prepare for.

Certainly, many firms have taken big steps in their AI journey, but we’re now in a new competitive environment where insurgents are gaining steam. That requires clear messaging not just about the tech a firm is using, but what advantages it offers over upstarts.

Those firms that have been telling a consistent story around innovation will be in a much better position to weather a negative media headline like the one described above.

And here’s the thing: incumbents have some significant advantages over the AI natives. Start with data. Decades of matters, outcomes, and institutional memory aren't something that AI natives can easily reproduce. An AI-native firm might promise speed, but speed built on a thin or synthetic dataset is a different product than speed built on decades of precedent and pattern recognition across thousands of deals and disputes. Then there's depth. AI-native firms tend to be built around a narrow thesis—usually a specific practice area or transaction type where automation delivers the clearest ROI. Most sophisticated clients don’t have mere legal problems. They have complicated business problems that need a legal solution. Traditional firms, for all their inefficiencies, have breadth, which can work magic under ideal circumstances: partners who’ve seen a novel issue in litigation inform how they think about it in transactional work, or have regulatory expertise that cross-pollinates with corporate practices. That kind of range doesn't compress easily into a product roadmap.

And then there's timing, which may be the biggest advantage of all. The broader business narrative is shifting. After two years of AI-will-replace-everything headlines, the pendulum is swinging back toward something more measured—companies are hiring for roles they thought they'd automate away, and “human-led” is starting to read less like a limitation and more like a selling point.

That shift matters enormously for how general counsel make decisions. There's real safety in the familiar. If a matter goes sideways, a GC explaining to her board that she retained the firm with the best reputation and the longest track record is making an easy case. Explaining that she chose an AI-native shop with no institutional history and no record to point to is a much harder discussion. Boards don’t just evaluate outcomes; they evaluate the judgment behind the decision. Right now, that judgment still favors the incumbent.

Communicate the advantages

But advantages do not automatically equal winning. Firms need to communicate them.

Most firms are experimenting with AI. They have pilot programs and working groups. But they need to be ready to explain why their model is superior in the age of AI. Any ambiguity is itself a liability in part because it lets others fill the narrative void. A firm's stakeholders—its lawyers, clients, laterals, recruits—don't need a firm to have the right on why they will thrive amid new challenges; they need it to have an answer. The firms that will win the departure-story fight aren't the ones with the best AI tools. They're the ones who can say, clearly, why they believe they are well-positioned in the AI age — before a partner's exit forces the question.