Virtual Pricing Director®: Embedding Pricing and Profitability into the AI-Driven Work-to-Cash Ecosystem

By Richard Burcher, Vice President, Pricing & Profitability at Aderant

Pricing is where Profitability is Won or Lost

Most firms don’t have a pricing problem. They have a pricing-and-profitability execution problem.

Firms may have sophisticated pricing teams, clear guidance on value-based fee arrangements, and increasingly advanced analytics. Yet profitability still leaks, quietly and persistently, through avoidable discounting, unmanaged scope creep, inconsistent decision-making, and late-stage write-downs that nobody explicitly chooses, but everyone accepts as inevitable.

That leakage is about to get worse.

As artificial intelligence accelerates the shift toward hybrid human-technology service delivery, long-standing assumptions about effort, leverage, staffing, and value are being destabilized. Work will increasingly be delivered by different combinations of people and technology, at different cost structures, often within the same matter.

This is why the next phase of legal pricing maturity isn’t about better rate setting or more elegant fee structures. It’s about embedding pricing and profitability discipline into matter management—so pricing intent is continuously informed by how matters are staffed, delivered, billed, and paid across the lifecycle.

Rather than treating pricing as a one-time decision, firms gain ongoing visibility into whether delivery aligns with the economic model they sold.

That is precisely what Virtual Pricing Director® (VPD) was designed to do.

From Pricing Tools to Pricing Intelligence

Many firms still operate with a familiar pricing lifecycle: a proposal is prepared, a structure is agreed, the matter begins—and profitability is assessed only after billing, when options are limited or non-existent.

That model struggles even in a purely human delivery world. In a hybrid human-technology model, it becomes untenable.

AI breaks the traditional link between time spent and work delivered. More work can be done in less time—sometimes dramatically less—making time a poor proxy for value, cost, or margin. Pricing decisions made at the outset, without continuous profitability management, are simply not resilient enough for what lies ahead.

By embedding VPD into the Work-to-Cash workflow, firms can apply pricing and profitability intelligence at the moments where economic outcomes are shaped—without removing human judgment or oversight.

Execution remains rules-driven and AI-assisted, while VPD provides the pricing insight and feedback loops that allow firms to adjust scope, staffing, and pricing assumptions as matters unfold.

Questions that were once answered only after billing can now be addressed during delivery:

• Are we executing this matter in a way that aligns with the economic model we sold?

• How is technology-enabled work affecting margin assumptions in real time?

• Are scope, staffing, or effort patterns drifting in ways that threaten profitability?

• Are billing decisions reinforcing—or undermining—the client value proposition?

• In an AI-enabled delivery environment, these questions are no longer optional.

Designed for AI-enabled Legal Delivery

AI does not simply reduce hours. It reshapes cost curves, leverage models, and value perceptions—often simultaneously.

Firms need pricing and profitability systems that can accommodate mixed human and AI contribution within the same matter, addressing increasing client scrutiny of outcomes rather than inputs, and new margin risks that are invisible in traditional time-based reporting.

Designed with these realities in mind, Virtual Pricing Director® treats pricing and profitability as dynamic, managed disciplines—rather than static ‘moments’—helping firms adapt their economic models as delivery models evolve.

Pricing and Profitability as a Strategic Advantage

The firms that will lead over the next decade will not simply be those that adopt AI fastest. They will be the firms that align AI-enabled delivery with disciplined pricing and profitability management.

Embedded within the Aderant Work-to-Cash ecosystem, Virtual Pricing Director® represents a clear step toward that future—where pricing, profitability, and delivery are no longer separate conversations, but part of a single, continuously learning operating model. To learn more, visit Aderant.com.