As a teenager growing up in Kansas, I spent one summer working in the cornfields. From five in the morning until midday, I worked as a corn detasseler, which means I removed the pollen-producing tassels from the tops of corn plants.
I was not very good at it.
By the end of the first day, my neck was covered in cuts from the sharp edges of the corn leaves. The people working around me were older, faster, and more experienced. It’s a summer I will not forget. But the memory that sticks with me most vividly is the day we arrived at a new field where I noticed a large piece of farm equipment in the next field over.
I asked the foreman what it was.
“That machine is doing what you’re doing right now,” he told me. Then, seeing the look on my face, he added, “Don’t worry. You’re better at it. You can do it with less waste.”
He meant to reassure me. Instead, I remember thinking: Uh-oh. That machine is going to take this work away. Then I looked at the people working around me and thought about how that machine was going to affect them.
As an economist and the president of a leading economic consultancy that just celebrated its 65th anniversary, I find myself returning to that experience as I think about what the next 65 years will look like—particularly at a moment when the use of artificial intelligence is no longer a future prospect but a present reality and a technology that is rapidly changing the world of professional services.
Bringing a Human Perspective to the Economics of AI
I am keenly aware that economic language can make profound human experiences sound remarkably clinical. “Substitution for labor” sounds very different when the labor being substituted is yours.
I say that because there is another side of this discussion that we cannot afford to lose sight of: Professional services are, fundamentally, about people.
At NERA, I have long described our strategy as “people first.” If we recruit exceptional people, develop them, give them meaningful opportunities, and create an environment in which they thrive, we will thrive. Prioritizing our people rests on the belief that our key differentiators are the judgment, creativity, expertise, and credibility of our people.
AI does not make that philosophy less important. It makes it vital.
This people-first perspective has shaped how I approach the use and impact of AI because I do not want to lose sight of the people whose work will be transformed as a result of its adoption. My research as an economist also has shaped my thinking because the field of economics has a lot to say about how we should frame and think about technological change and how innovation can lead to productivity improvements and market expansion, but also to efficiencies that change how we work and what we do. I draw on both of these perspectives to better understand what AI means for professional service firms like ours, explore how we can navigate the opportunities and challenges it presents, and consider how to integrate it thoughtfully into our daily work.
Reinvesting the Productivity Gain to Create More Value
We are already seeing AI perform tasks that people once performed. It can search thousands of documents, organize information, analyze data, and produce a first draft in a fraction of the time those tasks once required.
But a task is not necessarily a job and is certainly not a vocation.
Suppose AI turns something that once consumed two days of someone's time into something that takes 20 minutes. The economist in me sees a substantial increase in productivity. The leader in me asks, “What do we do with the time we just created?”
Some might answer that we need fewer people. For someone beginning a career today, the uncertainty this creates is real and may feel threatening.
But reducing headcount is not the only possible response to greater productivity. The capacity AI creates can be reinvested to provide better client service, higher-quality work, stronger mentorship, and new services. It can enable us to pursue important questions for our clients that once would have been too costly to evaluate. It may also change the mix of skills firms need, generating a greater demand for data, technology, and interdisciplinary expertise alongside the core professional capabilities on which our work has always depended. To me, the strategic response is not to diminish the opportunities we can give our people, but to use AI to take on the more challenging questions and issues that will really make a difference to our clients, expand the services and client support that our teams offer, and help our people develop the judgment, expertise, and relationships on which professional services rely.
The Opportunity to Change the Talent Model
Advances in AI may even allow us to get back to some of what drew us to our professions in the first place. After all, economists generally did not become economists because they dreamed about formatting spreadsheets. Most lawyers did not go to law school because they wanted to spend their time checking citations and formatting briefs. We chose our professions because we wanted the opportunity to help clients solve difficult problems, develop the expertise our clients need, and help others learn and make better decisions in an increasingly complicated and quickly changing world.
If AI can streamline routine tasks surrounding our work, it creates a real opportunity.
This distinction matters enormously in professional services. As AI gathers information, reviews documents, and generates drafts more quickly, the value of simply producing those inputs may decline. What becomes more valuable are the capabilities that turn information into insight: asking the right questions, identifying what matters, exercising economic and legal judgment, understanding the client, communicating a complicated idea clearly, and earning trust.
In economic terms, AI has improved the efficiency with which professional services firms perform many routine tasks. But the ability to read thousands of documents more quickly or to create an economic dataset in weeks rather than months does not automatically mean we are going to give our clients better advice and counsel. Someone still has to define the question we are trying to answer, weigh competing explanations, identify what matters, exercise judgment, communicate the conclusion, and stand behind it. In our work, these are not peripheral skills. Increasingly, these are the skills that will be the key differentiators for professional services firms.
Therefore, the economic question is not only, “What can AI replace?” It is also, “What can AI enable, and what choices will firms make with the capacity it creates?”
Leadership Amid Uncertainty
All of us have to be ready to answer these questions. All of us will have to continue learning and adapting. But it is neither fair nor useful to put the burden on individual employees and say, in effect, “Technology has changed; go figure out how to remain valuable.”
Leaders have this responsibility too.
If professional services firms want to continue attracting exceptional people, we need to create environments in which they can see a future for themselves. That means thinking seriously about training, career paths, experience, mentorship, and how junior professionals develop judgment.
The best firms will not simply ask how much labor AI can remove from the process. They will ask how technology can help their people become better at what clients ultimately need them to do.
These are economic and strategic questions. But they are, above all, human questions.
Years after that summer in Kansas, I became curious about what happened to corn detasseling. Unsurprisingly, the work has changed. Machines now perform much of the initial detasseling in many fields, but people still follow behind the machines, removing tassels the equipment missed. Some of those who used to walk the corn rows now operate the machines that once seemed to threaten their livelihoods.
There is something reassuring in that story. But the uncertainty and anxiety we feel will not go away, because no one knows exactly how AI will reshape careers in law, economics, consulting, and other professional services. That is precisely why leadership matters.
Over the coming months, I plan to explore the economics behind these changes. The answers will rarely be simple. But I firmly believe we will reach better ones if we remember what professional services firms fundamentally are: organizations of people serving other people.
As we become increasingly focused on what AI can do, we cannot lose sight of the people working alongside it and the need to plan and prepare for the opportunities that will come next.
