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It\u2019s that time of year again and here is Part 1 of the Artificial Lawyer Predictions for 2026. This time a range of experts from across the industry were asked three questions: what will definitely happen, what might happen, and what definitely won\u2019t? Thanks for all the excellent insights and for sharing your thoughts. Part 2 is next week. Here they are in no particular order.<\/p>\n
\u2014<\/p>\n
Electra Japonas, CLO, SimpleDocs<\/p>\n
What will definitely happen in legal AI in 2026?<\/p>\n
Legal will finally stop confusing experimentation with progress. By 2026, most teams will have tried \u2018AI for Legal\u2019 in some form, and the novelty will be gone. Specifically for contracting, what\u00a0will matter is whether AI makes it measurably easier: fewer loops, clearer positions, faster decisions. Tools that don\u2019t reduce internal debate or external friction will quickly\u00a0fall out of use, regardless of how advanced the underlying model is.<\/p>\n
What might happen this year?<\/p>\n
Some Legal teams will probably realise that their biggest blocker was never technology, but the absence of clear internal positions. That could trigger a shift toward codifying how the business actually wants contracts to land, rather than treating every negotiation as a fresh exercise in judgment. If that happens, AI becomes useful not because it is smart, but because it enforces consistency where humans historically did not.<\/p>\n
What definitely won\u2019t happen in legal AI in 2026?<\/p>\n
AI will not fix unclear risk appetites, misaligned stakeholders, or Legal teams that refuse to make trade-offs. It won\u2019t replace lawyers, and it won\u2019t eliminate negotiation. The idea that better models alone will deliver better legal outcomes will be exposed as wishful thinking. In 2026, the gap won\u2019t be between teams with AI and teams without it, but between teams that decided how they want to work and teams that didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\u2014<\/p>\n
Winston Weinberg, CEO, Harvey<\/p>\n
What will *definitely* happen in legal AI in 2026?<\/p>\n
In 2026, context wins.\u00a0Legal AI will decisively shift from \u2018knowing more\u2019 to \u2018knowing the situation.\u2019\u00a0 Context-aware systems will consistently outperform generalist models, making situational understanding table stakes.<\/p>\n
What might happen this year?<\/p>\n
A headline transaction will be partially automated using AI. That will only happen because the in-house team and the law firm are operating inside a shared, deeply integrated AI system.<\/p>\n
What definitely won\u2019t happen in legal AI in 2026?<\/p>\n
We won\u2019t see large scale AI job displacement in the legal industry.<\/p>\n
\u2014<\/p>\n
David Wang, Head of Innovation, Cooley<\/p>\n
There will definitely be more consolidation in legal AI in 2025 as the first wave GAI becomes normalized<\/p>\n
We might see the first post-agent form factors begin to be commercialized<\/p>\n
We will definitely not see anyone successfully predict what is going to happen in AI in 2026 \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Anni Datesh, Chief Innovation Officer, Wilson Sonsini<\/p>\n
What will *definitely* happen in legal AI in 2026?<\/p>\n
More\u00a0focus on AI governance. As firms are forced to reconcile an increasingly complex patchwork of client AI guidelines, audits, and compliance demands, we will see a maturing of processes and tools aimed at governance and compliance.<\/p>\n
What might happen this year?<\/p>\n
We may see a proliferation of self-serve AI tools from law firms for narrow, repeatable use cases. Given growing comfort with AI and the availability of client-facing spaces in major platforms, we may see self-serve tooling offered to clients beyond just general \u2018legal chat bots.\u2019<\/p>\n
What definitely won\u2019t happen in legal AI in 2026?<\/p>\n
The death of the billable hour. Not yet, folks.<\/p>\n
\u2014<\/p>\n
Bryon Bratcher, MD, Gravity Stack<\/p>\n
What will for sure happen:\u00a0<\/p>\n
Beyond increasing adoption of AI assistants, law firms will continue investing in bespoke AI solutions. A recent Wharton study found that roughly one-third of enterprise AI budgets are allocated to R&D, a signal that firms are building, not just buying. This shift will require new internal roles and clearer ownership of AI strategy, development, and governance.<\/p>\n
What might happen:\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to that same Wharton study, 60% of enterprise companies are hiring Chief AI Officers. Some large law firms may follow suit in 2026, whether through formal Chief AI Officer roles or equivalent leadership positions. We may also see increased demand for hybrid legal\/technical talent and more systematic upskilling of existing teams on vibe coding.<\/p>\n
What definitely won\u2019t happen in legal AI in 2026:\u00a0<\/p>\n
This will upset all the AI bears, but AI will not turn out to have been a phase. If anything, the industry is still at the tip of the iceberg. Law firms will not \u2018move on\u2019 from AI after a year of experimentation; they will double down. The idea that legal AI enthusiasm fades in 2026 will age very poorly.<\/p>\n
\u2014<\/p>\n
Scott Stevenson, CEO, Spellbook<\/p>\n
What will *definitely* happen in legal AI in 2026?<\/p>\n
Demand for \u2018no slop\u2019 AI will skyrocket. Vendors will step up to that demand.<\/p>\n
Users are becoming astutely aware of the AI slop problem: outputs that look reasonable but that on inspection feel thin, regurgitated and hollow. Unnecessary AI redlines. Fluffy arguments that lack substance.<\/p>\n
Vendors will use grounding techniques to ground AI in objective data that you can inspect. At Spellbook we are launching Market Data Grounding to enable contract reviews to be grounded in real market data that you can filter and view.<\/p>\n
What might happen this year?<\/p>\n
Early adopters will likely begin collaborating with AI coworkers on email threads and in Microsoft Teams\/Slack. We have seen software engineers already move in this direction\u2014delegating long running coding projects to agents via Slack, checking in like you would check in with a coworker.<\/p>\n
This may be the beginning of the tipping point where AI tools shift from \u2018helpful tool\u2019, to \u2018helpful AI coworker\u2019.<\/p>\n
Besides that, I think AI may get a little more boring. We\u2019ve launched groundbreaking capabilities over the last couple years, but now I think we need a phase of quiet iteration where we simply make everything we\u2019ve made better, more accurate, more reliable, more easy to use. Less press headlines, more quiet improvement of accuracy.<\/p>\n
What definitely won\u2019t happen in legal AI in 2026?<\/p>\n
Personally I don\u2019t think the NewMod firms will be any real threat to traditional firms in 2026. Traditional firms are adopting AI technology very quickly and have a distribution\/marketing advantage.<\/p>\n
\u2014<\/p>\n
Jennifer Hill, CEO, ThoughtRiver<\/p>\n
What will *definitely* happen in legal AI in 2026?\u00a0<\/p>\n
2026 is bound to be an exciting year for legal AI, as legal professionals become more comfortable wading into the new world of legal work. Here are 2 things to watch:<\/p>\n
The \u2018magic wand\u2019 mindset will settle into reality. AI tools improve workflows, reduce drafting, research and editing time, and supercharge lawyering. The ultimate efficiencies come when AI works more like the legal professional works and replicates tasks with an greater accuracy and nuance. To achieve this faster, lawyers will increasingly realize that a little effort goes a long way.<\/p>\n
Hallucinations may become harder to detect (as opposed to easier) \u2013 especially when we\u2019re using agentic tools that lean on speed as opposed to accuracy. The human need to \u2018get it done\u2019 does not outpace the requirement for quality work. Consider AI a dynamic collaborator that still needs minding. It\u2019s where a legal professional\u2019s knowledge is essential to spot the subtle differences among answers that are wrong, not really correct, wishy-washy, correct, and a really great lawyer-quality answer.<\/p>\n
What might happen this year?<\/p>\n
\u2013 It will be interesting to see whether injected code in contract meta data prohibits certain AI-contract edits from occurring.<\/p>\n
\u2013 We might start to see some agentic system fails \u2013 the fall-out from poorly reviewed & executed contracts. Just like there have been false case citations appearing in litigation, the same lack of precision and accuracy has upstream effects upon a transaction. In 2026, we may start seeing where the last 2-years\u2019 focus on quick-and-easy takes a backseat to high accuracy AI-tools.<\/p>\n
What definitely won\u2019t happen in legal AI in 2026?\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2013 Fictious case citations won\u2019t stop. Checking sources is still fundamental.<\/p>\n
\u2013 The billable hour isn\u2019t going to die anytime soon (or at all). We will likely see more marketing of alternative business models so that clients start to feel the vibe change coming (even if slowly).<\/p>\n
\u2013 Lawyers aren\u2019t going anywhere. There is simply too much work and too many opportunities to improve outputs, provide greater value, and expand legal services and access to justice. Opportunities are endless to expand legal knowledge, automate risk review, and provide greater high-quality services to all. Lawyers are on a journey to scale ourselves and our positive impact through AI. Beware those who refuse to adopt technology and use it thoughtfully. Clients won\u2019t pay for inefficiencies much longer.<\/p>\n
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Jake Jones, Flank<\/p>\n
Will: Legal AI vendors will begin to offer legal services via acquisition, consolidation, roll ups.<\/p>\n
Might: The legal AI bubble will burst. Some vendors will experience unsustainable churn and we will see a lot of attempts for these \u2018losers\u2019\u00a0to exit to bigger fish before they collapse.<\/p>\n
Won\u2019t: Domain specific LLMs that materially outperform the latest foundation models for general legal work.<\/p>\n
\u2014<\/p>\n
Avaneesh Marwaha, Chief Executive Officer, Litera<\/p>\n
What will *definitely* happen in legal AI in 2026?<\/p>\n
Firms will begin identifying business development as a necessary skill to advance forward as efficiencies and commoditization of some work types occur leveraging AI. The real value of AI will sit in driving top line growth at firms.<\/p>\n
What might happen this year?<\/p>\n
A hybrid AI first law firm at scale.<\/p>\n
What definitely won\u2019t happen in legal AI in 2026?<\/p>\n
AI Judges. For the good of society, hopefully still decades away.<\/p>\n
\u2014<\/p>\n
Nicole Bradick, Factor<\/p>\n
What WILL happen \u2013\u00a0<\/p>\n
AI will become ubiquitous at the large firm level. Lawyers will be trained and will increase comfort with using AI. All firms will have implemented some AI solution by year end, with the more advanced firms moving towards AI as the operating system for their firms.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What MIGHT happen \u2013\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lawyers may get complacent in their AI use. \u00a0As accuracy improves, lawyers may end up working with AI on auto-pilot, accepting AI outputs instead of critically considering the accuracy and veracity of that output. It remains an important role for vendors to make sure users understand what is AI output v. not, and flag when accuracy should be confirmed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What WON\u2019T happen \u2013\u00a0<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t expect any meaningful regulations on AI out of the US next year. This will allow AI companies both in and outside of legal to push the boundaries of what is possible, but could also have some very negative impacts on lawyers, firms and clients if we\u2019re not all careful and temper enthusiasm with healthy skepticism.<\/p>\n
\u2014<\/p>\n
James Ding, CEO, Draftwise<\/p>\n
What will *definitely* happen in legal AI in 2026?<\/p>\n
In 2026, law firms can expect clients to demand the adoption of AI for contract drafting and review. Time kills deals, and in a world where AI can meaningfully accelerate the deal cycle, in-house teams will be far less willing to accept the pace at which law firms have traditionally operated.<\/p>\n
What might happen this year?<\/p>\n
AI adoption will expand beyond general-purpose tools like ChatGPT and Gemini that dominated lawyer usage in 2025. Much like the early days of cloud computing, when innovation largely meant rebranding basic cloud storage, legal tech is now positioned for a second wave. In 2026, we\u2019ll see legal-specific applications that clearly outperform generic models.<\/p>\n
What definitely won\u2019t happen in legal AI in 2026?<\/p>\n
The billable hour is not dead. For high-end work, firms are paid not just to produce documents, but to assess market norms, evaluate precedent-driven risk, and apply professional judgment. And firms will continue to charge clients for this strategic counsel. That said, the billable model is likely to evolve for lower-value, more commoditized work and for smaller firms, where tasks require less historical context and market insight.<\/p>\n
\u2014<\/p>\n
Daniel Lewis, CEO, LegalOn<\/p>\n
What will *definitely* happen in legal AI in 2026?\u00a0<\/p>\n
If current trends continue, foundational models may be nearly 4x better at the end of 2026 than at the start. In legal, that will translate to increases in accuracy and capabilities, allowing people to use AI for even more tasks. Products will continue to improve on top, product value will increase, and user adoption will continue to grow as a result.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What might happen this year?<\/p>\n
We may see several large ($500m+) acquisitions.<\/p>\n
What definitely won\u2019t happen in legal AI in 2026?\u00a0<\/p>\n
We will not reach any broadly agreed upon AGI \u2018artificial general intelligence\u2019 that wholly replaces lawyers.<\/p>\n
\u2014<\/p>\n
Ed Walters, VP Legal Innovation + Strategy, Clio<\/p>\n
What will\u00a0definitely\u00a0happen in legal AI in 2026?<\/p>\n
In 2026, corporate legal departments will stop treating legal AI as an experiment and will begin requiring outside counsel to show measurable efficiency gains. Firms that cannot do so will increasingly watch those capabilities move in-house. At the same time, law firms will move beyond short-term, promotional AI pilots and commit to full platform implementations.<\/p>\n
Out: Prompt engineering.\u00a0In: Context engineering.<\/p>\n
Out: Point solutions.\u00a0In: Platforms.<\/p>\n
Out: Silos.\u00a0In: Operating systems and ecosystems.<\/p>\n
Out: magical thinking.\u00a0In: Change management thinking.<\/p>\n
What might happen in legal AI in 2026?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s possible that some global firms move from two large legal information duopoly tools to one (plus a fully deployed AI-first platform). The marginal additional benefit of the second of two duplicate legacy legal research vendors just doesn\u2019t seem very compelling for the price, in an age where AI creates so much more value.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s possible that in 2026 some global firms will begin moving away from maintaining two large, overlapping legal information vendors in favor of one core provider paired with a fully deployed, AI-first platform. As AI takes on more substantive reasoning and workflow responsibility, the marginal value of paying for duplicate legacy research tools becomes harder to justify. In a market where value is increasingly created through context, orchestration, and execution, redundancy will start to look like inefficiency rather than risk mitigation.<\/p>\n
What definitely won\u2019t happen in legal AI in 2026?<\/p>\n
We\u2019re not getting AGI. We will get GPT-6 and Gemini 4, and they will overtake a bunch of undifferentiated, thin-wrapper prompting tools.<\/p>\n
What will not happen in 2026 is the emergence of artificial general intelligence. While the market will see the next generation of large language models, including GPT-6 and Gemini 4, these releases will not represent a step change toward general intelligence. Instead, they are likely to accelerate market consolidation. Solutions that rely on undifferentiated, prompt-based layers will find it increasingly difficult to compete as foundation models continue to overtake point solutions. The market will further separate platforms that embed AI directly into systems of record and operational workflows from those that offer superficial AI experiences without durable underlying value.<\/p>\n
\u2014<\/p>\n
Cecilia Ziniti, CEO, GC AI<\/p>\n
What will *definitely* happen in legal AI in 2026?<\/p>\n
Legal AI already moved to production in in-house legal departments, with 86% of in-house legal team members using AI for legal work at least once a week. 2026 will bring deeper use cases, agents, and legal teams bringing legal AI to the rest of the company for first pass reviews and standing in for legal for simpler questions.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Further, every major in-house team will have at least one workflow (typically NDA review, contract intake, or outside counsel invoice review) where AI is deeply embedded in daily operations. \u00a0<\/p>\n
AI will influence who gets hired and who advances, as understanding and directing AI becomes a key skill of modern leadership especially in legal. We get CEOs emailing us asking for GCs who know GC AI! Similarly we see GCs evaluating their team members on how well and creatively they AI \u2013 individually lawyers won\u2019t be able to opt out!\u00a0<\/p>\n
What might happen this year?<\/p>\n
In\u2011house teams and general counsel will continue to lead on AI. Legal teams are rolling out AI playbooks, redline guidance, billing rules, and prompts they require outside counsel to use. This shift might finally push Big Law to move faster away from the billable hour, as GCs start defining not just what gets delivered, but how the work gets done, and voting with their dollars.<\/p>\n
What definitely won\u2019t happen in legal AI in 2026?<\/p>\n
AI won\u2019t replace lawyers this year. In corporate legal teams and among general counsel, judgment, accountability, and business context matter. The best teams using AI this year will use it to elevate their impact \u2013 lawyers will control the AI, know the right questions to ask, and serve their stakeholders better with AI as their stand-in, tuned to their legal judgement.<\/p>\n
\u2014<\/p>\n
Jerry Levine, GC and Chief Evangelist, Leah<\/p>\n
What Will Definitely Happen:<\/p>\n
Point Solutions Will Hit Their Ceiling, Platforms Will Drive Buying Decisions: 2026 is the year legal AI stops being about neat tools and starts being about operating infrastructure.\u00a0The\u00a0legal AI market will stop debating whether platforms matter more than point solutions and start feeling the consequences of choosing the wrong one. Point solutions have thrived by solving discrete problems like research, drafting, and redlining. Those capabilities are now table stakes. The differentiator will no longer be what an AI tool can do in isolation, but how outputs connect across systems, teams, and workflows, and whether that behavior can be governed at scale. Legal departments won\u2019t abandon point tools overnight, but buying criteria will shift. This doesn\u2019t mean point solutions disappear, but they will be evaluated as components inside broader operating environments, not as standalone systems of record.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Name Changes:\u00a0ContractPodAi will become Leah (I suppose that this prediction wasn\u2019t a \u2018prediction\u2019 if I already knew the outcome).\u00a0<\/p>\n
What Might Happen:<\/p>\n
The Contract Lifecycle Contraction:\u00a0Contract lifecycle management could hit an inflection point, with analysts predicting zero-touch contracting for low-risk agreements and redlining tools achieving 95% accuracy (but don\u2019t mistake accuracy for understanding and humanity).\u00a0 I expect that companies using AI in CLM can cut contract review time by as much as 50%. And speaking of reductions, I do think that there will be a contraction in the CLM market, with two (maybe more) CLM company mergers predicted.<\/p>\n
Law: The Political Battleground:<\/p>\n
I do have some concerns for the legal profession that could become a political flashpoint in jurisdictions that have elections and political contests this year. AI in law touches two sensitive nerves at once: employment anxiety, particularly for junior associates (although I\u2019m certain we aren\u2019t going to see mass displacement of lawyers), and populist concerns around access to justice, where AI is framed either as an equalizer for underserved communities or as a tool that that can allow for significant misuse.<\/p>\n
I\u00a0also don\u2019t expect sweeping USA federal action on AI in 2026.\u00a0AI licensing for legal work, outright restrictions on AI use in specific practice areas, or broad transparency mandates are unlikely to become law at the national level. But I do see many organizations adopting AI guidelines and policies that mirror the most restrictive requirements to avoid running afoul of state and national AI laws.<\/p>\n
What Won\u2019t Happen:<\/p>\n
Humans Will Not Be Removed from the Loop:\u00a0In 2026, AI hallucinations will not be eliminated, and human judgment will not be removed from legal workflows. The idea that legal AI can operate autonomously, without meaningful human oversight, will remain unrealistic in professional practice. As AI capabilities continue to advance, legal organizations are placing greater emphasis on trust, accountability, and transparency in how AI is applied. Human review remains a core part of responsible deployment, not because AI lacks potential, but because professional legal work requires clear ownership of decisions and outcomes. What will evolve is not the disappearance of humans from the process, but the formalization of how humans and AI work together. Legal organizations will increasingly define clear review, accountability, and escalation frameworks that embed human judgment where it matters most. In 2026, the differentiator will not be whether AI makes mistakes. It will be whether organizations can demonstrate responsible, human-centered deployment that balances automation with accountability.<\/p>\n
No Billing Model Revolution: AI won\u2019t replace human judgment on high-stakes legal matters \u2014 it will enhance lawyers, not substitute for them (the \u2018end of the billable hour\u2019 won\u2019t arrive either). Even if all law firms switched to fixed fees overnight, legal costs would remain high because clients pay for strategic judgment and risk reduction, not just document generation. Companies hire experienced lawyers at firms for their expertise in navigating complex regulations and high-stakes litigation, where the partner\u2019s reputation and experience matter more than AI efficiency. The legal industry\u2019s relationship-based value and regulatory protections will keep high-complexity work from becoming commoditized.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2014<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Antti Innanen, Dot.legal<\/p>\n
What will definitely happen:<\/p>\n
We are entering the era of Law 3.0, where natural language becomes the new legal interface, and AI models do the rest. The idea comes from Andrej Karpathy and coding, but it applies to law as well.<\/p>\n
This is a massive shift, because specialised language (like in coding), used to be our main tool. Now it is judgment. Legal work moves further away from syntax and closer to evaluation, framing, and responsibility.<\/p>\n
The penetration of legal AI will be as widespread as Microsoft Excel or PowerPoint. Almost every lawyer will have some kind of AI tool at their disposal by the end of 2026. Dario Amodei has said that 90 percent of code will be written by LLMs. My prediction is that roughly 90 percent of legal documents will be AI-created by the end of 2026.
And I am also not sure what Law 2.0 was. Maybe we skipped that?\u00a0<\/p>\n
What might happen:<\/p>\n
We might see the first self-driving law firms enter the market. Waymo for Law. We will move from tools to agents to full self-driving, end-to-end AI models.<\/p>\n
And, like the first self-driving cars, they will probably fail spectacularly.<\/p>\n
What definitely will not happen:<\/p>\n
The death of the billable hour is premature. It will not happen this year. Pyramid structures and hierarchies will not collapse either. Change here does not arrive as disruption but as erosion.<\/p>\n
No bang. Just a long, audible whimper.<\/p>\n
\u2014<\/p>\n
Oz Benamram, Skills<\/p>\n
What will definitely happen (direction is certain)<\/p>\n
The Client+AI Drought<\/p>\n
The most significant shift in 2026 won\u2019t be what firms do with AI; it\u2019s what clients do with AI that firms never see. Clients will increasingly use AI instead of contacting external law firms. Some firms already experience it, they just don\u2019t know it, because \u2018You don\u2019t hear every time the phone doesn\u2019t ring\u2026\u2019<\/p>\n
What does it mean for law firms? Talk to your clients. Understand their needs and how you can stay relevant in this changing environment.\u00a0 You need intelligence on what questions clients are asking AI instead of asking, so you can reposition your services around higher-value work that AI can\u2019t handle.<\/p>\n
Knowledge as a competitive weapon<\/p>\n
Clean, structured, context\u2011rich KM (precedents, outcomes, expertise signals) becomes decisive; AI exposes poor KM and Information Governance and forces leadership to regard it as a strategic asset. Whether we call them \u2018Knowledge,\u2019 \u2018Innovation,\u2019 \u2018data,\u2019 or \u2018AI\u2019 officers, law firms will continue to appoint dedicated leaders to oversee the transformation required to remain relevant.<\/p>\n
What does it mean for law firms? It doesn\u2019t mean hiring a \u2018Chief AI Officer\u2019 to run more pilots. It doesn\u2019t mean buying software without first cleaning and structuring your existing content. It means doing the unglamorous work of data hygiene, taxonomy development, and expertise mapping-work that has no ribbon-cutting ceremony but makes everything else possible. If you haven\u2019t started this process, you should urgently get help.<\/p>\n
ROI measurement maturity<\/p>\n
Pressure to demonstrate ROI from AI will increase, but firms will mature away from traditional \u2018time saved\u2019 metrics (which are inadequate and in conflict with billable\u2011hour economics). The true ROI on AI is measuring what new capabilities you acquire that you didn\u2019t have before.<\/p>\n
What does it mean for law firms?\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t mean abandoning all efficiency metrics. It means focusing on the revolutionary aspect of AI (verses the evolutionary marginal improvements) that will allow you to do much more: Matters you previously turned down as uneconomical. Questions you can now answer in hours instead of weeks. Risk you can surface in due diligence that you previously missed.<\/p>\n
Platform consolidation and feature bundling<\/p>\n
Point solutions and \u2018one-use-case\u2019 tools will face consolidation or collapse, as platforms bundle \u2018good enough\u2019 AI features. We will observe the beginning of a wave of mergers, in which larger providers will acquire several startups. Some startups will close.<\/p>\n
What does it mean for law firms? It doesn\u2019t mean \u2018only work with the biggest vendors\u2019 or \u2018avoid all startups.\u2019 It means doing vendor financial due diligence, building exit strategies into contracts, ensuring data portability, and understanding what happens to your investment if a vendor gets acquired or shuts down mid-engagement. It means treating vendor selection as a risk management process, not just a feature comparison. Now is the time to care about the financial feasibility of the startups you are working with to survive the winter. Otherwise, you will face disruption mid-engagement. It also means that other than infrastructure projects (e.g., your DMS or your search engine), the correct answer to \u2018buy vs. build\u2019 is most likely \u2018rent\u2019 to enter a short-term engagement in a fast-moving market.<\/p>\n
What might happen (plausible but contingent)<\/p>\n
Agentic AI that actually executes workflows<\/p>\n
Narrow, agentic systems move beyond Q&A to multi\u2011step tasks (e.g., review against the playbook, redline, file to the DMS, draft email), particularly in standardized work such as NDAs or checklists.<\/p>\n
What does it mean for law firms? Don\u2019t wait for general-purpose agents. Identify your three highest-volume, most standardized workflows and pilot agents there now with your existing tech stack, whether it\u2019s DeepJudge, Harvey or Legora \u2013 any system that allows you to build workflows. You should be investing in workflow documentation, quality assurance processes, and human oversight mechanisms for the narrow lanes where agents can actually deliver value. It means accepting that most of your work won\u2019t benefit from agents yet-and being strategic about where you experiment.<\/p>\n
Visible, scaled productivity gains<\/p>\n
A subset of firms demonstrates substantial, verified time savings on specific workflows, sufficient to alter staffing or pricing discussions, not merely slide decks.<\/p>\n
What does it mean for law firms?\u00a0 If you achieve real gains, decide now whether you\u2019re competing on speed\/price or capturing margin. You can\u2019t do both quietly.<\/p>\n
Alternative fee \u2018tipping point\u2019 for AI\u2011enabled work<\/p>\n
A leading firm or two publicly shifts away from pure billable hours for AI\u2011heavy work, tie flat\u2011fee or outcome\u2011based pricing for high\u2011volume matters to AI\u2011enabled efficiencies, sharing some gains with clients.<\/p>\n
What does it mean for law firms?\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t mean abandoning the billable hour firm-wide. It doesn\u2019t mean racing to offer discounts on AI-powered work before you\u2019ve achieved actual efficiencies. It means war-gaming scenarios: If Ropes or Weill offer flat-fee M&A due diligence powered by AI (look up their recent announcements), what\u2019s your response? Can you match it? Undercut it? Differentiate on quality? The time to think through your positioning is before the next announcement.<\/p>\n
Google becomes a major player in legal AI<\/p>\n
More law firms will adopt the Google Gemini, breaking OpenAI\u2019s near-monopoly on legal AI infrastructure (most tools from Harvey to CoCounsel to Microsoft Copilot run on OpenAI models.)<\/p>\n
What does it mean for law firms? Evaluate Google\u2019s legal AI marketplace now, particularly if you\u2019re already in the Google Workspace ecosystem. It doesn\u2019t mean switching stacks tomorrow. It means maintaining optionality. Don\u2019t hard-code your entire innovation strategy to a single model provider. The 2026 AI market will be multipolar; your architecture should be model-agnostic.<\/p>\n
What definitely won\u2019t happen (ruled out for 2026)<\/p>\n
AI replacing lawyers or law firms<\/p>\n
AI will not make lawyers or firms obsolete; complex judgment, accountability, persuasion, and client trust remain human, even if specific tasks are offloaded. In 2026, AI will not independently oversee litigation strategy, high\u2011stakes negotiation, or nuanced regulatory counseling without substantial human involvement.<\/p>\n
The death of the billable hour<\/p>\n
The billable hour does not disappear; business\u2011model shifts will be incremental at best and any alternative-fee experiments will be partial.<\/p>\n
One vendor \u2018winning legal AI\u2019<\/p>\n
No single \u2018Salesforce of legal AI\u2019 emerges; the market remains fragmented, with multiple platforms, niche tools, and integrations.<\/p>\n
Clients abandoning the value of expertise<\/p>\n
Clients do not stop paying premiums for trusted judgment, relationships, and strategic insight, even if some work becomes cheaper or faster with AI.<\/p>\n
\u2014<\/p>\n
Helena Hallgarn, Virtual Intelligence VQ\u00a0<\/p>\n
What will *definitely* happen in legal AI in 2026?\u00a0<\/p>\n
This year, lawyers are increasingly recognising that AI services are powerful and sophisticated tools, but still just tools. They cannot be relied upon as legal experts in their own right. Used thoughtfully and correctly, however, AI can significantly enhance a lawyer\u2019s capabilities, enabling more efficient work and better legal outcomes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What might happen this year?<\/p>\n
We may now begin to see more mature legal tech solutions that address specific legal problems, questions, or tasks. Rather than generic tools, these will be specialised, ready-to-use services designed to integrate directly into lawyers\u2019 day-to-day work. Such solutions can often be adopted with little or no onboarding and may directly replace certain manual work steps, allowing lawyers to focus on higher-value tasks.<\/p>\n
What definitely won\u2019t happen in legal AI in 2026?\u00a0<\/p>\n
AI services will not replace skilled lawyers. While these technologies can automate tasks, analyse large volumes of information, and support decision-making, they lack the legal judgement, contextual understanding, and professional responsibility that experienced lawyers provide. Instead, AI should be seen as a powerful complement that enhances legal expertise rather than a substitute for it.<\/p>\n
\u2014<\/p>\n
Richard Mabey, CEO, Juro<\/p>\n
What will *definitely* happen in legal AI in 2026?\u00a0<\/p>\n
We will see a shift from AI helping lawyers to do the work, to AI actually doing the work. At least some of it. AI can already autonomously review contracts, build due diligence reports and create research notes. Sceptics have generally never tried to do this themselves. In-house lawyers will have very little patience to pay law firms by the hour for any work that can be done by AI. Instead they will reallocate external legal spend to AI tooling and to hire folks internally to oversee agents and handle exceptions.<\/p>\n
What might happen this year?<\/p>\n
The billable hour will be severely challenged in 2026. The paradigm of paying by the minute for human labour to execute legal adjacent tasks will start to look faintly ridiculous, if it does not already. Law firms that get ahead will innovate in billing for value delivered. This may not reduce overall legal spend, but instead realign pricing to outcomes not output. However, I suspect most firms with partners on seven figure salaries will do whatever it takes to keep the status quo. Great for them, less so for the clients.<\/p>\n
What definitely won\u2019t happen in legal AI in 2026?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Overall legal spend will not go down. In part this will be Jevon\u2019s Paradox in action as AI opens up new types of workflows and workstreams. But also, law firm revenues will be boosted in the short term by increased M&A activity, rising investment in AI companies and a whole lot of litigation. For law firms that do high value work \u2013 and invest in AI \u2013 it should be a bumper year for fees. Even if all that work done by trainees and paralegals disappears.<\/p>\n
\u2014<\/p>\n
Beau Wysong, Senior Vice President of Global Marketing, Opus2<\/p>\n
What will *definitely* happen in legal AI in 2026?<\/p>\n
By the end of 2026, the use of AI for legal work will be normalized and largely assumed across the majority of practice areas. Last year, we saw strong adoption of AI to automate and accelerate administrative tasks with the vast majority of users being administrative and support professionals as well as associates. In 2026, we\u2019ll see significant adoption among senior lawyers, partners, and law firm leaders. Their use will reflect their priorities, using AI to ideate and surface strategic insights, test and refine arguments, and enhance client relationships.<\/p>\n
What might happen this year?\u00a0<\/p>\n
We\u2019re likely continue to see more and more entrants into the already expansive legal AI technology market. While overall AI adoption will increase and usage frequency will reach new highs, internal adoption of individual AI point solutions will likely plateau as users begin to experience solution fatigue. Rather than learning new AI tools for specific use cases, savvy users will experiment with AI in familiar platforms to address those same use cases. By the second half of the year, this could drive consolidation in the legal tech market, as law firms simplify their tech stacks and reduce solution overlap in favor of AI-enabled platforms that offer broader value.<\/p>\n
What definitely won\u2019t happen in legal AI in 2026?\u00a0<\/p>\n
AI will not replace lawyers or legal support professionals in 2026. In fact, where other sectors have decreased their workforce as a result of AI,\u00a0a recent report in MIT\u00a0noted a 6.4% increase in legal. Despite advances in generative capabilities, AI-assisted work product will still require\u00a0human direction, oversight, and intervention. Law firms will not (and cannot ethically) delegate legal work to unsupervised machines. While AI won\u2019t shrink the legal workforce, it will change the skillsets that law firms are looking for. Law firms will place a premium on technical fluency. This will enable greater overall capacity with minimal headcount increases as case loads and data volumes continue to grow.<\/p>\n
\u2014<\/p>\n
Jacqueline Schafer, CEO, Clearbrief<\/p>\n
What will definitely happen in legal AI in 2026?<\/p>\n
Courts will continue catching bogus citations in legal filings. The rate has already accelerated to four or five new documented cases per day, up from 120 total cases between April 2023 and May 2025 to 660 by December 2025.<\/p>\n
In the last weeks of 2025 and early 2026 we\u2019ve already seen cases where the court levied attorneys\u2019 fees and sanctions of over $100K. Law firms are rapidly moving in 2026 to an operations-driven process requiring an auditable \u2026 report to prove a pleading is hallucination-free before signing instead of the traditional messy train of emails saying \u201cyes it\u2019s good to sign.\u201d<\/p>\n
What might happen this year?<\/p>\n
Courts will start to establish mandatory hyperlinking of pleadings (as jurisdictions like New York\u2019s commercial division have done since 2020) to address the hallucinations issue.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What definitely won\u2019t happen in legal AI in 2026?<\/p>\n
AI hallucinations won\u2019t disappear. They\u2019re baked into how large language models work, and as Thomson Reuters\u2019 Michael Dahn noted, model makers can\u2019t get hallucinations to zero for open-ended questions. The legal world will live with this problem for a long time, which is exactly why verification tools are becoming essential rather than optional.<\/p>\n
\u2014<\/p>\n
Horace Wu, CEO, Syntheia<\/p>\n
What will happen<\/p>\n
The major labs will continue releasing frontier models (GPT-6, Gemini-4, Claude-5, etc.), but with diminishing returns for legal use cases.\u00a0 The legal industry will stop asking \u2018who has the best model?\u2019 and start asking \u2018what model is good enough?\u2019\u00a0 Legal software will not require the latest frontier models to be highly performant, which will shrink the advantage of many industry-specific legal tech vendors.<\/p>\n
At the same time, legal tech will go through further rounds of consolidation, driven by both opportunistic and strategic M&A.\u00a0 Smaller vendors without moats will quietly disappear or become zombies.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Law firms and legal services companies will experiment more seriously with alternative business models, including subscription products.\u00a0 Competitive advantage will increasingly sit with products and services that can deliver trusted, verifiable outputs.<\/p>\n
What might happen<\/p>\n
We may see one or more shocks that changes how AI is used in legal work, e.g. a public negligence action or malpractice claim against a globally recognised firm that is linked to AI-generated output.\u00a0 Even if the action fails on its merits, they would have an outsized signalling impact.<\/p>\n
We might see the rise of a new service category for \u2018legal AI audit\u2019, similar to how company financial accounts need auditors.\u00a0 In-house teams that send law firm AI generated work will have to pay for AI audits, potentially at a premium cost.<\/p>\n
More radically, a leading law firm or legal services provider might deliberately destabilise the vendor ecosystem by open-sourcing a workflow platform or internal tooling.\u00a0 This isn\u2019t a move to lead the market, but to commoditise it.\u00a0 This would accelerate a shift where software becomes infrastructure, and competitive advantage reverts to judgment, reputation, and risk allocation.<\/p>\n
What won\u2019t happen<\/p>\n
AGI won\u2019t happen.\u00a0 There won\u2019t be autonomous legal reasoning by anyone (even if they try to market it like that).\u00a0<\/p>\n
Law firms and legal companies won\u2019t change their business model in 2026, not because they don\u2019t want to, but because the system is slow.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Gen AI won\u2019t solve the access to justice problem in 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Gen AI will not reduce the number of lawyers or the amount of work.\u00a0 It will change the nature of the work, but the hardest part of legal practice will remain the same: moving faster does not mean the answers are right.<\/p>\n
\u2014<\/p>\n
And that ends Part 1 of the AL Predictions for 2026, Part 2 which is equally as excellent and insightful, and packed with tons of more market experts, will be next week.<\/p>\n
Thank you very much for everyone\u2019s thoughts, from the very concise, to the super-detailed \u2013 there are so many smart insights here to explore as we all consider what the future will hold for us this year.<\/p>\n
Richard Tromans, Founder, Artificial Lawyer<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
[ Main pic: the illustration shows a group of legal innovators standing around an Aztec sun stone \u2013 which was meant to prophecy the future. In the background is, of course, a pyramid, representing the law firm model. AL was going to add an associate human sacrifice in true Aztec style, but decided not to \ud83d\ude42 Also, you\u2019ll notice a couple of hallucinations in the image; initially I tried to remove them, but then decided to keep them in recognition that AI is still not perfect yet. ]<\/p>\n
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