Key insights:

• • • AI adoption is now a talent retention and recruitment issue — Law firms that lack professional-grade AI tools risk losing both current and prospective talent.

    • Client relationships are increasingly tied to AI-driven value — Corporate legal departments expect their outside counsel to use AI to improve productivity, quality, and innovation; however, few believe most of their law firms are meeting those expectations.

    • Law firms must rethink their business and pricing models — Although many firms feel financial pressure to accelerate AI adoption, most have not adjusted their pricing structures to reflect AI-driven efficiencies.

Law firms are experiencing unprecedented pressure from the rapid advancement of AI, which is affecting their talent recruitment, client relationships, and business models, according to deeper analysis of the recent ����������2026 Future of Professionals Report.

To help law firms navigate this AI-driven disruption, �������� has published a new action paper, Future of Professionals Report 2026: Actionable insights for law firm leaders, drawing on insights from 736 law firm professionals and 203 corporate legal professionals.

Indeed, the new paper highlights that almost one-quarter of law firm professionals will refuse a job offer if the prospective firm lacks professional-grade AI tools. Further, any perceived misalignment between a professional’s AI preferences and the firm’s strategy increase the risk of attrition, especially among those professionals who value mentorship and skill development.

You can download your copy of the��2026 Future of Professionals Report��������

In addition, almost one-third of corporate legal professionals say they are reconsidering relationships with outside law firms that do not demonstrate how they’ll offer clear AI-enabled value within the next 12 months, the paper notes. And clients increasingly expect their outside counsel to deliver efficiency, quality, and innovation through AI; however, only between 3% and 6% say they believe most of their outside firms are meeting each of these expectations.

Finally, almost 4-in-10 law firm professionals say they are feeling financial pressure to act faster on AI, yet almost two-thirds say their firm’s pricing structure remains unchanged despite clients’ demand for new models that reflect AI-driven efficiencies and increased value.

Dealing with AI-driven challenges

The paper notes that firms with approved AI tools are more attractive to talent, while the use of unauthorized “shadow AI” by more than one-third of professionals creates security and compliance risks. To address this, firms should provide transparent AI solutions and invest in training. While AI may reduce demand for some junior roles, it may increase the need for others, especially hybrid tech-legal roles.

On the client relationship front, many corporate legal departments are facing internal pressure to adopt AI and expect their outside law firms to keep pace. In-house legal teams increasingly expect AI-enabled productivity, quality, and innovation, yet many see a significant gap between expectations and delivery. For example, 70% say they expect productivity gains, while only 6% say they believe most of the firms they work with are delivering them.

Clients, for their part, also expect pricing models that reflect AI-driven efficiencies through greater cost certainty and transparency. Outside law firms that fail to adapt may risk fee pressure, ultimately losing business to more agile competitors.

Only half of professionals see their firm’s AI strategy reflected in their daily work, and this potential misalignment could cause talent and AI adoption problems.

Fortunately, amid all these challenges for law firm leaders, the paper identifies three strategic paths law firms can take, including:

• • • Using AI to elevate by automating routine tasks that would then allow professionals to handle complex, high-value work.
    • Using AI to scale by prioritizing productivity and efficiency and handling high volumes of routine work with AI and human oversight.
    • Using AI to reimagine by rebuilding the firm around AI and offering new models like outcome-based pricing and embedded partnerships.

Unfortunately, some firms are choosing to defer this crucial decision, which increases their risk of client and talent attrition as the market evolves.

Whichever path law firms take, however, the paper makes clear that firm leadership must clearly communicate their AI strategy.��The paper notes that only half of professionals see their firm’s AI strategy reflected in their daily work, and this potential misalignment could cause talent and AI adoption problems.

The paper encourages firms to move quickly to close the gap between client expectations, talent needs, and operational realities by defining a clear AI strategy, investing in training and tools, and adapting pricing models for an AI-driven market.

Using the guidance from this action paper, firm leadership can navigate these challenges and move their law firm into a more responsive, profitable, and sustainable AI-enabled future.

You can read a full copy of the��Future of Professionals Report 2026: Actionable insights for law firm leaders��paper here

Key insights:

• • • AI adoption has become an urgent business imperative — Enabling corporate functions are under pressure from leadership, business stakeholders, and employees to demonstrate tangible AI-driven value.

    • Slow AI adoption creates risk — Many professionals are frustrated by limited access to high-quality AI tools, which contributes to increased employee turnover and growing use of unauthorized shadow AI

    • Success depends on coordinated transformation — Organizations need a deliberate AI strategy rather than scattered experimentation to help guide responsible AI adoption across the organization.

Today, internal corporate enabling functions — such as legal, tax, global trade, compliance, and risk — find themselves at a crossroads as they face mounting pressures from three critical fronts: i) internal stakeholders that are demanding faster, more informed decisions; ii) finance departments that are expecting AI-driven efficiency and cost control; and iii) a professional workforce eager for tools that enhance the value of the work they do.

The message from the C-Suite is clear: AI must deliver tangible results now, according to the recent ����������2026 Future of Professionals Report.

To help internal corporate function leaders manage this pressure and move forward with confidence into an AI-enabled future, �������� has published a new action paper, Future of Professionals Report 2026: Actionable insights for corporate leaders, drawing on insights from hundreds of internal corporate professionals.

Facing down the triple pressures

The urgency that corporate function leaders are facing is underscored by those three areas of pressure. For example, almost half of professionals surveyed in enabling functions say they are either already experiencing the financial consequences of lagging AI adoption or are expecting to within a year. Many enabling functions have long been expected to absorb growing workloads without proportional increases in resources. Now, AI is increasingly viewed as a way to expand capacity and improve efficiency, making delaying its adoption a potential source of budgetary and competitive risk.

You can download your copy of the��2026 Future of Professionals Report��here

Stakeholder pressure is equally intense. As many business units accelerate their own AI deployments, they expect the organization’s other enabling functions to keep pace. If these functions become bottlenecks, they risk being sidelined or being perceived as obstacles rather than strategic partners. Indeed, more than half of corporate professionals say they are facing significant pressure from stakeholders to act faster on AI, with in-house legal teams feeling this most acutely.

Yet the pressure coming from the workforce may be the most alarming. The action paper shows that fully 30% of professionals say they are considering leaving their organizations within two years if the gap between the AI-driven value they expect and what is made available to them isn’t addressed. Access to professional-grade AI tools has become a key factor in job decisions, yet nearly 6-in-10 professionals say they lack access. This gap contributes to both retention challenges and the rise of unauthorized AI use, increasing compliance and governance risks.

Choosing the right path

Faced with the reality of these pressures, corporate function leaders must choose a strategic path for AI adoption. The action paper outlines three primary trajectories:

• • • Using AI to elevate by shifting human effort to high-value, judgment-based work.
    • Using AI to scale by leveraging AI to handle increased workloads without increasing headcount while optimizing for efficiency.
    • Using AI to reimagine by rebuilding workflows around AI’s capabilities, such as implementing shared data infrastructure and real-time dashboards.

However, knowing the path is not the same as walking it. The action paper also highlights a potential execution gap, in which a lack of coordination and shared accountability across functions derails any real progress. This is a particular problem for enabling corporate functions because many departments often operate in silos, using different AI tools and standards, which leads to fragmentation and operational bottlenecks.

The solution, as the paper outlines, lies in building a shared framework for AI governance and accountability, with fiduciary functions like legal, tax, and compliance taking the lead. Some critical recommendations outlined in the paper include advocating for professional-grade AI tools, planning for an evolutionary journey through AI adoption, and leading an organization-wide conversation about AI governance and standards.

Finally, the paper encourages corporate leadership teams to step back from daily pressures and engage in structured exercises to define a shared vision for AI within the organization. By developing a long-term roadmap that considers processes, data, technology, people, and risk, corporate leaders can ensure AI adoption delivers both immediate value and sustainable competitive advantage for the future.

You can read a full copy of the��Future of Professionals Report 2026: Actionable insights for corporate leaders paper here

Key highlights:

• • • Build on internal momentum rather than top-down mandates — Dean Kalb backed faculty who were already experimenting with AI, embedding shared learning outcomes into the legal writing program first before expanding to other courses.

    • Empower students to shape the school’s AI policy — Dean Kalb formed a 15-person student advisory group that surveyed one-third of the student body and produced AI principles that directly influenced school policy.

    • Create opportunities to get students collaborating with faculty — Efforts by Dean Kalb uncovered shared concerns of faculty and students, underscoring that students often know AI tools better than faculty and creating a co-learning opportunity in the classroom.

In her first six months as dean at the University of San Francisco (USF) School of Law, Johanna Kalb heard the same message from alumni across sectors: Those students entering law school today would step into a profession that looks meaningfully different from the one that exists now.

So, in her first move to translate that urgency into institutional change, Dean Kalb got behind those faculty members who had already started building toward that future.

Start with what is already in motion and invite others in

Dean Kalb started with the efforts that Profs. Nicole Phillips and Megan Hutchinson had already been doing by conducting their own experiments in their classrooms and building their own tools.

Dean Kalb’s first step mattered as a strategic choice. Rather than convening a task force or commissioning a study, she identified the faculty who had credibility with their peers and gave them resources and institutional backing. In this way, USF was able to embed shared AI learning outcomes across its legal research, writing, and analysis program in the second semester of the 2024-‘25 academic year.

The decision to focus on this program was deliberate because it built upon existing internal momentum and fit into the course’s existing goals. The structure of the legal research and writing program — with faculty having autonomy while supporting each other — also made the integration work by providing natural support.

Expand through optional workshops before adding mandates

Over the following summer in 2025, Profs. Phillips and Hutchinson ran optional hands-on workshops for the broader faculty. “Faculty learn from other faculty,” explains Dean Kalb. “They don’t want a vendor to come in and sell them. They’re not interested in having somebody from central administration try to tell them how they can teach better. But listening to a colleague who really understands the work that they do is very helpful.”

Indeed, some faculty showed up, were excited by the possibilities, and began integrating AI learning outcomes into their elective courses. This voluntary uptake created a visible proof of concept before any additional requirements or mandates were introduced.

Alongside the workshops, Dean Kalb also expanded AI learning outcomes into two required courses on evidence and professional responsibility. The professional responsibility inclusion was straightforward given the ethical dimensions of AI use in legal practice. One colleague, Prof. Tiffany Li, had already been building those outcomes into her section and was willing to share her approach with other faculty members who were teaching the same course.

Give students a formal role in shaping the direction

When USF rolled out access to the AI platform Claude across students and faculty, the response was more complicated than Dean Kalb anticipated. Feedback from students at USF — a Catholic Jesuit institution with a strong social justice identity — raised questions about AI’s social, environmental, and democratic impacts.

Dean Kalb intentionally chose to use the students’ feedback to involve them. With the help of another alum, who has deep experience in evaluating and implementing emerging technologies, Dean Kalb convened a student group to develop a set of draft principles for AI use at USF Law. The students conducted structured interviews with faculty, staff, and students, resulting in the creation of a survey in which approximately one-third of the student body participated. The student group drew on these results to draft a series of AI principles and presented them to faculty, staff, and other students. Ultimately, the principles were adopted by the faculty.

What came out of that process has already begun to shape the law school’s AI practices in concrete ways. For example, a faculty technology advisory committee with student representation has been formed to implement the principles to ensure transparency and ongoing oversight. The school also has begun exploring ways to engage with AI that reflect and enhance its social justice mission.

We now have a shared sense of where the community is and what our concerns are. That allows us to speak in a common language as we talk about why and how we’re doing this.

The more significant outcome, Dean Kalb says, was the discovery of shared concerns among faculty and students that AI would erode critical thinking rather than develop it. “That was probably the most helpful part of the whole process,” she says. “We now have a shared sense of where the community is and what our concerns are. That allows us to speak in a common language as we talk about why and how we’re doing this.”

Commit to sharing in the learning

Dean Kalb’s suggestion for her peers and faculty is to integrate AI tools into their own lives, which would allow them to better ����������keep pace with technology that is moving faster than any curriculum committee can match. “It’s hard to regulate and teach these tools in the abstract,” she explains. “I’ve found that playing around with them in my personal life — where the stakes are low — has helped me come up with ideas for their use at work, and that in turn, means that I notice their evolution.”

For a profession built on expertise and the authority that comes with it, this mindset requires a particular kind of intellectual honesty. Some students are beginning to arrive at law school with more familiarity with AI tools than their professors, Dean Kalb adds, and this may offer an opportunity to shift the classroom dynamic toward co-creation, in which faculty and students are building knowledge together rather than transmitting it in one direction.

This change in perspective can, turn the stress of “keeping up” into the more enjoyable experience of collaboration, she says.

You can find out more about the impact of AI on legal education here

Key highlights:

• • • The limits of the current system and good intentions — While the justice gap is not the fault of legal educators, their good intentions alone cannot close a systemic gap that requires new models of training and delivery designed for the long term.

    • A healthcare model for legal services is needed — Just as the healthcare industry relies on physicians, nurses, and physician assistants, the justice system needs a wider spectrum of trained and regulated legal providers; and American law schools are best positioned to educate, license, and oversee them.

    • States prove the model works — Alaska, Utah, and Arizona have already developed programs that train and certify non-lawyer legal service providers to help individuals navigate courts and address common legal issues, offering a replicable framework for those states willing to open regulatory doors.

Our nation’s healthcare system has wisely evolved past being one built on doctors alone. Yet in the legal industry, access to services remains largely tethered to a lawyer-only model that leaves millions of people unable to secure the help they need. Every day, tenants face eviction without representation, parents navigate custody disputes alone, and workers struggle to secure employment benefits or resolve workplace disputes because they cannot pay for legal counsel.

Legal professionals need to work together to create a broader, smarter, and more efficient legal workforce that can meet the public’s legal needs while maintaining the United States’ current legal standards of excellence. American law schools are best positioned to lead this effort; however, they will need to partner with regulators to educate, license, and oversee new categories of legal service providers who, like nurses and physicians’ assistants, can help expand the public’s access to critical support.

Preserving excellence while expanding access

American legal education has long been the global gold standard, producing leaders in law, politics, and business. Its rigorous curriculum, emphasis on critical thinking, and commitment to developing practical problem-solving skills have established a framework that many systems around the world aspire to emulate.

While meaningful innovations have taken place in legal education over the years, many are best characterized as refinements to the existing model rather than significant reforms. For example, curricular options today are more likely to include a wider variety of subject areas and teaching methods, however, most US legal education is still delivered through an in-person, full-time, three-year post-graduate Juris Doctor (JD) degree. While the overall quality of American legal education is exceptional, it is not filling our nation’s need for justice work.

The consequences are increasingly difficult to ignore. Low-income Americans receive no or insufficient legal help for 92% of their substantial civil legal problems, according to the Legal Services Corp.’s report. As a result, in many court systems, self-represented litigants have become the norm rather than the exception, whether the legal challenge involves housing, consumer debt, or family stability.

This is not the fault of legal educators, who often go above and beyond to help bridge the gap through the provision of free legal services and other efforts. Even so, it is the responsibility of legal educators to assist in designing and supporting new models of training and legal delivery to systemically narrow the gap for the long term.

Innovation beyond fine-tuning

Addressing this persistent and growing issue will require more than fine tuning. Instead, to meet the demands of a society increasingly characterized by inequality, social division, and complex interdisciplinary problems requires change that will better prepare our justice system for the future.

To get there, legal educators may have to sacrifice one part of what has long defined them: homogeneity. While a degree from a more elite law school is certainly rewarded in the entry-level employment market, the legal education provided at most of the accredited law schools in the US is more alike than different.

For law schools to help close the justice gap, increasing institutional pluralism is essential. Law schools can and should differentiate themselves by developing tailored solutions to address specific justice challenges within their reach. For example, Medical-Legal Partnership Clinics at and help low-income clients address legal issues that can impact their health outcomes. And students at the University of Arkansas School of Law provide assistance to small businesses, nonprofits, and rural municipalities that often cannot afford legal counsel though the university’s Community and Rural Enterprise Development Clinic.

To be sure, law schools cannot and should not do this alone. Law school deans have rightly encouraged legal education’s accreditation process to improve regulatory flexibility and promote responsible change. As a result, many schools are developing high-quality online programs that offer both access and excellence. These programs may expand the pool of lawyers over time, but they remain largely focused on JD education rather than the broader workforce that will be needed to improve the public’s legal health.

A framework for responsible expansion

To enhance access to justice, the legal profession needs to move beyond “educating lawyers” alone and expand into teaching law more broadly. The traditional JD degree will continue to be vital to our legal system; but just as healthcare relies on physicians, nurses, physician assistants and other licensed professionals, the justice system needs a wider spectrum of trained and regulated providers.

To get there, states must open their doors to a wider range of legal services providers. Unfortunately, many states — often for political reasons — continue to resist allowing limited-service legal providers to handle routine but still important legal needs.

Models for this approach already exist. , , and each have developed programs that train and certify non-lawyer legal service providers to help individuals navigate courts, understand their rights, and address common legal issues involving housing, family law, public benefits, and debt.

If state courts and legislators are serious about closing the justice gap, they should begin by opening their regulatory doors to these alternative legal providers, while providing responsible licensing and oversight mechanisms in collaboration with law schools in their state. If those doors are open, law schools can and will step through. Many law schools already have innovative master’s degree programs that are aimed at law-adjacent fields such as government contracts, human resources, compliance, and more. These non-lawyer educational programs can easily be tailored for alternative legal providers.

Keeping legal education in the hands of American law schools will properly balance access and excellence, ensuring the public continues to be served by qualified practitioners. Law schools have the skilled faculty, ethical underpinnings, and institutional infrastructure that’s needed to train and oversee the next generation of justice workers.

A robust justice system needs a full spectrum of professionals to meet society’s legal needs, much as our healthcare system relies on a range of trained providers. Until we build such a structure, the justice gap will remain exactly where it sits today, to the detriment of many citizens.

You can find more about the��challenges facing law schools and legal education here

Key insights:

• • • Successful AI implementation requires a solid foundation — Strategy, leadership, and the impact on operations and individual users are key elements to any successful implementation.

    • AI success is a skills strategy, not a technology strategy — AI creates a whole new set of skills that are required for both legal department attorneys and department leadership.

    • AI changes how legal work is conducted — If implemented correctly, AI not only improves the end work product, but it also changes how lawyers perform their jobs.

Corporate legal departments are already experiencing the benefits of AI, including improved productivity, and reduced costs and errors, the Thomson Reuters Institute’s recent shows. So it’s not surprising that AI is increasingly becoming a strategic priority for general counsel (GCs).

The report cautioned, however, that success with AI is not a given. AI is not a silver bullet which guarantees improvements across the department. Instead, AI adoption and implementation must be carefully planned in order to realize those benefits.

Crucially, successful AI implementation is not simply about the technology; rather, it’s a reflection of the department itself and often can signal whether the department has the right elements in place to enable that success.

AI enhances successful legal departments — it does not create them

AI implementation is like any other law department strategy — it does not live on its own but instead advances as a direct result of everything that has come before it, including the work of the department’s attorneys and professionals, its daily operations and processes, and the GCs who are guiding the overall vision.

Overall, it’s about having a solid foundation upon which to build AI adoption and implementation.

The Pyramid of AI Success

AI may be one of the most impactful and transformational technologies to come on the scene in recent years, but it’s important to remember that it is still simply one tool among many. And its ultimate success will be determined not only by its capabilities, but by how it integrates with and augments the work that corporate legal department attorneys perform daily.

The technology itself does not perform the work — it enables more efficient work. This means that the rise of AI creates a whole new set of necessary skills for both legal department attorneys and department leadership.

With that in mind, GCs should focus on a few key areas to improve their department’s chances of AI success. The essential steps can be viewed as a pyramid — every step that you take builds, each upon another, creating a solid foundation. Establishing a top-level AI strategy means setting the tone from leadership, which then permeates down through operations and ultimately transforms how individual users work every day.

• • Learning — Most departments have a basic AI understanding and a culture to encourage change, but they often do not have the depth of understanding to move from AI literacy to AI fluency. Be sure to determine where your team is on this learning curve.
  • Empowerment — Empowering your professionals is crucial to drive experimentation and identify new use cases. Ask yourself, does my team feel encouraged to explore new ways of working and empowered to make changes?
  • Ownership — The legal team should feel they have significant input into how AI will be used in the department and throughout the organization. AI can be a major transition, and team members should feel that they can freely share ideas, concerns, and insights.
  • Accountability — Team members with personal goals that are linked to AI adoption are more likely to become top learners and regular users, our research shows, and this leads to greater overall benefits for the department.
  • Usage — Regular use drives adoption, so you should build AI into your team’s daily habits, monitor how many legal team members have tried AI, and how many are using it regularly.
  • Expectations — Balance encouraging uptake with clear expectations around adoption. Offering open encouragement along with access to tools and training to build momentum can be key first steps. As team members become more proficient, set formal expectations around AI usage. Be clear that when targets are set, usage will be tracked and individuals will be held accountable. Then, follow up with low- or no-usage individuals to determine causes, such as difficulty with training.

For GCs, today’s top challenge is how the department can develop needed AI skills in a way that will best augment how lawyers work. If implemented correctly, AI will not only improve the end work product, but it will also better enable lawyers to perform the work they do best.

AI success with outside counsel

The same principles of strategy and leadership that contribute to AI success within the department also extend to working with outside counsel. Currently, more than half of corporate counsel say they believe their outside law firms should be using AI, according to the report; however, two-thirds also say they do not know how their outside firms are approaching their use of AI.

This creates a communication gap, in which some GCs attribute to hesitance or caution. “We do not ask and they are shy to provide answers because they are already under a lot of pressure because their rates are so high,” reports one GC.

About three-quarters of corporate counsel also say they expect their outside law firms to take the lead in AI conversations between the department and the firm. However, that does not mean that GCs should simply accept a lack of conversation if firms are not forthcoming. Those GCs that want their outside firms to embrace AI should be open and transparent, conveying that they believe AI can assist firms with most work tasks, while placing a strong emphasis on output verification and the authority of attorney expertise. Indeed, GCs need to understand how their outside firms are using AI, especially how and when it is being applied, how it’s being supervised, and, perhaps most importantly, how it impacts fees.

Without detailed and regular discussions, GCs could develop a blind spot in this area. “Conversation has been only high level,” another GC explains. “We generally know what AI they are using but not how they are using it.” What’s surprising, the GC adds, is that “the billing has remained the same as it did before — so either they are not using AI tools efficiently, or they are just doing double work.”

You can download a fully copy of the , from the Thomson Reuters Institute here

Key insights:

• • • AI is now a common facet of the legal landscape — AI is increasingly a part of legal workflows across aspects of the practice, involving not only work matters, but also interactions with clients, opposing counsel, and the courts.

• • • Foundational understanding of AI in legal is crucial— The guide provides concise, practical information that lawyers and legal professionals can use to get a better grasp on AI use in legal practice

• • • Guidance needed in a fast-changing environment — AI technology and its uses, its limitations, and lawyers’ professional responsibilities in the practice of law are evolving rapidly — and this guide provides needed guidance and help in navigating today’s environment.

AI is influencing virtually every corner of the legal profession, impacting how legal research is conducted, documents are drafted, discovery is handled, client expectations are managed, and how courts are addressing questions of professional responsibility. Whether lawyers themselves are using AI or not, they are likely to at least be on the receiving end of AI-assisted work product from opposing counsel or clients.

To help bring clarity to this rapidly changing legal arena, the Thomson Reuters Institute and the have released the — a resource for lawyers and legal professionals who want to approach AI with clarity, confidence, and professional rigor. This “Foundational Overview” is the first installment of the “AI Guideline Series” being published by Thomson Reuters Institute and ILTA, with additional guides to be published within coming months.

You can also access the newly published

For AI-enabled lawyers to be the most effective, it’s important that they first understand the complex legal and technical terminology related to AI, as well as the different categories of AI, within which legal practice these technologies best fit, and the professional responsibilities that accompany their use.

Practical, concise overviews

The AI Guide is a resource for establishing a solid foundation by using the most current information in this fast-moving environment. Written with contributions from a variety of leading attorneys, legal scholars, and legal technologists, the Guide offers lawyers a practical orientation to today’s AI landscape and the issues that matter most for their legal practice.

The Guide contains concise overviews on:

• • • the current state of AI adoption across the legal profession
    • essential AI terminology
    • the major categories of AI technologies and platforms
    • the situations in which AI is often used to support legal work
    • the ethical and professional responsibility considerations that lawyers must understand, and
    • the emerging trends likely to shape AI use in legal in the years ahead.

The Guide also offers a collection of additional resources for more in-depth exploration.

As AI shows itself to be remarkably effective at assisting with many routine, time-consuming, and information-intensive legal tasks, it also continues to require careful human judgment, verification, and oversight to be most effective. That’s why understanding AI’s strengths and its limitations is becoming an essential professional skill.

A different way of interacting with information

Unlike previous technologies, AI is not simply another software application. It is a fundamentally different way of interacting with information — one that’s capable of generating analysis, drafting documents, identifying patterns, and assisting with increasingly sophisticated legal work.

AI’s application within the legal profession brings forward unique, specific considerations. It also raises questions — as well as answers that are still evolving around accuracy, trustworthiness, ethics, professional responsibility, and many other issues.

Today, these are no longer theoretical discussions; rather, they’re practical questions that lawyers are confronting every day, regardless of whether those lawyers are currently using AI in their workflows.

The “AI Guide for Legal Professionals: A Foundational Overview” can give lawyers a foundational understanding on how they and other legal professionals can integrate AI into their legal practice, better understand their responsibilities, and critically evaluate new AI technologies as they evolve.

You can access the newly published

Key insights:

• • • Law firms and clients are both redesigning for AI — Both sides are rethinking how legal work gets done, including thoughts on operating models, talent, technology, and the role of automation in delivering services.

    • There’s a communication gap despite shared dependence — Even though each side’s AI choices directly affect the other, many law firms and legal departments are still planning separately, without enough transparency or coordination.

    • There are 5 critical shared questions they need to address together — Law firms and their clients need joint conversations about pricing, work allocation, trust, talent development, and wider industry standards to better shape a sustainable future together.

A law firm choosing its 2030 strategic business model without knowing how its clients are evolving is navigating blind — and vice versa.

And yet, across the legal profession, that is exactly what is happening. Law firms and corporate legal departments are each embarking on significant transformations — redesigning their operating models, reimagining their talent models, and making decisions about technology. What is striking is how often they are doing so in isolation from each other, retreating into their respective silos at precisely the moment when their futures are most deeply interconnected.

The pace of change raises the stakes. Ninety-one percent of corporate C-Suite leaders say the rise of AI will have a significant impact on their five-year business strategy. Further, AI adoption has nearly doubled across the legal sector over the past 12 months, and half of legal professionals say they expect agentic AI to be central to their workflow within two years.

Clearly, the decisions being made today about talent, technology, pricing, and relationships will lock in outcomes that are hard to reverse.

The AI view from corporate law departments

On the in-house corporate side, General Counsel are contending with broadening mandates, increasing demand and complexity, and a pace of business that shows no signs of slowing. Not surprisingly, AI is increasingly the strategic response: , up from 25% who said that last year. And for most that means AI-enabled capability to do more, faster, and at greater scale.

Thomson Reuters Institute’s GCO 2030 research maps out what the transformed legal department could look like — from tech-forward functions that scale routine work through automation, to seamlessly integrated teams that blend internal and external expertise, to legal departments that actively supercharge peer functions like HR and Finance.

The common thread through all of this is a shift toward strategic selectivity: Doing more with sharper focus and engaging outside counsel differently as a result.

The AI view from law firms

Among law firm leaders, AI is unavoidable — in every leadership conversation that Thomson Reuters Institute researchers held with managing partners in recent months, the issue of AI came up. For many, it is seen as a lever for growth, although law firms vary considerably in how far they have moved from consideration to execution.

In fact, our recent research points to four possible models emerging on the horizon that have AI-native disruptors built around agentic automation, elite advisory boutiques in which senior judgment is the product, integrated powerhouses that combine top-tier brand with AI-enabled delivery at scale, and those that hold back from AI adoption (although the research suggests this is a delay, not a strategy). What unites the more progressive scenarios is that strategy requires genuine commitment: A firm simply cannot pursue all models at once, and the choices made about talent, pricing, and client relationships will compound over time.

You can access the full feature article,��The 2030 legal department: 5 ways AI will transform how in-house teams work��here

The problem, of course, is that both sides are designing futures that will inevitably shape the other — yet two-thirds of GCs say they do not know how their outside firms are approaching AI, and law firms report genuine uncertainty about what their clients want. This shows a clear communication gap at the heart of the legal ecosystem, and it is opening at precisely the moment that demands coordination.

The futures being designed in those silos are not mutually exclusive. When a corporate legal department shifts its model — whether automating routine work, restructuring how it engages external counsel, or reorienting toward strategic advisory — it changes the demand profile that law firms face. When a firm repositions itself around premium complexity or agentic delivery, that changes what clients can rely on externally, and therefore what they must build internally. Each side’s choices narrow or expand the options available to the other.

Addressing 5 critical questions together

Against that backdrop, there are several questions the legal profession cannot answer from within a single organization — questions that require genuine conversation between firms and the clients they serve.

The first is the question of value and pricing — In an AI-enabled legal market, how is value defined and paid for, and can the answers be fair to both sides while still encouraging innovation? If AI dramatically accelerates the delivery of advice, does efficiency become the new floor or the new ceiling? Are clients paying for outcomes, risk reduction, speed — or some combination of all three? And which side absorbs the productivity dividend?

The second question concerns where the work lives — As both law firms and legal departments expand their AI capabilities, the traditional allocation of work between in-house and external counsel will shift. Determining what genuinely belongs in each place and why — based on, for example, risk, complexity, relationships, and strategic importance — is a conversation that requires honesty from both sides.

Third is the question of trust and transparency — How can firms and their clients build shared frameworks for disclosure, governance, and accountability around AI use in a way that strengthens relationships rather than undermines them? Without these frameworks, AI integration risks eroding the relationship foundations upon which legal advice depends.

Fourth, the talent pipeline question — As the type of routine work that historically served as the apprenticeship model for past generations of lawyers rapidly disappears, both firms and legal departments face a shared responsibility for how legal talent is trained and developed.

Fifth, and perhaps most structurally significant, is which challenges are ecosystem-wide? — Data standards, interoperability, shared risk frameworks, and ethics and assurance are not problems any single organization can resolve alone but rather, are ones that require coordinated action across firms, legal departments, technology providers, and academia.

Indeed, none of these questions can be resolved in isolation, and avoiding them does not preserve the status quo, it simply locks in poor defaults. Leadership in this moment doesn’t mean having all the answers, but it does mean being willing to ask the questions out loud, with the people who need to be in the room.

The firms and legal departments that come to these questions together, rather than arriving at the table with entrenched positions already locked in, will be better positioned to build a future that is resilient, transparent, and sustainable.

To start, pick one of the five questions above and put it on the agenda for your next client or firm meeting. Not as a negotiation, but as an open conversation worth having.

That is how the communication gap between law firms and corporate legal departments gets closed — one honest conversation at a time.

Start your legal department’s future planning using our reimagine guide from the Value Alignment Toolkit

Key insights:

• • • AI is changing legal’s role, not just its workload — Going forward, AI will do more than automate routine tasks, it also will help in-house legal teams become more strategic business partners.

    • The 5 archetypes make the transformation concrete — There are five practical ways in which AI could reshape legal work, including automation, stronger advising, better collaboration, and global scale.

    • Every organization’s AI transformation will be different — ��������’ own legal transformation journey shows the common and unique aspects of this process.

Beyond the automation, productivity boosts, or the now-familiar promise of doing more with less, the question over how AI will really transform the work that corporate legal departments do on a daily basis, has yet to be truly answered.

To deepen our understanding of where in-house legal is really heading next, Norie Campbell, �������� Chief Legal Officer, and Lizzy Duffy, a Senior Director of the Thomson Reuters Institute, produced a new feature article, The 2030 legal department: 5 ways AI will transform how in-house teams work��that steps back from the day-to-day noise around AI and asks the bigger, more interesting question: “What is the legal function actually becoming?”

Importantly, the article recognizes that in-house legal teams are navigating real constraints around time, budget, and clarity even as expectations continue to evolve. It also acknowledges how GCs are balancing rising demands with a growing focus on efficiency, while also working to define what effective and meaningful AI adoption should look like for their teams.

Indeed, this human pressure is one of the most compelling aspects to the questions corporate law departments are facing today, and it reverberates beyond a simple theory of AI in legal to really reflect a profession at a turning point.

The five archetypes

The feature also lays out five archetypes — distinct models for how AI could reshape legal work, from high-volume automation to better strategic advising, stronger business partnering, smarter collaboration with outside counsel, and truly global leverage across teams and languages.

By referencing these five archetypes, legal department leaders can start asking where their own teams fit, and what they need to do to get better prepared for the AI-driven legal future of 2030.

These archetypes cover everything from deciding on the best ways to leverage AI-led automation to helping legal teams become more proactive strategic advisers. The archetypes also detail how to foster collaboration that can allow other corporate functions to act more confidently without constant legal intervention. And how to use AI to reduce barriers caused by language and time zones, enabling multinational legal teams to work more effectively across geographies.

By referencing these five archetypes, legal department leaders can start asking where their own teams fit, and what they need to do to get better prepared for the AI-driven legal future of 2030.

��������’ own journey

This feature article also builds a practical, grounded picture of the future from inside ��������’ own General Counsel’s Office (GCO), showing readers a transformation that’s already taking shape.

This insider perspective offers a front-row look at how one GCO is trying to move from experimentation to real transformation and tells a bigger story than technology alone. Today’s transformation of the corporate legal department is really about leadership, ambition, and the choices department leaders need to make now if they want to stay relevant by 2030.

More than anything, the feature article stresses that adopting AI tools is not the same as true transformation. To move beyond incremental gains, legal departments must redesign workflows, improve data infrastructure, invest in training, and hire for adaptability and technical literacy. Ultimately, the central message is that efficiency is only a by-product — the real challenge is deciding what kind of legal function an organization will need in 2030 and how to start building toward that vision now.

You can access the full feature article, The 2030 legal department: 5 ways AI will transform how in-house teams work here

Key highlights:

• • • Curriculum��redesign must start now — One law school’s approach illustrates the necessity of mapping the entire curriculum to identify which skills to preserve, evolve, or build from scratch.

    • Training faculty in AI use is critical — Faculty AI training should be a multi-layered approach including hands-on training with specialized legal AI tools, guidance on redesigning curricula, and more.

    • AI simulations may be the key — Law school leaders need to act now by experimenting with small pilot projects and building simulation-based learning tools to replace the developmental depth that once came naturally in the first years of practice.

The debate about AI consuming most of the work that teaches essential lawyering skills to junior attorneys is forcing a reckoning with the long-held assumption that law schools were never designed to produce practice-ready lawyers and that it was always the profession’s job.

Indeed, AI is forcing that uncomfortable truth into the open faster than anyone anticipated because essential lawyering work — the document review, contract markup, research memo creation — dictated how a junior lawyer learned to spot the issue buried on page 47, to sense when a clause was off, and to develop the instinct that no classroom can fully replicate. Now, as more law firms deploy AI to handle precisely those entry-level tasks, the organic training moments that used to define the first two to three years of legal practice are evaporating.

, Executive Dean, Faculty of Law at Bond University, and Co-Chair of the Council of Australian Law Deans, says he sees where this is leading. The ultimate results will be firms hiring fewer junior lawyers today because AI has taken over that entry-level work, James explains, adding that means there will simply be no pipeline of mid-level, experienced lawyers to draw from in three to five years. Indeed, this is a slow-moving crisis, already in motion, and yet to fully arrive.

This crisis lands at the center of what the AI and Future of Legal Practice (AIFLP) initiative exists to address because at the core of this crisis is what does being job-ready really means when the job itself is being redefined. Answering this question requires law schools, law firms, licensing bodies, and technologists to do something they have historically struggled to do — that is to think and act collaboratively.

Rethinking the curriculum before AI does it for you

leads IE Law School’s AI initiative and is steering the school’s efforts to embed AI across the curriculum. To do so effectively, her approach requires going back to a broader set of foundational questions in legal education such as: For what is legal education meant to prepare students? How do students learn to develop legal judgment? What makes legal advice genuinely valuable? And what skills are essential to deliver that value in an AI-enabled profession?

“Layering AI tools on top of an unchanged curriculum serves no one,” Perez-Llorca explains, adding that without answers to the fundamental questions, “you are just adding technology to a structure that was never designed to handle it.”

Check out how one law school professor is building AI simulation tools

IE law school is currently mapping its entire curriculum to determine which skills need to be preserved, which need to evolve, and which need to be built from scratch, while also using the AI-boosted curriculum to train faculty. Perez-Llorca describes the school’s faculty AI training as a multi-layered approach encompassing university-wide LLM training, substantive AI law curriculum review, hands-on training with specialized legal AI tools, guidance on redesigning curricula, and assessments to reflect students’ growing AI proficiency. Before students can be taught with AI, professors need to understand the tools themselves and how to use them in teaching, in simulation, and in assessment, she adds.

An AI tutor that meets students where they are

Bond University’s James says he has spent the last several months building an AI tutor designed to walk students through course material the way a patient, attentive instructor would. His vision for the AI teaching assistant supports the professor meeting students where they are. “It [the AI tutor] introduces the week’s topic, outlines learning outcomes, guides students through the readings, checks comprehension with short quizzes, and then adapts in real time based on how the student responds,” James explains, adding that the AI tutor will pull any student who is struggling deeper into the material until the learning outcome is achieved. “The conversation never stops until the learning does.”

However, James is careful to draw a clear distinction about what the tutor replaces and what it does not, stressing that AI is a substitute for the lecture recording, the static reading list, or the passive video watched at midnight before an exam — but it chiefly exists to support the law professor. This approach frees up class time, turning it from content delivery to more meaningful the time between the human instructor and students, he adds.

Act by design or default

The approaches by both Perez-Llorca and James point to a way to address the question of disappearing tasks that teach essential lawyering skills as well as shift the center of gravity in legal education toward ways to foster developmental skills and legal judgment. Indeed, inertia is not a strategy, and law school deans and associate deans can be at the forefront of this fight by taking decisive action, including:

• • • Experiment freely — Investigate with AI on your own by starting small with a pilot project.
    • Strategically assign where AI goes — Decide where AI belongs in the curriculum, such as in courses focused on legal research and drafting as they become commoditized by AI. Also, determine in which instances AI does not belong, such as counseling clients through ambiguity, navigating ethical complexity, and advocating persuasively. Make sure these all remain led by human lawyers.
    • Focus on skills — Map your law school’s curriculum by identifying which skills need to be preserved, which skills need to evolve, and which need to be built from scratch.
    • Build AI-assisted teaching tools — Make experiential and simulation-based learning central to the curriculum.

“The choice is between dealing with this crisis by design or by default,” James says, noting that the pipeline problem he described is already in motion while the practitioners, educators, technologists, and licensing bodies that need to solve this together are not yet consistently in the same room.

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Key insights:

• • • UK law firms face a more selective growth market in 2026��— Client demand remains steady, but external legal spend expectations have cooled, with growth concentrated in areas such as Regulatory, Labor & Employment, and international work.

    • Legal expertise alone is no longer enough — UK legal buyers increasingly favor law firms that combine technical excellence with commercial judgment, business understanding, and practical guidance aligned to client priorities.

    • AI adoption is becoming a client expectation��— Corporate legal teams are moving faster than their outside law firms on GenAI, and many UK legal buyers now expect outside counsel to use AI to improve efficiency, workflows, and the quality of legal work.

The legal market in the United Kingdom today has shifted into a new normal. While law firms saw an explosion of demand and spending immediately following the pandemic, increasing client caution has resulted in a shift in priorities. Today’s law firms cannot simply rely on their old ways of providing legal service to succeed, as UK clients expect firms to combine expertise, commercial judgment, international reach, and visible AI-enabled improvements in how legal work is delivered.

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2026 State of the UK Legal Market

A new report from the Thomson Reuters Institute, “2026 State of the UK Legal Market,” reveals how the UK legal market is shifting, as more judicious clients are beginning to force law firms to reassess their strategy. Overall anticipated net spend from legal clients has seen declining growth rates in recent years, and while some practices like Regulatory and Labor & Employment continue to see strong demand growth, other practice areas such as Insurance, IP, and Disputes face potential contraction.

This shift is also guided by emerging buyer preferences. The report reveals an increasing commerciality to the UK legal market, one in which clients increasingly favor advisors that combine legal excellence with commercial judgement, and those that are leveraging AI to bolster not only efficiency but improve the overall legal work product.

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Taken as a whole, the report paints a picture of clients that now are moving faster than their outside legal advisors, strengthening their internal capabilities, and setting clearer (and higher) expectations. This means that UK law firms cannot rest on their laurels, as clients increasingly push their outside firms to keep up with new business challenges.

The market is cautious, but opportunity remains

The report reveals that UK legal buyers are more cautious about external legal spend than they have been at any point in the last five years. That may mean law firms can no longer rely on the broad-based demand that defined the post-pandemic period and instead need to be more precise about where opportunity exists — and where it doesn’t.

The report tracks buyer sentiment through net spend anticipation (NSA), which measures the share of buyers expecting to increase external legal spend over the next 12 months minus those expecting to decrease it. Since its 2021 peak, UK NSA has fallen steadily to +5 percentage points in 2025, returning the market to the more stable, single-digit baseline that was seen before the pandemic.

For those law firms looking to capture increased business, the report makes clear that legal expertise is now the price of entry, not the point of differentiation. The firms that stand out will be those that know how to apply their expertise in ways that reflect the client’s business realities.

Indeed, that is becoming even more important as corporate legal departments face growing pressure to demonstrate their own value to the wider organization, and they’re increasingly pointing to improvements in their own quality and effectiveness even before mentioning cost savings, efficiency, or time savings. Not surprisingly, more than one-third of UK legal buyers now cite business savviness as a reason they favor a particular law firm.

To help demonstrate their internal value, clients are pushing their outside law firms to leverage advanced technology to improve the overall effectiveness of legal work. Of course, this has resulted in a clear gap, the report notes, between how corporate legal teams are moving and how law firms are responding. For instance, the report shows that more than half of UK corporate legal respondents say their organizations are already using GenAI tools across the business, compared with just about one-third law firm respondents who said this.

That difference in outlook matters because clients increasingly believe AI will become a larger part of how legal work is delivered, and they’re not content to simply wait and see whether their outside counsel will fully adopt the technology. Indeed, corporate legal departments are expecting their outside law firms to keep pace with how legal work is changing, and they will reward those firms that do.

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a full copy of the Thomson Reuters Institute’s “2026 State of the UK Legal Market” by filling out the form below: