How many of us have said, “This year went so fast?” If you utter that sentiment, you are not wrong. Things are moving quickly, and with 2026 around the corner, it is a good time to focus and plan on what you and your firm must do to stay ahead. Technology is no longer a back-office efficiency solution; it has become integral to every practice. In a 2025 survey of 2,800+ legal professionals published by the ABA’s Law Technology, 31% said they personally used generative AI at work, a 27% increase from the prior year, while legal firms reported 21%, making it clear that lawyers are moving faster than institutions.
Planning for success in 2026 means leveraging emerging technologies to secure a competitive advantage across all business units, including staffing, training, client relations, and legal filings.
Strategy Before Software
The biggest technological mistakes law firms make are rarely technical; they are strategic. Too often, firms invest in new platforms without first redefining workflows, business goals, or growth priorities. When technology is layered on top of outdated practices, it accelerates inefficiency, increasing risk and inconsistency rather than improving performance and culture.
Firms must recognize that there is no one-size-fits-all solution and assess the services they deliver, the clients they serve, expected turnaround, fee structures, and quality controls. A firm focused on complex, specialized cases will require a very different technological ecosystem than is built around high-volume, standardized work. This planning applies to growth strategies as well. If you plan to expand into new markets, adopt alternative fee arrangements, or add a new practice area, you will evaluate technology through very different lenses.
This is where leadership alignment becomes essential. Even after periods of strong performance, firms are being pushed to continually rethink how they do business as AI-driven tools and evolving client expectations reshape the legal industry. When leadership prioritizes strategy over technology, firms are far more likely to invest in systems that support sustainable growth, consistent service delivery, and long-term impact.
Rethinking Leverage, Not Just Headcount
For decades, staffing was a math equation where clients flowed in, associates billed hours, and opportunity and growth were determined. In 2026, it will be crucial to rethink internal operations and workflows as work changes. Drafting, summarizing, first-pass research, contract review, and routine correspondence are increasingly amenable to automation or augmentation. That doesn’t eliminate junior talent needs, but it changes what “junior” should do and what must be supervised.
Firms should build staffing models around work, not titles. A complex commercial dispute might be broken down into discovery strategy, document review, deposition preparation, motion practice, and client reporting. Some portions will still have a seasoned attorney responsible for the work. Still, other functions can be streamlined through improved knowledge management, process design, and AI-assisted review, provided the firm has strong guardrails and human verification. Competitive advantage emerges from deploying the right expertise at the right stage, not from decreasing headcount.
Training as a Competitive Advantage
Training can’t be a one-hour webinar or self-directed module on the firm’s new platforms. In 2026, training is a business development strategy because it determines whether the firm can reliably deliver modern and reputable services. That includes technical competence, judgment, escalation protocols, and client-ready communication.
The ABA-published 2025 survey data underscores that lawyers are already using AI personally, while firms lag in institutional adoption, often due to policy uncertainty, ethical concerns, and inconsistent workflows. This gap is a training opportunity for firms that standardize how they use it, which will reduce risk and unlock more consistent productivity.
A practical training plan has a specific curriculum. It teaches prompt discipline and verification methods, document-handling rules, citation hygiene, the firm’s confidentiality boundaries, and when not to use AI. It also builds fluency in legal project management, pricing basics, and data interpretation because client conversations increasingly revolve around predictability, timelines, and outcomes, not just legal theory.
Governance, Risk, and Trust
As AI becomes embedded in daily legal work, governance is no longer optional; it is essential to risk management, compliance, and client trust. Firms should expect heightened scrutiny around confidentiality, data retention, ethical obligations, and the reliability of AI-assisted outputs. There are many resources, including LinkedIn and Microsoft, that help create a practical governance framework that defines how and when AI may be used, requires rigorous diligence, documents workflows that demonstrate human oversight, and includes ongoing training to ensure consistency and accountability. Just as important, transparency has become a client expectation, not a courtesy. The question firms must now be prepared to answer is no longer whether they use AI, but how they govern it responsibly.
The goal is not “more technology.” It is better performance and improved client satisfaction. This will be achieved through a blend of tools, training, and redesigned processes. In the legal profession, operational excellence is becoming synonymous with legal excellence. Are you ready for a successful 2026?
