Every year, there is a flurry of predictions about what will happen with AI and how it will change and shape the landscape of work. And sometimes, those predictions even come true. Here’s a look at the year’s top predictions about AI that actually came true, and what that says about what we can expect in 2026.
People will adopt AI faster than their workplaces
The American Bar Association's Legal Industry Report documented a modest shift in legal professionals’ AI use: 31% of legal professionals used generative AI at work in 2025, up from 27% the previous year. While a 4-percentage-point increase might seem incremental, it represents continued momentum in an industry historically resistant to rapid technology adoption.
Other studies have shown that as many as 79% of legal professionals are using AI. This suggests individual adoption of AI is moving much faster than firm or corporate-level AI implementation. This is not a surprise, with governance concerns and risk management making corporate deployments slower than individual use of AI tools.
We will see more AI regulation
Stanford HAI's 2025 AI Index Report showed an increase in AI-related regulatory activity. AI-related legislative mentions rose 21.3% across 75 countries. The United States alone introduced 59 of those regulations. This confirmed the prediction that legal teams, when adopting AI, will need to navigate an increasingly complicated world of compliance.
AI is shifting from chatbots to agents
A number of studies showed that AI tools have evolved from simple chatbots to specialized AI agents. Numerous vendors launched more sophisticated AI products capable of document drafting, search, and metadata extraction. This is indicative of a fundamental change in how legal technology delivers value. It is designed to augment and streamline actual legal work, and lawyers have an expectation that it will deliver work held to the same standard as they are.
Do the predictions that came true in 2025 hold a clue for what will come in 2026? We believe that they do. Here are our predictions for the state of legal AI in the coming year:
Prediction 1: Buyers won’t tolerate companies that aren’t AI-first
We spoke with Evan Wong, the CEO of Checkbox.ai, and he predicted that there would be an increasing capability gap between AI-native legal tech solutions and older, legacy legal tech solutions. He likened the transition to the transformation from paper to digital or on-prem to cloud.
He noted:
“We're now shifting from SaaS to AI-first, which is another technology transition that we're going through as an industry and as a society. As we step into 2026, the gap between companies that can move quickly on AI and those who can't will profoundly widen. My prediction is that buyers will no longer tolerate vendors that are not driven by AI. Buyers will want a best-of-breed approach to AI solutions.”
Prediction 2: ROI will drive buying decisions, and legal teams lead on how it's measured.
Legal teams know they need to measure the value of their AI investments, but there are a couple of obstacles to quantifying these tools’ effect on the business. Traditionally, ROI for legal teams has been measured in cost avoidance, risk mitigation, and operational efficiency. But trying to calculate the value of what didn’t happen vs what did is incredibly difficult. And even if legal teams had greater responsibility for revenue-generating initiatives, they’re difficult to attribute directly to the legal department.
When legal teams are evaluated using metrics designed for revenue-generating departments, there is a mismatch in expectations. Legal prevents disasters and mitigates risk, which are valuable to the business but don’t always fit within the neat ROI formulas that finance teams expect. As one of our customers recently told us, “I do not want to be viewed as a cost center. I want to be a business partner.”
Like it or not, in the current economic climate, it’s critical to be able to explain the value of AI tools in a way that finance teams understand in order to lessen the resource pressure on legal teams. The most forward-thinking GCs we’ve met face this problem head-on and define the metrics by which they’re measured themselves, in partnership with their finance colleagues, and we expect to see more of this in the coming year.
Prediction 3: Internal AI governance will mature
The increasing amount of AI-related legislation, as well as greater amounts of end-user adoption, is leading to the presence of in-house AI governance frameworks. We expect that an emphasis on AI oversight roles, vendor guidelines, and policy guardrails will become a standard part of AI implementation in 2026.
What we’ve learned
The 2025 predictions that came to pass reveal the secrets to successful AI adoption in 2026. In-house legal departments will set up governance, operational, and measurement guidelines for successful AI adoption. Companies will continue to be cautious. And buyers will expect more from technology that evolves extremely quickly.
Learn more about successful AI adoption with the following resources.
Every year, there is a flurry of predictions about what will happen with AI and how it will change and shape the landscape of work. And sometimes, those predictions even come true. Here’s a look at the year’s top predictions about AI that actually came true, and what that says about what we can expect in 2026.
People will adopt AI faster than their workplaces
The American Bar Association's Legal Industry Report documented a modest shift in legal professionals’ AI use: 31% of legal professionals used generative AI at work in 2025, up from 27% the previous year. While a 4-percentage-point increase might seem incremental, it represents continued momentum in an industry historically resistant to rapid technology adoption.
Other studies have shown that as many as 79% of legal professionals are using AI. This suggests individual adoption of AI is moving much faster than firm or corporate-level AI implementation. This is not a surprise, with governance concerns and risk management making corporate deployments slower than individual use of AI tools.
We will see more AI regulation
Stanford HAI's 2025 AI Index Report showed an increase in AI-related regulatory activity. AI-related legislative mentions rose 21.3% across 75 countries. The United States alone introduced 59 of those regulations. This confirmed the prediction that legal teams, when adopting AI, will need to navigate an increasingly complicated world of compliance.
AI is shifting from chatbots to agents
A number of studies showed that AI tools have evolved from simple chatbots to specialized AI agents. Numerous vendors launched more sophisticated AI products capable of document drafting, search, and metadata extraction. This is indicative of a fundamental change in how legal technology delivers value. It is designed to augment and streamline actual legal work, and lawyers have an expectation that it will deliver work held to the same standard as they are.
Do the predictions that came true in 2025 hold a clue for what will come in 2026? We believe that they do. Here are our predictions for the state of legal AI in the coming year:
Prediction 1: Buyers won’t tolerate companies that aren’t AI-first
We spoke with Evan Wong, the CEO of Checkbox.ai, and he predicted that there would be an increasing capability gap between AI-native legal tech solutions and older, legacy legal tech solutions. He likened the transition to the transformation from paper to digital or on-prem to cloud.
He noted:
“We're now shifting from SaaS to AI-first, which is another technology transition that we're going through as an industry and as a society. As we step into 2026, the gap between companies that can move quickly on AI and those who can't will profoundly widen. My prediction is that buyers will no longer tolerate vendors that are not driven by AI. Buyers will want a best-of-breed approach to AI solutions.”
Prediction 2: ROI will drive buying decisions, and legal teams lead on how it's measured.
Legal teams know they need to measure the value of their AI investments, but there are a couple of obstacles to quantifying these tools’ effect on the business. Traditionally, ROI for legal teams has been measured in cost avoidance, risk mitigation, and operational efficiency. But trying to calculate the value of what didn’t happen vs what did is incredibly difficult. And even if legal teams had greater responsibility for revenue-generating initiatives, they’re difficult to attribute directly to the legal department.
When legal teams are evaluated using metrics designed for revenue-generating departments, there is a mismatch in expectations. Legal prevents disasters and mitigates risk, which are valuable to the business but don’t always fit within the neat ROI formulas that finance teams expect. As one of our customers recently told us, “I do not want to be viewed as a cost center. I want to be a business partner.”
Like it or not, in the current economic climate, it’s critical to be able to explain the value of AI tools in a way that finance teams understand in order to lessen the resource pressure on legal teams. The most forward-thinking GCs we’ve met face this problem head-on and define the metrics by which they’re measured themselves, in partnership with their finance colleagues, and we expect to see more of this in the coming year.
Prediction 3: Internal AI governance will mature
The increasing amount of AI-related legislation, as well as greater amounts of end-user adoption, is leading to the presence of in-house AI governance frameworks. We expect that an emphasis on AI oversight roles, vendor guidelines, and policy guardrails will become a standard part of AI implementation in 2026.
What we’ve learned
The 2025 predictions that came to pass reveal the secrets to successful AI adoption in 2026. In-house legal departments will set up governance, operational, and measurement guidelines for successful AI adoption. Companies will continue to be cautious. And buyers will expect more from technology that evolves extremely quickly.
Learn more about successful AI adoption with the following resources.
