What it takes to scale AI with confidence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer an experiment for legal professionals. It is a foundational technology that transforms how legal teams operate, bill, and manage risk. On March 10, we launched the first episode of the Future Ready Lawyer 2026 webinar series, “Building Confidence in an AI Era”, focusing on how organizations can responsibly scale this technology.
This webinar unpacked the realities of technology adoption, moving past theoretical discussions to address how organizations can build reliable frameworks. By understanding the latest data and expert insights, legal operations leaders can take control of their workflows and ensure their teams use new software effectively and securely.
How technology is shaping the legal profession
The session centered on the rapid shift from piloting individual tools to scaling them across entire teams and regions. Participants explored the findings from the 2026 Future Ready Lawyer Survey, which revealed that 92 percent of legal professionals now use at least one AI tool in their daily work.
The data presented during the webinar paints a clear picture of the current impact of technology on the legal sector.
- Productivity gains are real: 62 percent of respondents report saving between six and 20 percent of their work week thanks to process automation.
- Revenue is growing: 52 percent of law firms and legal departments attribute a six to 20 percent increase in revenue to their software investments.
- Barriers still exist: Despite high adoption rates, 39 percent of professionals cite inadequate training and resources as a primary challenge, while 41 percent of law firms worry about ethical and data privacy concerns.
Key insights from the webinar
1. AI adoption is no longer the question, scaling it is.
One of the clearest signals from the discussion was that legal has moved past the experimentation phase. With more than 90% of legal professionals now using at least one AI tool, the challenge is no longer access or willingness. It’s consistency, ownership, and scale.
Several panelists emphasized that AI usage today is highly fragmented — different tools, approaches, maturity, often within the same organization. As Elgar Weijtmans and Ken Crutchfield noted, this fragmentation may work during pilots, but it breaks down quickly when teams try to operationalize AI across an enterprise.
The real question facing legal leaders now is not whether AI is being used, but how it is governed, embedded, and sustained across teams.
2. The hard part of AI isn’t the tech; it’s the people.
A recurring theme was that technology itself represents only a small part of successful AI implementation. AI adoption is roughly 20% technology and 80% people.
Firms and legal departments that are seeing meaningful results invest heavily in training, change management, and workflow redesign. That means small‑group enablement, real use‑case mapping, and showing lawyers how AI fits into their day‑to‑day work — not just giving them access to a tool and hoping for adoption.
Panelists reinforced this by pointing out that adoption doesn’t scale through one‑time training. It scales when lawyers can see immediate relevance at the moment of need. Without that, even the best technology stalls
3. Shadow AI is a governance failure, not a user failure.
Concerns around “shadow AI” — lawyers using consumer‑grade tools outside approved systems — surfaced repeatedly.
Panelists explained that shadow AI emerges when official tools are hard to use, poorly integrated, or simply unavailable. Lawyers will always gravitate toward the easiest path to getting work done.
The most effective way to reduce shadow AI isn’t stricter enforcement; it’s better design. When secure, approved AI tools are embedded directly into document management systems and workflows, the incentive to use external tools drops dramatically.
4. AI isn’t replacing lawyers; it’s exposing what only lawyers do.
Perhaps the most philosophical insight pertained to related aspects of the same shift.
AI is rapidly stripping away non‑legal and “context” work, tasks that were never core to legal judgment but consumed enormous amounts of time. As that work disappears, the profession is being forced to confront a deeper question: what is uniquely legal expertise?
This has implications far beyond efficiency. It affects pricing models, staffing, the role of in‑house teams versus law firms, and even how legal value is defined. AI isn’t diminishing the lawyer’s role. It’s narrowing the role to its most essential, strategic core.
Why this matters to legal operations
Across the discussion, one message was consistent: AI is accelerating changes that were already underway in legal. The organizations that succeed won’t be the ones chasing the next model or tool. They’ll be the ones that invest in leadership, governance, and clarity around how legal work actually gets done. For legal operations, these insights signal a shift from tool evaluation to operational leadership. The value now lies in defining governance, embedding AI into workflows, and driving consistent adoption across teams. Legal ops becomes the connective tissue between strategy, technology, people, and outside counsel expectations, ensuring AI delivers scale, trust, and measurable impact rather than isolated efficiency gains.
For more valuable insights, download our Future Ready Laywer 2026 report, Confidence in an AI Era: Scaling AI Across Organizations. or register for the rest of the webinar series.
