Legal industry leaders explore earning and maintaining trust in an AI-driven world; Wolters Kluwer 2026 Future Ready Lawyer Survey mirrors industry change

Building and maintaining clients’ trust defines future readiness. In her opening remarks, Nicole Stone set the stage for the day’s discussion by pointing to the report’s finding that AI is already woven into the everyday routines of legal teams everywhere, with adoption rates sitting at 92 percent. But even with this progress, legal professionals face some major challenges, especially around ethics, data privacy, security and talent development.

Stone also highlighted the report’s bedrock conclusion that being future ready is not just about adopting the latest technical tools available. Rather, it is about building and maintaining trust from clients and regulators by demonstrating transparency, using AI responsibly, as well as developing strong and competent teams.

Trust emanates from culture in the AI age. Mark Brennan amplified Stone’s comments, observing that a key piece of trust starts with culture, not technology. Accordingly, the most important shift around the culture piece is normalizing challenges and accountability with respect to AI use. “Lawyers and business teams need both to feel empowered to use AI and essentially obligated to question it,” Brennan stated.

In practice, that shows up in simple behaviors like documenting when using AI in research or drafting, encouraging teams to escalate uncertainty early, and training lawyers to test outputs rather than just accept them. Brennan further observed that firms that reward sound judgment and transparency, and not just speed, create an environment where AI use can be the norm, and trust can follow from that.

Future readiness requires a commitment to continuous learning. As AI becomes more embedded in the legal world, one of the most essential cultural shifts organizations need to adopt to earn and maintain trust is an unwavering commitment to AI literacy, continuous learning and training, said Amy Dietrich. She pointed to the report’s findings on the need for law firms and legal departments to invest in ongoing training so that legal professionals genuinely understand both the potential and limitations of AI systems.

In the law firm environment, Dietrich underscored the importance of engaging in testing and practical experimentation. In her view, problems can be a jumping off point to test different models and tools. Additionally, Deitrich fully embraced the report’s citation from University of Cologne law professor Dr. Frauke Rostalski that, “Human oversight of AI processes is essential: AI outputs must be reviewed through sound legal reasoning and ethical judgment by a human in — or at least on — the loop.”

An on-the-ground European perspective. Viktor von Essen, Libra’s creator of AI-legal workflow solution, shared his unique insights in connection with helping law firms and corporations adopt AI-based technologies. Two prerequisites must be fulfilled, according to von Essen. First, you must fully comply with all applicable regulatory requirements, and the technological tools must be trustworthy and reliable. As lawyers are personally responsible for their legal work products, they can only interact with technology that they can trust to upload sensitive documents and be reliable in all respects, he said.

Second, after dealing with many lawyers, it became crystal clear to von Essen that the technology solution had to be based on strong content that was transparent and could be traced back to its source. This requirement was imperative as lawyers must be able to back their arguments with authoritative content, meaning court opinions and secondary sources. Von Essen also noted that since Libra became affiliated with Wolters Kluwer, its content library grew to reflect the work of 30,000 authors, spanning over 200 years. In conclusion, Von Essen pointed to tracing back to the source, transparency and reliability as closing the circle. In his view, this is the starting point to build trust and gain AI adoption.

Managing AI activities across borders and markets. It is vitally important to adopt universal principles to maintain a consistent trust standard when dealing with clients who are moving across borders and jurisdictions, according to Martin O’Malley. He emphasized that matters such as privacy, security, confidentiality, and diligence need to be consistent across markets. He described this approach as table stakes insofar as best standards are concerned.

O’Malley also observed that when thinking about the deployment of legal products and services, it is necessary to enable professional responsibility so that applicable compliance standards are satisfied. In his view, trustworthiness needs to be built in. O’Malley advocated for establishing global minimum standards around AI practices, which would include data handling and documenting human review. He observed that he is already seeing these practices in the markets in which Wolters Kluwer operates. Lastly, O’Malley believes that as AI becomes more pervasive, it is important to ensure that human oversight and quality controls scale as well.

Dealing with evolving client expectations. Clients already assume AI adoption in the legal space it is table stakes; it is no longer a future trend; its is happening now, Licia Garotti remarked. Her observations are certainly buttressed by the Future Ready Lawyer Report, which finds that 54 percent of clients increasingly expect their legal partners to be AI competent and to use AI responsibly. Garotti elaborated that using AI is no longer a differentiator among lawyers, and that using AI is no longer an option for a legal professional. She also underscored that clients also expect a higher level of service, greater speed in the delivery of that service, as well as lower costs that reflect increased efficiencies.

Garotti also identified a growing phenomenon where clients frequently compare law firm output with output created by an AI tool used by the client. As a result, legal professionals need to constantly improve their own AI-related skills to effectively address these queries.

A word about methodology. The report, which provides current and in-depth perspective on law firms and corporate legal departments, reflects insights from 810 legal professionals across the U.S., China, and nine European countries — Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, Poland and Hungary.

You can access Competing for Trust in an AI-Driven World webinar recording by clicking here, as well as the 2026 Wolters Kluwer Future Ready Lawyer Survey — Building Confidence in an AI era by clicking here.