In-House Legal Teams Brace for AI-Fueled Transformation in 2026

Corporate legal departments may have been slow to tech evolution, but they’re poised for a break-out year ahead.

Legal departments have for a few years been getting pitched on tech tools to speed up work flows, manage contracts, and more. While many legal teams buy these tools, the more advanced departments are looking to 2026 for the tech to start revolutionizing how they work and maybe even reduce their legal spend. It’s not just about buying software, but infusing tech use throughout the legal department and the company as a whole.

“After decades of sheepishly holding the title of ‘Most Tech-Averse Department,’ in 2026 corporate counsel will surprise the enterprise with a full reputation rebrand as the company’s boldest tech adopters,” Bernadette Bulacan, chief evangelist at the contract lifecycle management company Icertis, said in an email. “They’ll leave those 2025 pilots behind and lead full-blown AI rollouts, win innovation awards, and host lunch-and-learns to teach everyone else how to use the tools.”

From Novelty to Necessity

Since ChatGPT and other generative AI tools arrived on the scene more than three years ago, legal departments have been talking about using more AI. The time has come for some departments to build their own tech.

Patricija “Patty” Corey, legal operations manager at the cybersecurity company HUMAN, said legal departments can use AI chatbots like Claude to build their own tech solutions to supplement the software they buy, otherwise known as “vibe coding.”

“The teams that stand out will use AI, vibe coding, and light tech skills to build and iterate on real solutions quickly, without waiting on outside help,” Corey said.

That innovation is coming because legal tech is mature enough and in wide enough use. It’s no longer a novelty, said Bruce Byrd, executive vice president and general counsel at Palo Alto Networks.

“Over the coming year, legal departments will rapidly accelerate their responsible use of AI tools to improve efficiency, optimize processes, and maximize the talents of their legal professionals,” Byrd said in an email. “These tools will graduate from ‘nice to haves’ to necessary elements of any high-functioning department.”

Where Humans Fit

The maturity of available tech tools is increasing the importance of figuring out where and how to best use them. All legal departments have largely the same AI tools available to them, but they don’t use them the same way.

What will make legal departments stand out is figuring out the right way to leverage AI alongside the lawyers in the department, said Tommie Tavares-Ferreira, chief strategy officer at the alternative legal services provider Lawtrades. The highest-achieving legal teams will have clear workflows and “thoughtful lawyer-in-the-loop design,” Tavares-Ferreira said in an email.

“AI won’t replace legal judgment, but it will demand that legal departments articulate when judgment is required and how it’s applied,” she said.

Using Tech Strategically

Legal teams have been striving for bigger corporate roles, often describing their ambition to be more “strategic” within their enterprise. Legal tech gives them an opportunity to really achieve that vision.

AI could enable legal departments to be less of a cost center and more of a driver of the business, said Jerry Levine, chief evangelist at ContractPodAI.

“I think you’re going to see more and more GCs saying we are having measurable business impact from adopting AI, from bringing these tools internally,” Levine, former general counsel at IPsoft, said.

On the regulatory side, businesses will be using data to build and use gen AI tools, raising questions around governance and compliance. Legal departments will get those questions when they come up, said Richard Robinson, former head of legal operations at Toyota.

“How do I meet my CEO’s and my general counsel’s mandate?” said Robinson, now director of client success at the legal services company Epiq. “I go out and implement AI in a way that furthers the goals of the company while protecting the confidential and potentially privileged information in our company.”