2026 will be the year of the AI-native lawyer, but who dares to adapt the business model?
“AI is changing legal work, but above all, the role of humans within it.”
AI as a catalyst for change
What do legal experts expect from AI in 2026? That question was central to the annual trend survey by The National Law Review. For this edition, 85 professionals from legal practice, academia, and technology were surveyed, including lawyers, judges, legal tech founders, and professors. It provided a rich and nuanced picture of how AI will influence the legal profession and how quickly that will happen.
Participants shared their views on a range of strategic questions: will AI replace junior lawyers within five years? Will we achieve general AI that thinks like a human as early as this year? Should lawyers be disbarred if they submit documents containing AI hallucinations? And: are legal education programs sufficiently preparing students for an AI-driven practice?
The first half of the study consisted of multiple-choice questions mapping trends and opinions. The second half invited participants to freely share their predictions on how AI will change the legal field and what would surprise them most in 2026. From ethical shifts to new roles within legal teams: the result is a broad palette of insights into the future of the profession.
The most striking predictions have been compiled in the report, with additional commentary by editor-in-chief Oliver Roberts. What stands out most: the emphasis this year is not on the technology itself, but on its strategic, ethical, and economic consequences. AI is no longer seen as an external innovation, but as something that touches the core of legal decision-making, billing, education, and trust.
In this blog, we highlight three main themes: the future of the business model, the rise of AI-native legal professionals, and the fundamental repositioning of firms around value, transparency, and quality.
The hourly rate under pressure
According to Joseph Tiano, the discussion is no longer about efficiency, but about legal value. “Clients are no longer going to pay for hours of work that AI handles in seconds,” he states. This forces firms to fundamentally revise their pricing models. Time is no longer central; instead, the focus is on the outcome and the added value.
Melissa Jones also sees this movement in practice. As managing partner at Stoel Rives, she notes that clients are increasingly making it clear upfront that AI tasks may not be billed on an hourly basis. “It forces us to become much more transparent about what true legal added value is,” she says. This shifts the focus from effort to impact. What was once seen as a measure of commitment is now becoming an obstacle to trust.
Lydia Flocchini, CEO of Scarab Strategies, sees this development as an even greater shock than the technology itself. “The old calculation model no longer fits the new work process. AI reveals how outdated time-based billing actually is.” For her, 2026 is all about letting go of the past and daring to choose a new logic. She expects new pricing models, such as fixed fees per product or subscriptions for standard advice, to gain structural ground.
The rise of the AI-native legal professional
As pricing models shift, the profile of the young legal professional is also changing. Renee Henson, professor at the University of Missouri, sees how students are rapidly integrating AI into their daily learning and working methods. “They will hardly be able to imagine a world without AI,” she states. According to her, 2026 will be the year in which AI is no longer seen as a tool, but as a natural part of legal practice.
This development is also changing how law is taught. Amy Schmitz, professor at Ohio State University, observes that AI is increasingly being used to simulate realistic legal situations. “What was once seen as academic fraud is now becoming a way to practice professionally. Students simulate clients, judges, and opposing parties with AI, thereby training their strategic insight.”
This generation is therefore not only learning how AI works, but especially how to use it critically and effectively. This gives rise to a new type of legal professional: someone who thinks in systems, risks, and scenarios, and uses AI as an amplifier of legal insight. This requires a new curriculum in which AI skills, ethical assessment, and critical use of sources are given a prominent place.
Strategic advantage for firms that dare
It’s not just young legal professionals who are adapting. Firms must also take action, and the differences are becoming increasingly visible. Scott Milner, partner at Morgan Lewis, sees it daily: “Without human oversight and valid quality processes, AI becomes a risk instead of an opportunity.” According to him, it is not the number of tools that counts, but the way they are embedded in the legal workflow.
Colin Levy, General Counsel at Malbek, agrees. He notices that clients are becoming increasingly critical. “It’s no longer enough to say you use AI. Clients want to know how you use it, what safeguards are in place, and what that means for quality, speed, and reliability.” For him, AI has now become a subject of due diligence, a sign that the technology is maturing.
Clients increasingly expect verifiable working methods: audit trails, source attribution, control mechanisms, and transparent divisions of roles between humans and machines. Firms that invest in this gain trust. Those who wait risk becoming irrelevant, not because of the technology itself, but due to a lack of control, insight, and vision.
From experiment to infrastructure
What first began as a series of experiments is now growing into a silent infrastructure. Christian Puzder, CEO of Casefriend, sees how AI is developing into the skeleton of legal processes. “AI is no longer a digital assistant on the sidelines. It is beneath the work, processing information, generating drafts, and monitoring deadlines,” he says.
Notably, smaller firms in particular are leading the way in this. Because they are less burdened by cumbersome decision-making, they can experiment faster and automate more intelligently. According to Puzder, technology becomes a way for them to compete on quality, speed, and customer focus, rather than just on size.
The use of AI is thus moving from technological curiosity to strategic necessity. Those who know how to integrate AI into daily practice, from document analysis to risk signaling, are building a robust legal infrastructure. Not to replace, but to strengthen.
The legal professional as system architect
All these developments lead to a new role for the legal professional. Not as an executor, but as the director of a hybrid process. Nathan Holmes, attorney at Boles Holmes White, calls it the transition from lawyer to system architect. “The lawyer of the future knows where AI adds value, where human oversight remains essential, and how to make both work together optimally.”
This requires new skills: designing legal workflows, assessing AI output, and translating legal risks into concrete control points. According to Holmes, the true value of the 2026 legal professional lies here—not in producing work, but in safeguarding quality, strategy, and trust. Legal added value is shifting from ‘having knowledge’ to ‘being able to interpret context and manage processes’.
More and more firms are therefore exploring new roles within their teams. Not as a hype, but as a logical extension of legal craftsmanship.
The power of collaboration between human and machine
The central message of the report is clear: AI is not the game changer. It is the legal professional who learns to collaborate with AI who makes the difference.
As Haider Ala Hamoudi, dean of the University of Cincinnati College of Law, summarizes it:
“AI does not replace lawyers. But it does replace the lawyers who do not know how to use it.”
Those who take this collaboration seriously are building a practice that is faster, more strategic, and more valuable than ever. And that requires not a new tool, but a new mindset. Trust, transparency, craftsmanship, and technological literacy come together in a new legal professional practice.
The call of this report summarized: those who understand AI and learn to work with it consciously position themselves more strongly for the future. Not because they have to, but because it contributes to more careful, strategic, and efficient legal work. The insights from this prediction are intended to spark conversation within firms, educational institutions, and the broader legal community.