The Bureau and ACEDS’ 2026 AI Report reveals how AI is transforming the legal industry, from implementation and workflows to governance, risks and opportunities.
The 2026 Artificial Intelligence Report, conducted by the Secretariat in collaboration with ACEDS, found that AI has been almost universally adopted across the legal industry. The question is no longer whether AI is being used, but which AI technologies are being used, how they are integrated into everyday legal workflows, and what risks need to be addressed to ensure that their use is accurate, defensible, and consistent with professional and ethical responsibilities.
Now in the second year that the Secretariat conducted the study in parallel with ACEDS, the study highlights the industry’s rapid transition from experimentation to operational implementation. Generative AI is becoming an increasingly common part of legal practice, with respondents reporting increased use across document preparation, legal research, web search, document review, document summarization, e-discovery, and other core legal activities.
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Key findings from the report include:
– 91% of respondents have used Generative AI in the past year, indicating a significant shift from experimentation to everyday use
– Data privacy and confidentiality continues to be the top barrier to AI adoption (57%), with hallucinations rapidly increasing (46%) to become the second-highest barrier after cost (40%)
– 64% of respondents expect their organization’s AI investments to increase over the next 12 months, reflecting continued momentum in adoption and deployment.
The findings also highlight that accelerated adoption has both benefits and risks. While organizations realize increased speed and efficiency, they must also address growing concerns about privacy, confidentiality, reliability, and defensibility.
“There has been a clear acceleration in the adoption of commercial GenAI tools within traditional e-discovery workflows, and these technologies are now being actively used throughout the core discovery process,” said Richard Finkelman, Managing Director of the Bureau. The incident has brought the risks, particularly around hallucinations and data privacy, into sharper focus. Expert discovery is now the next frontier, and while adoption today is still in its infancy, we expect it to move rapidly towards more mainstream use over the next 12 months.”
“AI has moved from a forward-looking conversation to an everyday reality for legal teams. What our legal community now wants is not hype, but practical guidance, including what tools to use, where they fit into the workflow, and how to deploy them responsibly without compromising confidentiality, accuracy, or defensibility,” said Maribel Rivera, vice president of strategy and client engagement at ACEDS. “This report makes clear that education and governance must keep pace with adoption. As GenAI becomes part of document creation, review, research, and new expert discovery workflows, legal professionals need the skills to ask better questions, validate output, and put human oversight at the center of every process.”
The 2026 Bureau and ACEDS Artificial Intelligence Report provides valuable insights for legal professionals and organizations looking to stay ahead of AI trends and meet the challenges of AI implementation head-on.
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