Nearly half of legal professionals worry that artificial intelligence will hinder the development of independent judgment, even as adoption of generative AI tools in law firms and corporate legal departments more than doubled in two years. The tension between rapid efficiency gains and long-standing fiduciary duties is reshaping how lawyers work, what clients expect, and which firms keep their talent, according to the Thomson Reuters 2026 Future of Professionals Report.
The report, which surveyed 1,816 professionals across legal, tax, risk, and compliance fields in over 60 countries, found that 48% of legal professionals are concerned about AI's impact on independent judgment development. Respondents now expect the timeline to trusted judgment to stretch by nearly two additional years. Meanwhile, 80% of legal professionals believe AI will have a high or transformational impact on their work within five years, a three-percentage-point increase from the prior year.
Adoption and daily use
Generative AI has moved from experiment to core workflow. In 2026, 41% of law firms and 47% of corporate legal departments said their teams are using GenAI, up from 28% and 23% respectively in 2025. Overall usage across all surveyed fields jumped from 22% to 40% year over year. Firms are already seeing returns: 53% of respondents said their organizations have achieved ROI from AI investments.
The technology is handling tasks that once consumed hours of billable time. Among legal professionals using AI, 77% use it for document review, 74% for legal research, 74% to summarize documents, and 59% to draft briefs or memos. Contract drafting, correspondence drafting, and extracting contract data each top 50% usage. These figures show AI becoming a trusted partner in judgment-intensive work, not just back-office efficiency. "Freedom to practice creatively while drawing increasingly upon nuanced professional judgment and guidance. I see the existing legal services model as hopelessly broken," said a law firm leader in the United States, quoted in the report.
For legal support roles, the shift is especially pronounced. Tasks like document review and contract analysis - traditionally manual and repetitive - are now automated with tools that can accelerate research, proofreading, and summarization. AI Legal Assistant & Document Review Training helps paralegals and junior lawyers build the skills to use these systems effectively, reducing turnaround times while maintaining accuracy.
The client expectation gap
Clients are not waiting for firms to catch up. While 78% of corporate clients say AI-enabled quality improvements are very important or essential, only 6% say most of their providers actually deliver them. The 2026 report notes that 32% of clients are reconsidering relationships with firms that lag behind. This demand-side pressure compounds an internal threat: 24% of professionals experiencing an AI value gap are considering leaving within two years, at an estimated replacement cost of $232,000.
Legal professionals see AI as a way to meet these expectations. In the 2024 Future of Professionals Report, 59% of respondents were excited about handling large volumes of data more effectively, 41% about improving client response times, and 35% about reducing human error. Yet the enthusiasm is tempered by a persistent hesitancy. Among those who have not yet tried AI tools, 50% cited concerns about output quality and usefulness, and 13% pointed to data security worries.
Trust, ethics, and fiduciary standards
Legal professionals are demanding transparency and safeguards. When evaluating AI tools, 96% require safeguards for confidential data, 94% demand outputs grounded in authoritative content, and 90% say the reasoning must be explainable and defensible. These are the minimum conditions for what Thomson Reuters defines as Fiduciary-Grade AI. Respondents overwhelmingly draw red lines: 96% believe allowing AI to represent clients in court would be a step too far, and 83% say using AI to provide direct legal advice is inappropriate.
The role of human oversight remains central. "The role of a good lawyer is as a 'trusted advisor,' not as a producer of documents... breadth of experience is where a lawyer's true value lies and that will remain valuable," an attorney respondent told the 2024 survey. That sentiment aligns with the broader consensus: 85% of professionals believe AI integration will require new roles and skills, not job elimination. The most desired capabilities for the future are adaptability to change, problem-solving, creativity, and communication.
New roles and the talent equation
Adoption is creating demand for new positions. Respondents identified AI-specialist professionals (39%), IT and cybersecurity specialists (37%), AI implementation managers (33%), and AI-specialist trainers (32%) as emerging roles. At the same time, 36% of legal professionals expect their own job titles or responsibilities to change within three to five years because of GenAI. Agentic AI - which can break down complex tasks, execute subtasks across platforms, and escalate decisions to humans - is already in use at several large law firms, positioning early adopters to reduce attrition and attract talent. Indeed, 32% of professionals using professional-grade AI said they would turn down a role that did not offer such tools.
The training and education landscape is shifting accordingly. Legal teams interested in staying current can explore AI for Legal Professionals Courses to develop the judgment, ethics, and technical literacy that firms and clients now require. As one respondent put it, the future is about practicing creatively while drawing on nuanced professional judgment - and that demands continuous skill-building at every level.
Why this matters for legal professionals
The data points to a hard fact: clients are willing to leave firms that can't explain how AI improves their advice, and junior talent is willing to leave firms that refuse to adopt it. The gap between what AI can do and what most legal teams currently deliver is also a retention risk. For lawyers, the task is not to become technologists but to understand how to select, oversee, and ethically deploy AI so that speed does not erode trust. The firms that treat AI adoption as a professional competency elective will face attrition on two fronts; those that embed it into their fiduciary responsibility will keep both clients and people.
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