Gartner Forecasts Consumption Pricing at 35% of New Legal-Tech Spend

On September 3, 2026, Gartner forecast that consumption-based pricing will account for more than 35% of net new corporate legal-technology spending with major vendors by 2028. Gartner said hybrid combinations of subscriptions, credits, allowances and overages could expose successful AI users to budget shocks when usage scales. Legal departments should negotiate metering definitions, alerts, caps, data-export rights and use-case-level reporting before pilots become production dependencies. Law firms also need to decide when AI consumption is overhead, a matter expense or embedded in an alternative fee, because unclear pass-through treatment will become a client-trust issue.