Deloitte's The AI Imperative: Reshaping of the Legal Industry (121 senior legal leaders, April–May 2026) found that 61% of legal departments are actively deploying AI, and only 2% report no adoption — down from 76% reporting no adoption in 2024. 61% are already experimenting with or piloting agentic AI systems. AI budgets increased in 79% of legal departments, with those that increased spending gr
Legal Futures published the Law Firm Growth Report 2026 (August 3) with a specific focus on how AI enables smaller and mid-sized firms to compete at the output level with significantly larger practices. The report's framing — "faster, leaner, smarter" — describes the competitive dynamic where mid-sized firms' AI agility advantage over BigLaw's slower bureaucratic AI rollouts is a real, exploitable
Supio's 2026 State of AI in Plaintiff Law (207 personal injury attorneys and firm leaders, published July 23) found nearly 8 in 10 plaintiff firms have experimented with AI, yet only 30% have embedded it into day-to-day workflows. Trust — not cost — is the primary barrier to adoption, per the report. For mid-sized plaintiff firms, the gap between experimentation and embedding is a management probl
Source: Morningstar/PR Newswire: Trust, Not Cost, Is Blocking AI Adoption in Plaintiff Law — Supio ReportLegal AICase StudiesMid-SizedFirms
Crowell & Moring (700+ attorneys) piloted Legora in late 2025 and launched firmwide in January 2026. On July 22, the firm published six-month results: more than 2 million platform interactions, 82% of the entire firm are active users, 91% of attorneys onboarded, and nearly 70% of attorneys using the platform at least weekly. An associate in the Patents Group noted the platform had "accelerated my
Thomson Reuters published July 16 a case study featuring Swarbrick Law, a Scottish firm using CoCounsel to accelerate legal tasks and engage with clients more effectively. The documented outcomes: CoCounsel "more than pays for itself" in combined time savings and cost benefits delivered to clients; it helps optimize practice performance and improve client experience; and access to the platform's e
Source: Legal Support Network / Thomson Reuters: Enhancing Client Service with CoCounsel — Swarbrick Law Case StudyLegal AICase StudiesMid-SizedFirms
Wotton Kearney, an Australian specialist law firm, completed a competitive RFP process this week and selected Intapp DealCloud with Celeste as its firm-wide BD and relationship intelligence platform. The stated selection rationale — that DealCloud is "purpose-built for the legal market, highly configurable, designed for the agentic era, and supported by a team with genuine expertise in legal busin
Lawmatics launched the Merlin AI suite on July 9, comprising three integrated capabilities: Merlin Copilot (conversational interface for accessing automations, reports, and data); Merlin Qualify (AI lead qualification agent that scores and prioritizes incoming leads by fit, urgency, and engagement signals); and Merlin Engage (agentic prospect engagement via SMS, email, website chat, and phone — cu
FTI Consulting published a case study this week on its IQ.AI platform achieving a 96% accuracy rate for document categorisation in a complex commercial dispute, enabling a legal team to validate its litigation position and prepare for trial under a compressed two-week timeline — a matter that would have been unmanageable under conventional document review timelines. The case study represents the c
The Macfarlanes Harvey rollout has emerged this week as the most cited implementation model in mid-market AI deployment discussions. The firm did not attempt to deploy Harvey firm-wide simultaneously — it rolled out practice area by practice area, using a Centre of Excellence to standardise use cases discovered by early adopters on non-billable time, and continued until 80% of its lawyers were reg
[Paragon Legal's ALSP market analysis](https://paragonlegal.com/insights/alternative-legal-service-providers-what-are-they-and-when-to-use-them/) provides a structural view of where corporate legal work is migrating: 57% of corporate legal departments now use ALSPs, and the U.S. ALSP market is projected to reach $23.04B by 2028, up from $7.37B in 2022 — a 20.9% CAGR that outpaces any growth projec