Research briefings

Two years after generative AI tools became standard infrastructure at major law firms, the supervision frameworks governing their use remain dangerously uneven. This briefing synthesizes findings from a survey of 214 law firms and corporate legal departments conducted between January and April 2026, revealing that...

Methodology: 200-respondent practitioner survey, April–May 2026. Respondents drawn from law firms (n=112) and in-house legal departments (n=88), segmented by organization size, tool category, and deployment model. Failure defined as project abandonment, reduction to pilot-only scope, or failure to achieve ≥50% of stated ROI targets within...

The Legal Stack Research Briefing | Legal Ops / CLM Series

Eighteen months after generative AI moved from pilot curiosity to operational infrastructure inside legal organizations, the governance frameworks meant to contain and direct that infrastructure remain, for most organizations, aspirational documents rather than functioning systems. The Legal Stack's 2026 Legal AI Governance Maturity Index —...

The dominant pricing architecture of enterprise legaltech — the per-seat annual license — is under structural pressure. Across contract review, legal research, and document automation, AI vendors are introducing consumption-based and outcome-linked alternatives that promise better alignment between cost and value but introduce significant budget...

The first wave of enterprise legal AI deployments — rushed into production between 2023 and 2024 as firms scrambled to demonstrate AI competency to clients and boards — is now producing a second-order problem: lock-in. Legal operations directors, law firm COOs, and general counsel who...