The first half of the year gave law firm leaders plenty to track, and July is already adding more. Here are five recent developments worth putting in front of your managing partners, your practice group leads, and anyone at the firm helping shape technology decisions this year.

The gap between AI-ready firms and everyone else is widening

Thomson Reuters’ 2026 Report on the State of the US Legal Market found that firms with a formal AI strategy are nearly four times more likely to see meaningful benefits than firms without one, according to coverage of the report on LawSites. The same report tracked a 9.7 percent jump in firm technology spending, the largest real acceleration in decades.

The lesson here is not about buying more tools. It’s about having a plan that the whole firm understands.

Courts are getting more specific about how AI can be used in filings

The Texas Supreme Court has proposed rule changes aimed at AI misuse in court filings, including possible sanctions and a requirement that signatories attest to a filing’s accuracy. The Ropes & Gray AI Court Order Tracker for Texas provides an open-access log of the state’s growing set of AI-related orders and standing rules. In Connecticut, a federal judge used a sanctions hearing earlier this month to push attorneys to resist client pressure to rely on generative AI for legal research, noting that the technology is not a substitute for professional judgment.

For firms without a written AI policy, these developments are a reminder that the rules of the road are being drawn now.

Corporate legal leaders are naming security and privacy as their top AI concern

A survey of about 100 senior legal leaders released this month by legal technology company Litera, Legal Departments at the Leading Edge, found that while AI is delivering measurable business impact, corporate legal leaders name governance and privacy risks as the areas where the infrastructure has not kept pace. Outside counsel are hearing about these concerns from their clients, and it’s changing how firms are asked to describe their own AI use, data handling, and vendor controls in engagement conversations and outside counsel guidelines.

Being able to answer those questions clearly is quickly becoming a client-facing capability, not just an internal one.

Legal ops teams are shortening AI contracts to about a year

According to reporting from Law360 Pulse, legal operations teams are increasingly capping AI tool contracts at roughly twelve months, choosing the flexibility to walk away over the discounts that once made three-to-five-year deals attractive. The reasoning is practical: the category is moving fast enough that being locked in feels riskier than paying more per year.

For firms evaluating platforms right now, this is a signal to weigh flexibility, exit terms, and data portability alongside price.

Firms are investing in structured AI training, not just tools

Reed Smith announced this month that it is partnering with Cornell University to train its attorneys on AI best practices, and Barnes & Thornburg has named 38 attorneys as internal AI Practice Champions to guide adoption inside specific practice groups. Both moves point to the same underlying idea: the value of AI depends on the people using it, and formal training is starting to replace informal experimentation.

Smaller and mid-size firms don’t need a university partnership to follow this pattern. They do need a training approach that fits their size and reflects how their attorneys actually work.

How Innovative Computing Systems supports firms across these areas

None of these developments require a full strategic overhaul. They do, though, reward firms that have a partner paying attention to them so the firm doesn’t have to.

  • On closing the AI strategy gap: Our Managed Intelligence framework helps firms move from ad-hoc use to a defined strategy, with clear ownership, an AI committee structure, and a roadmap that matches the firm’s practice mix.
  • On staying ahead of court rules and professional responsibility expectations: Our AI Policy Development services produce acceptable use policies, human oversight requirements, and documentation practices that align with evolving guidance from courts and bar associations.
  • On answering client and outside-counsel security questions with confidence: Our Advanced Cyber Security services, along with our IT Foundational Standards and Security Fundamentals, give firms the controls, documentation, and evidence they need when a client asks how their data is being handled.
  • On evaluating AI tools without getting locked in: As part of Managed Intelligence, we help firms run structured pilots, review vendor contracts, and align tool selection with the firm’s policies, so decisions are made with clear criteria rather than sales pressure.
  • On building AI adoption into the way attorneys actually work: Our training and adoption support translates policy into practical guidance for the people using these tools every day, and evolves as the tools do.

Innovative Computing Systems has spent more than 35 years working alongside law firm administrators, IT directors, and managing partners on exactly this kind of change. Our role is to make sure the technology stays safe, secure, and reliable, no matter which stories dominate the next roundup.

If any of the topics above are already on your firm’s agenda, we’re happy to talk through where you stand and what a next step might look like. We’ve got your back.