For all the focus on AI tools, the real challenge in adoption is human. Legal teams eager to capitalize on new tech in lasting, transformative ways take several approaches to navigating that challenge: building trust in AI outputs, redefining core skills, and helping professionals adapt to new ways of working, to name a few.
Our 2026 AI Visionaries offer deep and impactful insights into this effort. As their perspectives make clear, successful AI implementations depend on training, governance, a steady hand, and – reassuringly, for those who still shiver a little at the idea of “robolawyers” – a renewed emphasis on expert judgment and critical thinking.
Read on for guidance around how to coach your team through legal AI adoption and into AI transformation.
Focus on the Promise
Christine Hasiotis Martins, global e-discovery leader and senior litigation counsel at GE Vernova, notes: “AI will no doubt change the way lawyers work. AI has the potential to handle the mundane, tedious tasks that have long consumed our legal time: contract review, due diligence checklists, initial research, document review. By using AI, the legal team can redirect our energy toward strategic counsel and business partnership.”
That’s a pretty exciting promise. Less time spent on rote tasks and more time to focus on the meaty stuff? It’s a win-win.
“When we are freed from the repetitive tasks, we can focus on what truly matters: understanding the business, anticipating challenges, and providing the nuanced judgment that only human experience can offer,” Christine continues. “AI is elevating what we can contribute and the work we do.”
The benefits stretch beyond individual, professional engagement into real organizational value, too.
“This shift allows Legal to deliver cost savings and drive productivity that demonstrates our value beyond risk mitigation,” Christine adds. So in-house legal teams and outside counsel can build meaningful, productive business relationships with their peers and colleagues – not just flag risks and erect blockers.
“We can support our litigations in ways that we simply could not have before, because we can do incredible amounts of work and analysis so quickly, efficiently, and accurately,” agrees Jesse Burroughs, discovery counsel at Bayer US. “The old ‘fast/cheap/good, pick two’ paradigm is going away, and that’s incredibly exciting.”
It’s also a recipe for breakthrough career and professional growth, among individuals as well as the broader legal community.
“This moment in AI is a rare opportunity for legal to show we are not just adopting technology: we’re activating innovation within legal itself. This is our chance to connect curiosity with experimentation in ways our function has never experienced before,” Christine shares. “It is our chance to ask ‘what if?’ and ‘why not’ rather than defaulting to ‘we’ve always done it this way.’”
Recognize and Reward Healthy Caution
It’s doubtless an exciting moment, but AI isn’t all easy buttons, sunshine, and rainbows. Legal professionals know that; to facilitate truly successful AI implementations, you’ll want to meet them where they are and set some healthy expectations for use.
“Legal organizations who are seeking to adopt AI must develop an AI governance framework, assign a cross functional dedicated team, and develop a training curriculum for their lawyers that disarms the fear of displacement,” Christine emphasizes.
A well-rounded approach will help comfort those who may be resistant to using new tech and workflows, as well as address a key risk factor in legal AI usage: the potential for unscrupulous trust in AI outputs.
“The skill gap I see is that lawyers who are eager to demonstrate they are using AI may over-rely on the AI output without applying the critical thinking skill that defines our legal profession. Our most valuable skills as lawyers are judgment, reasoning, questioning, verifying, and validating. It’s too easy to take the output of AI, scan the format, and use it as-is because we are so impressed with how quickly the output makes us happy,” Christine cautions. “We need to train our legal teams in how AI works, and in particular, develop training that demonstrates how our work changes depending on the tasks we assign to an AI tool.”
Jesse echoes this advice, noting that the promise of AI mustn’t be seen through rose-colored glasses. Appropriate use, fit for purpose tools, and client buy-in are all necessary to capitalize on that promise in a safe, lasting way.
“It’s such a powerful tool, and so many people are using it in unforeseen ways that it’s difficult not to make a Pandora’s box comparison,” Jesse observes. “But I think that just inevitably comes with the territory when you have large and sudden technological leaps like this, especially when that technology is instantly available to anyone with an internet connection and an idea. It’s just going to take a lot of time and work to really get our hands around it as a society.”
And that’s perfectly okay. Laying out your governance policies, explaining the due diligence you’ve done to select the appropriate tools for your organization, empowering your colleagues to talk with clients and other stakeholders, and taking the time to recognize those who are finding the right balance will help you establish a good footing for your AI strategy and culture as a team.
Prove the Value of Legal AI Skills (And Make Them Fun to Learn)
While professional and economical opportunities abound with AI, the difficult truth is that change is hard. Few of us find it easy to thrive when the ground underneath us is shifting.
“The question that our industry has to confront now is: How do we get everyone, especially new lawyers, to understand and accept that this kind of work – validating, questioning, contextualizing the output of AI – is a core part of being a lawyer?” points out Liz Gary, of counsel at Morgan Lewis. “This is not a specialty that you develop after 10 years of practicing. Everyone, up and down the line, has to start thinking in terms of validation, quality control, interrogating data, getting your own eyes on something and understanding the context it’s giving you.”
For many, it feels like a big ask – and an intimidating new mindset to take on. However, a bright outlook can be found in the innate overlap of the “new skills” and the long-standing ones.
“Being a good fact investigator is already part of being a good litigator or a good lawyer,” Liz encourages, “which now means being a good user of technology – and yes, a good prompter.”
Folks in legal data intelligence already feel this deeply.
“In a large, sophisticated practice, every single one of your clients has more data than they know what to do with. The ability to identify the right data, collect it in the right way, negotiate through that, work with it, know what it says, master it early on – that's it. That's where cases live and die,” Liz points out. “If you want to be a top-notch litigator, you have to master fact investigation or fact discovery and think of it as a really important part of your practice.”
So much of the work legal teams focused on litigation, investigations, and other types of legal data challenges were laying the groundwork for their success with this new era of AI. Interrogating and interpreting data, asking smart questions phrased as thoughtfully as possible, building strategies and fact patterns and theories – these are all the same skills that make excellent AI implementations possible.
And, as a bonus? We’re all in it together, giving new things a try as we go and seeing how a little innovation brings new verve into daily routines.
“This work is about knowledge sharing, connections with other people, and creativity, which I think is an unsung hero in the e-discovery space,” Liz concludes. “More tools in the toolbox just allow you to be more creative, which I think is the most fun aspect of this job.”
Graphics for this article were created by Sarah Vachlon.
