As AI adoption soars to unprecedented levels across law firms and legal departments, a new NetDocuments report spotlights six legal tech trends set to redefine the profession – trends every legal professional will need to watch in 2026.
As the legal profession enters an era of rapid technological transformation, 2026 is shaping up to be a year defined by smarter, more strategic use of AI and emerging tools, keeping lawyers and firms on high alert.
A new Netdocuments report, 2026 Legal Tech Trends, identified six key trends set to transform the legal tech landscape this year – signalling a significant shift in how legal professionals are using and valuing technology.
Josh Baxter, CEO of NetDocuments, emphasised the significance of the report’s findings, highlighting how the rapid rise of AI – and its growing integration into legal workflows – is forcing teams to rethink not just what AI can do, but how it drives real change in their work.
“The rapid rise of AI has pushed legal teams across law firms, corporate legal departments and government agencies to rethink how work gets done – not only what AI can do, but how it should be applied, governed and adopted,” Baxter said.
“For years, document management focused on storing and organising information. Today, it must do much more. It must activate your knowledge, support intelligent workflows and serve as the secure environment where AI can work reliably and responsibly.”
6. Knowledge that organises itself
The final key trend the report highlights for the legal profession, one poised to redefine how firms operate, is AI-driven metadata enrichment and content analysis that automatically turns “unstructured content into structured insights”.
NetDocuments underscored the impact of this development, explaining that self-organising knowledge makes AI outputs “dramatically more accurate, relevant, and trustworthy” while also allowing lawyers to “stop wasting time categorising, filing, and correcting data”.
5. The era of connected intelligence
The report also finds that this year, integration between AI tools and enterprise applications will evolve into fully coordinated systems – where AI and business software no longer merely “coexist,” but work together seamlessly to drive operations.
NetDocuments notes that as AI systems begin communicating with one another, firms will move towards a unified digital environment “where insight moves as fluidly as thought”.
As a result, legal professionals are expected to spend less time switching between systems and more time focused on delivering outcomes and driving results.
4. Search becomes understanding
AI-powered semantic search is set to redefine how legal professionals access and leverage information in 2026, with the report highlighting its shift beyond traditional keyword searches to deliver results that “interpret meaning, context, and intent”.
In this new reality, a “one natural language query” can replace what would traditionally take “hours of manual digging”.
NetDocuments emphasised that this shift is transforming the way legal professionals work, moving them beyond simply retrieving “surface-level content” to truly “discovering knowledge”, enabling “faster, sharper decision making in litigation, transactions, compliance, investigations and public-sector matters”.
3. Collaboration without boundaries
The report highlighted that this year, “cross-platform co-authoring” and integrated workspaces are set to reshape teamwork, enabling legal teams to spend less time “tracking versions and more time creating value through collaboration”.
NetDocuments emphasised that collaboration is becoming a “creative continuum,” where teams spend less time “reconciling versions and more time generating insight, value and impact together”.
Thanks to these efficiencies, legal teams can now focus on “meaningful collaboration”, with “less time lost to coordination” and administrative overhead.
2. Automation with intent
Rather than requiring explicit instructions, the report notes that workflows are becoming increasingly self-directed and context-aware, dynamically adapting to the unique “nuances” of each case or project and “starting to plan before they act”.
NetDocuments explained that this shift is allowing teams to move beyond “babysitting processes” to actively “orchestrating outcomes”.
This shift towards smarter, more strategic legal workflows is “reducing friction and repetition” in lawyers’ daily tasks, freeing them to focus on higher-value aspects of their work with greater clarity and impact.
1. The rise of the intelligent assistant
The report highlighted that AI is no longer being used “passively” by legal professionals; instead, lawyers are moving beyond to now “actively collaborating” with their technology to elevate their work.
NetDocuments noted that these increasingly adopted “purpose-built tools” are transforming the legal landscape, shifting work from “reactive to strategic”, “connecting ideas”, and easing the “cognitive burden of everyday tasks”.
This new level of collaboration marks a significant shift, with AI now integrating background knowledge, offering answer-driven guidance, and leveraging agentic capabilities – freeing lawyers to concentrate on higher-value work such as “strategy, creativity, and impact” for clients, stakeholders, and constituents.
