Less work, more flow: the five themes defining legal's AI movement

We’re still thinking about the discussions we had at LegalTechTalk 2026. Definely brought the Rage Cage, which not only gave lawyers and legal teams a physical outlet for their contract rage, it was also a great opportunity for us to speak to legal professionals about the very real frustrations they are facing. 

We were part of some important conversations, and gathered some really valuable insights about how the industry is changing and where it’s headed.

Adoption is an emotional problem, not a technical one

People are, and will remain at the centre of AI adoption. Tech adoption in legal teams often stalls not owing to the technology, but because of the people. This was a common thread that ran through a number of different sessions.

Scott Cochrane of Blackrock crystallised it. When you ask a lawyer to engage with AI systems that will automate the work their professional identity is built on, you are not running a change management programme, you are triggering a deeply personal anxiety. Go to a party and ask a lawyer to tell you about themselves - within two minutes, they'll tell you they're a lawyer. It’s not just a job title, it’s an identity. 

The right response, Cochrane argued, is to lean in. Create an anxiety amnesty and let people voice what they are actually worried about. Build the psychological safety that makes real experimentation possible. Change is an emotional process, not a Gantt chart.

Expectations are shifting, and companies like bp are enforcing them

One of the very first sessions at LegalTechTalk was an honest chat with bp about the legaltech that’s helping them the most. bp’s Senior Counsel Santiago Ross, and Legal Tech Solutions Engineer Pushpika Abeysinghe talked about their experience of using and deploying Definely’s review tools, and what their 350-strong team now expects from the law firms they instruct.

bp rolled out Definely across their legal team and within two months had 80% adoption and were saving around 130 hours a month. The pilot had to be expanded early because internal demand outpaced expectations. The results were clear.

"We expect our external counsel to have the same tools," Santiago said, "and in the future we hope to see those efficiencies being reflected through our transactions. If my law firm is saving time, it should show in the type of work I'm being billed for."

Accuracy, consistency, and document quality are now a baseline requirement, and having tools like Definely is an expectation. As Nikki Shaver noted in her keynote speech, the time for dithering over legaltech has passed, innovation is now an urgent matter. For law firms still treating legal tech as optional, the client base is making the decision for them.

The skills gap is a concern for everyone

The notion that AI is taking the work that junior lawyers have always used to build their judgement is a major concern across the industry. Document review, first drafts, legal research - these are exactly the tasks where foundational skills are developed. Jon English from LexisNexis referenced their report “The Mentorship Gap”, in which a survey of 1,000 lawyers found that 72% are worried that junior lawyers are struggling to develop basic legal reasoning as a result.

The attributes that will define lawyers going forward - judgement, critical thinking, courage, the ability to ask exposing questions - are precisely the ones that cannot be built without doing the hard, repetitive work that AI is now absorbing. The training process for a lawyer must somehow preserve the friction that builds the learning.

LeeAnn Black from Latham Watkins also brought the human side of legal into focus. As AI takes on more of the technical load, the skills that will define a lawyer's value are communication, client relationships, and judgement. Those skills come from mentorship, from being in the room watching how a senior lawyer reads a client, how they navigate a difficult conversation, or hold a position under pressure. If a young lawyer can't communicate well with colleagues or clients, they will find themselves in a very different position in the firm, regardless of how well they can prompt an LLM.

Simplicity is the next competitive advantage

"Less work, more flow." Pushpika from bp distilled the single principle that guided their decision to roll out Definely across their global legal function. They needed a tool that reduced friction in the work lawyers were already doing, every single day.

Helda Santos from Bird & Bird was on the same page: the last five years have produced too many point-to-point solutions, and the instinct to keep adding tools is making the problem worse. The fear is that the cumulative weight of disconnected platforms will drive adoption down. Thibaut Gregoire of Mastercard wants to stop lawyers arriving on Monday morning and having to open three different tabs just to start their day.

With protocols like MCP making integration easier than ever, the expectation from buyers is that tools should fit around workflows, not the other way around. As Rhys Hodkinson from Definely put it, customers should be asking their vendors to demonstrate how they work within the broader technology ecosystem, not just what they do in isolation.

Critical thinking must be preserved

Mona Datt from Loom Analytics made a very practical point about critical thinking: it can't be delegated, it has to be practised. One of the places it most visibly breaks down is in how lawyers interact with AI tools themselves. The research from Wharton Business School on "cognitive surrender", the tendency to defer judgement to a convincing AI rather than challenge it, is a legitimate risk, not a theoretical one. The practical fix is to be explicit with the model about what you need from it. A well-scoped prompt, one that sets out the project, the context, and what you actually want the AI to do, stops the model from simply validating whatever you've already decided.

Jon English made a pertinent aviation analogy. When autopilot arrived, pilots didn't disappear, but training had to become deliberate. Simulations, mandated skill checks and monthly reviews were introduced. Legal needs its equivalent. AI can no longer be resisted, but it is critical to be intentional about what we protect.

Review is changing

One thing that stood out among all of the discussions is the notion that review is changing. With the volume of AI assisted drafting increasing, review is becoming more critical in the legal process. It's where critical thinking gets exercised and junior lawyers build judgement.

Tools like Definely don't make the decisions for lawyers; they clear away the frustrating pain points of the process: the cross-referencing, the version-checking, the gap-spotting, so that lawyers can spend their attention on the part of the work that requires real critical thinking. 

Definely’s structured review tools are built for lawyers working on complex contracts. We are the review layer in your legal stack.

Come and join our July webinar, where we’ll be discussing issues like comprehension debt and practical frameworks for keeping human judgement in the loop.