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AI for Lawyers: 2026 Data on Jobs, Hours, and Firm Value

Thomson Reuters surveyed 1,816 professionals across law, tax, audit, accounting, compliance, and risk for its 2026 Future of Professionals report. Nearly everyone uses AI now. Almost nobody thinks their firm is getting the value out of it. Here are the numbers on jobs, client revenue, and firm value, and what they mean if you practice law.

By Anthony Guerriero  ·  Reviewed by The Leveraged Years Editorial Desk  ·  Published June 28, 2026  ·  Last updated June 28, 2026

Thomson Reuters' 2026 Future of Professionals report, its fourth annual edition based on a survey of 1,816 professionals across 62 countries conducted in March and April 2026, finds that AI adoption is no longer the obstacle for lawyers: 74% use AI several times a week. The headline finding is an "AI value gap," with 91% saying their organization falls short of what AI could deliver, a gap now showing up in shadow AI use, client pressure, and talent risk. For attorneys, the report reframes AI from a question of whether to adopt to whether a firm can turn everyday use into value, with Thomson Reuters estimating roughly $143 billion in US legal and accounting revenue under active reconsideration (the company's own extrapolation). Primary source: Thomson Reuters Future of Professionals report 2026.

The adoption debate is over for lawyers too

For three years the open question in professional services was how many would actually use AI. The 2026 Future of Professionals report, Thomson Reuters' fourth annual edition, treats that question as settled. Across the 1,816 professionals surveyed, 74% say they use AI tools several times a week, and 44% use them multiple times a day. The respondents span law, tax, audit, accounting, compliance, risk, and global trade across 62 countries, surveyed in March and April 2026.

The report's focus is now on execution: whether firms can turn that everyday use into value clients and partners can actually measure.

The headline finding is a value gap, not a productivity number

Here is the number that should change how a managing partner reads this report: 91% of professionals say their organization is falling short of what AI could deliver. Thomson Reuters labels it the "AI value gap," and it is the spine of the whole report. Almost everyone is using AI. Almost no one believes their firm is capturing its value.

The report is specific about why, and the reason is not the technology. In firms and departments with a named AI strategy, 66% of professionals said AI was meeting or exceeding expectations for creating value. At organizations with no active strategy, that figure collapsed to 22%. Even where a strategy exists on paper, 35% said it is not visible in their day-to-day work, and 17% said their organization has no strategic direction on AI at all. Roughly half the profession, the report concludes, works somewhere a stated AI strategy either does not exist or does not match how the work actually gets done.

When professionals were asked why strategies stall, the top answers had nothing to do with software: tools not yet in place (47%), people not trained to work the intended way (43%), strategy not translated into clear priorities (32%), and no shared understanding of the plan (30%). The report's own read is blunt: these are change-management problems, not technical ones.

Shadow AI is now a law firm governance problem

The value gap does not sit quietly. It pushes people to work around their own firms. The report finds 34% of professionals use AI tools their organization has not sanctioned, in ways it cannot see, and that share rises to 41% among those who say their organization is moving too slowly. For a law firm, that is unmanaged data exposure and unverified output running through live client matters with no oversight.

The professionals are not careless about it. They are explicit about the bar AI has to clear: 96% say it must safeguard confidential data, 94% say outputs must be grounded in authoritative content, and 90% say the reasoning must be explainable and defensible. Yet 41% say they lack access to tools built for professional work on verified professional content. So people who know the standard are reaching for consumer tools that do not meet it, because the sanctioned option is missing or weak. That is the governance gap in one sentence.

Clients are not waiting, and the number is large

The pressure the report documents most sharply comes from clients. Among corporate clients who buy professional services, 78% say AI-enabled quality improvements from their providers are very important or essential. Only 6% say most or all of their providers actually deliver.

It has teeth. The report finds 32% of clients have reconsidered, or plan within 12 months to reconsider, relationships with firms they see as falling behind, and among those reconsidering, a third put more than $1 million in annual work at risk. Thomson Reuters extrapolates that to roughly $143 billion in US legal and CPA revenue under active reconsideration, which is the company's own calculation, not a measured loss. The direction is the part to take seriously: for client-facing lawyers, AI delivery is becoming a retention question.

Talent and judgment risks may arrive sooner than leaders expect

The same gap shows up inside the firm. Of the professionals who reported an AI value gap, 24% said they would consider leaving within two years and 13% within 12 months, at an estimated replacement cost of $232,000 per professional. The group most likely to leave is mid-career professionals, described as the most embedded AI users and the most mobile, the exact people a firm can least afford to lose. Yet almost half of senior leaders believe meaningful talent pressure is still at least three years away. That gap between when the risk arrives and when leaders expect it is its own finding.

Access to good tools is becoming a hiring lever. 62% said professional-grade AI would factor into accepting a new role, and among those already using such tools, roughly one in three would turn down a role that did not offer them, against 12% of those without access.

There is a subtler risk the report names that should land hard for any firm that trains young lawyers. 48% of professionals said they are worried about AI's effect on the development of independent judgment, and 71% said people early in their careers need structured support from experienced peers to build the skills AI risks displacing. If a junior associate's reasoning gets done by a tool, the judgment that makes a senior lawyer may never form. That is a pipeline problem disguised as a productivity win.

The three futures, and the one professionals actually want

The report asks professionals to place themselves among three illustrative futures: AI to Elevate, where AI frees people for higher-value judgment work; AI to Scale, where it adds capacity and throughput; and AI to Reimagine, where it restructures how the work is done. The preference is lopsided. 52% chose Elevate, 31% Scale, 7% Reimagine, and 8% none of them.

Read that against the value gap. Most professionals want AI to free them for judgment work, not just to add capacity. The firms that win the talent, the report implies, are the ones whose stated direction matches that preference, and 35% of professionals say theirs does not.

What a lawyer or firm should actually do with this

Strip the report to its operating lesson and it is the same one that runs through the better AI data this year, including the 2026 small business numbers: adoption is not the differentiator anymore, execution is. For an individual lawyer, the move is to get deliberate, build a verification habit you can defend, and push your firm toward sanctioned, professional-grade tools instead of quietly running client work through whatever consumer app is open. For a firm, it is to close the gap between an AI memo and daily practice with real change management, train people rather than just buy licenses, and protect the apprenticeship that builds judgment in junior lawyers.

None of that is a tool purchase. It is judgment and operating discipline, which is exactly what the data says now separates the firms pulling ahead from the ones quietly losing clients and people. That is the durable skill, and it is the one worth building on purpose.

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Informational tool analysis for working professionals, not legal, medical, or financial advice. AI tools do not replace your professional judgment.