Reading Between the Lines at Legalweek: What Legal Leaders Were Really Thinking

Everywhere you turned, people were talking about the future of legal technology and (of course) what AI might do next.

But after a few days of conversations and sessions, it became clear that the most important takeaways were not really about the flashiest announcements or newest plug-ins (in fact, there is definitely a sense of “AI exhaustion”). In more intimate conversations, it became clear that what legal teams really need in order to make all of this emerging technology useful in the real world, including better governance, better data, and clearer priorities, is a stronger foundation underneath the technology.

After meeting with customers, both long-standing and new, here’s what we really took away:

1. Legal Teams ARE Experimenting With AI, Just Without a Clear Roadmap

One message that circulated throughout the conference was that while most legal teams are moving forward with AI, not all are doing so with a fully formed strategy for implementation or adoption. As one panelist put it during a session on the future of legal technology, “If last year was the year of demos, this year is the year of pilots.” But speakers also emphasized caution. Piloting new technologies without a clear strategy or defined outcomes can easily turn into experimentation without impact.

We’re seeing this show up in a few familiar ways:

1. No clear governance model or internal strategy for evaluating tools
2. Unclear success criteria for AI use cases
3. Limited oversight of “shadow AI”
4. Open questions around compliance, defensibility, and data control

Liz Lugones, VP of Value Experience for Mitratech Legal Solutions, touched on this during a live Legalweek conversation with ALM / Law.com. During the conversation, she emphasized the importance of starting with the right question:

“It’s about asking the why, not just implementing a tool,” she said. “If you stay focused on the functionality without understanding the broader goal, you’re not really going to achieve the desired result.”

She shared an example from a customer conversation earlier that day to help paint the picture: what initially sounded like a request for a specific feature quickly turned into a much broader discussion about outside counsel strategy, governance, spend management, and operational efficiency.

The point she drove home is that legal teams need much greater clarity around the value they’re trying to create before deciding where AI fits. As she put it, legal teams need “clarity in defining value,” so technology decisions stay connected to real business outcomes, not just product capabilities.

That same idea came up in several other sessions throughout the week. In one panel on evaluating legal technology, for example, speakers warned that teams often start with vendor messaging instead of the problem they actually need to solve. Another session on legal workflow automation reinforced a similar point: if you automate a broken process or bad data, you simply scale the problem.

2. Innovation Leaders Want AI Inside the Tools They Already Use

For many legal departments, adding yet another disconnected system or standalone AI tool simply creates more friction. Instead, they’re now increasingly looking for solutions that can:

• Be built into the platforms they already rely on / Extend existing systems
• Work with current data and workflows
• Support governance and auditability
• Improve legal work without creating more tech debt

Recent industry data reinforces this shift. A 2026 survey of legal professionals found that when firms adopt AI tools, the most common reason is that the capability is already embedded in trusted legal software they use today (52%). Other top factors include confidence that the provider understands legal workflows (47%), ethical obligations (46%), and greater trust in outputs from legal-specific tools compared to general-purpose alternatives (43%).

As Liz put it in her ALM podcast conversation, “Stop treating AI like a widget. Treat it more like part of the team that you have governance around.”

She made a related point during the Legalweek panel discussion when she explained that strong technology outcomes still depend on strong operational foundations. For years, Liz has repeated a simple principle: “people and process first — tech next.” What she’s seeing now is that more legal teams are beginning to recognize why that order matters.

In another panel on end-to-end workflow automation, speakers described a practical division of labor emerging in legal work: strategic judgment, legal reasoning, and client counseling remain firmly human responsibilities. But tasks like information gathering, routing requests, conflict checks, document generation, and workflow tracking are exactly the kinds of inputs legal teams increasingly want technology to handle.

That shift is also influencing how vendors approach innovation. Instead of launching standalone AI products, many are embedding intelligence directly into existing systems. At Legalweek, Mitratech demonstrated several examples of this approach through TeamConnect ARIES™, its embedded AI ecosystem designed to surface contextual insights directly within matter and financial workflows.

3. The Conversation Is Moving From AI Adoption to AI Governance

If one theme tied the week together, it was governance.

Legal teams are still excited about innovation and efficiency gains. But the conversation has moved well beyond “Should we use AI?” and toward “How do we use it responsibly?” That includes questions around vendor governance, responsible implementation, data quality and readiness, defensibility, oversight, and aligning innovation with risk tolerance.

During the panel discussion, Liz pointed to a tension many organizations are facing: the pace of innovation is accelerating rapidly, but governance cannot be an afterthought. She described two themes rising together (the speed of development and the need for governance), and stressed that legal teams are increasingly focused on how those two realities can coexist.

At Mitratech’s evening social event and customer dinners throughout the week, the conversations got even more candid and expanded on this exact challenge: Many organizations still lack a clear understanding of where their institutional knowledge lives, how workflows actually function across teams, where the guardrails are within their organizations, and whether their data is reliable enough to support advanced AI use cases.

That’s why governance conversations are becoming less theoretical and more operational. Before layering on new technologies or the latest plug-in (think Claude Legal AI), many legal teams are stepping back to strengthen their fundamentals: organizing data, clarifying processes, and creating clearer ownership structures.

Those foundations are quickly becoming the real prerequisite for meaningful AI adoption.

“Without a strong foundation of data and behavior, AI can’t do its thing.” – Liz Lugones, VP of Value Experience for Mitratech Legal Solutions

 

What Comes Next

Legalweek always brings big ideas, product announcements, and bold predictions. This year was no exception, but the real story felt more grounded.

Across panels, conversations, and hallway discussions, the message was consistent: legal teams aren’t just looking for more AI. They’re looking for clearer value, stronger governance, and technology that actually fits how legal work gets done.

Legalweek also gave us an opportunity to preview some of the innovations we’re bringing to the Mitratech legal platform.

One example was ARIES™ Advanced Docket Management for TeamConnect, which uses AI to extract deadlines from court-issued scheduling orders and convert them into structured, reviewable tasks directly inside the platform.

Alongside capabilities like AI-generated living briefs, proactive budget forecasting, and automated invoice intelligence, these innovations reflect Mitratech’s broader vision of bringing contextual, governed AI directly into the legal operating system.

The response reinforced what we heard throughout the week: legal leaders want innovation that extends the capabilities of their existing systems while maintaining operational control. The technology partners (like Mitratech) who have the in-house expertise to create bespoke AI governance frameworks alongside customers, will win.

In many ways, that’s the bigger shift happening in the industry right now. Legal teams are going beyond exploring new tools and into evolving how their departments operate. Governance frameworks, stronger data foundations, and embedded intelligence are becoming the building blocks for the next phase of legal operations. And that shift may ultimately matter far more than any single technology announcement from the week.

Our team had so much fun at Legalweek in New York! To keep up with our live and post-event coverage, check us out on LinkedIn.