LegalWeek 2026: Velocity, Adoption and Governance in the Agentic AI Era

by An Trotter

What a way to kick off LegalWeek 2026. I had the privilege of joining an Epiq panel moderated by Jon Lavender, alongside Sandra Metallo-Barragan, Amy Sellars, and Clinton Sanko—followed by a second session on Strategic Legal Leadership in the Age of Agentic AI, moderated by Jon Kessler, with John Zhu, Jessica Escalera, Nicole Langston, and Lydia Petrakis.

As Chuck Kellner aptly summarized: "Total Cost of Ownership has evolved from a static cost model to a dynamic value framework." One has to focus on lawyers’ practical adoption, as well as dedicated resources and process to monitor and revalidate the results, while building toward measurable ROI.

Three themes emerged across both panels: velocity, adoption, and governance—each fundamentally reshaped by GenAI.

Velocity GenAI is compressing the path from concept to MVP, enabling rapid prototyping and iteration. But the pace of innovation is overwhelming—the number of LegalTech solutions continues to surge (see Legal Tech Hub's GenAI map). In this environment, a modular, iterative approach is essential. What's impossible today may be feasible in weeks.

Adoption Speed without full adoption delivers no value. Leading organizations are piloting faster and negotiating shorter vendor contracts to preserve flexibility. A platform approach helps—enabling multiple use cases while avoiding dependence on point solutions that may quickly become obsolete.

Driving adoption requires intentional strategy:

  • Prioritize practical, transferable training—not tool-specific instruction
  • Create forums (e.g., office hours) for lawyers to share real use cases
  • Use hackathons and incentives to drive engagement
  • Treat GenAI as a thought partner, on how best to leverage its strengths
  • Hold vendors accountable for delivering sustained value and usability for renewal

Governance GenAI exposes gaps in existing workflows. Unlike deterministic systems, agentic AI operates probabilistically—making oversight and revalidation critical.

Key considerations:

  • Design for continuous revalidation, especially as models evolve
  • Abandon "set it and forget it" deployment assumptions
  • Train users to understand connected data sources so they can identify hallucinations or stale outputs
  • Scrutinize foundational elements like RAG pipelines (e.g., document volume caps, data chunking, and consistency

The Bottom Line The market is evolving faster than traditional evaluation cycles can keep pace. Legal teams should pursue a dual-track strategy—building internal capabilities while evaluating external solutions—to stay agile and close capability gaps.

Legal teams that deploy GenAI themselves are also better positioned to support the broader business. They can move at the speed of product development, shape governance frameworks, and play a leading role in enabling responsible innovation.

Moderator Jon Lavinder takes a group selfie with the panelists
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