Discover what it takes to move from AI ambition to AI execution
Highlights
- Only 5% of law firms deliver the AI-enabled quality clients now expect, despite 77% demanding it.
- Firms with a defined AI strategy report AI value at more than double the rate of those without one.
- Synergy 2026 brings peer case studies, product-expert sessions, and CLE training to close that execution gap.
Ask a law firm leader today whether AI matters, and you’ll get an easy yes. Ask them whether their firm has actually closed the gap between what clients expect and what they’re delivering, and the conversation gets a lot more uncomfortable.
The Future of Professionals Report 2026: Actionable insights for law firm leaders shows that discomfort. 77% of clients say it’s very important, or essential, to see AI-enabled quality improvements from their outside counsel. However, just 5% say they’re actually getting that from most or all of their providers. That’s not a small gap. It’s a credibility problem, and it’s compounding by the month.
Synergy 2026 aims to close this gap, with a program shaped around the firms that are already ahead and exactly how they’re making AI pay off.
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The real differentiator is follow-through
Where the gap actually gets closed
The window is closing faster than it looks
Three fronts, one deadline
The Future of Professionals data breaks the pressure on law firms into three categories:
Talent. Nearly a quarter of law firm professionals (24%) say they’d categorically decline a job offer that didn’t come with access to professional-grade AI tools. Meanwhile, 34% admit they’re already using AI tools their firm hasn’t authorized, a shadow-AI problem that exposes firms to risk whether or not leadership has chosen to look at it.
Clients. 32% of in-house legal professionals are already reconsidering, or actively planning to reconsider, their relationships with outside counsel who can’t demonstrate clear AI-enabled value within the next 12 months. Meanwhile, only 11% of law firm professionals believe they could actually lose clients over this. That disconnect between what clients are signaling and what firms are hearing is exactly the kind of blind spot that turns into a lost account.
Financial. 38% of law firm professionals report real financial pressure to move faster on AI, and 71% of in-house counsel expect their firms to change how they charge for services as AI adoption increases. So far, just 28% of firms say they’ve made any pricing changes at all.
Put together, the picture is clear. The firms treating AI as a side project are the ones most exposed. The firms treating it as core strategy are the ones setting the terms of the conversation, with clients, with talent, and with their own P&L.
The real differentiator is follow-through
One of the more useful findings in the report is that the path a firm takes matters less than how clearly it commits to one. Among professionals at firms with a defined AI strategy, 64% say AI is meeting or exceeding their expectations for creating value. At firms with no defined strategy, that number drops to 29%.
Whether a firm is pursuing AI to elevate expert judgment, to scale routine work, or to reimagine the client relationship entirely, the firms getting results are the ones who’ve actually made the call and backed it with the tools, training, and change management to follow through.
That last part is where most firms are stuck. The report identifies the real transition obstacles as tools not yet in place (41%), people not yet equipped (39%), and strategy that stays invisible in day-to-day work (50%). None of those are technology problems. They’re execution problems. And execution is learned from people who’ve already done it, not from another product demo.
Where the gap actually gets closed
This is the case for Synergy 2026, taking place November 16–19 at the Fontainebleau Las Vegas. It’s built around the same tension the Future of Professionals Report surfaces. Firms need more than access to AI, they need proof of how to operationalize it, and a peer network that’s already navigated the parts that don’t show up in a product spec sheet.
Across 33 anticipated sessions organized into four tracks — AI strategy, governance & adoption; AI in legal practice; product, platforms & technical enablement; and business of law & talent — Synergy puts you in the room with the people actually running these transitions:
- Peer case studies from firms and legal departments that have already made a strategic AI choice and can show what changed in their client relationships, their pricing, and their talent pipeline as a result.
- Product-expert sessions on CoCounsel, Westlaw, Practical Law, and HighQ, including hands-on workflows and roadmap previews you won’t get from a webinar.
- A dedicated business-of-law track tackling the two hardest questions in the report head-on: how firms are actually changing their commercial models, and how they’re rebuilding the talent pipeline as junior work shifts.
- Six CLE-eligible sessions addressing the real ethical obligations attorneys face as AI adoption accelerates.
The window is closing faster than it looks
Client patience, per the report, is already wearing thin. 22% of in-house professionals plan to reconsider firm relationships within 12 months if AI-enabled value doesn’t show up, on top of the 32% already reconsidering today. That’s not a distant deadline.
Synergy 2026 is where firms go to close that gap before it costs them.
Register for Synergy 2026 and secure the peer connections, product expertise, and insights that turn this year’s AI strategy into next year’s results.
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