Why the AI-Enabled Legal Professional Will Define the Future of In-House Law

This column will unpack the ongoing impact of AI on the legal profession, specifically the legal job market and careers within it. Each column starts with an emerging AI-employment trend and ends with actionable insights on how to successfully hire top talent or level up individual careers in the era of AI. This first article serves as an overview of topics you can expect a deeper dive on this year.

For in-house corporate attorneys, becoming an AI-enabled legal professional is quickly moving from a “nice to have” to a real necessity. Over the next five years, C-suite mandates to integrate AI and drive business enablement across every department will reshape what’s expected of legal teams. These changes will influence hiring decisions, open new paths for career growth, and ultimately redefine how law is practiced inside organizations.

For today’s general counsel, staying ahead means more than just awareness. It requires meaningful exposure to a vast ecosystem of emerging AI tools, ongoing education about evolving employer expectations, and awareness on shifting job market dynamics tied to AI adoption.

Within the legal sector, organizations typically acquire new technology before bringing in or upskilling the people responsible for using it. For the past several years, much of the legal industry has been evaluating potential investments in AI solutions. In 2026, that evaluation phase turns into action—clear expectations around adoption, measurable usage, and demonstrable return on investment. A big piece of that AI strategy is hiring the right people to drive it.

Corporate law departments focusing on cost

AI-enabled tools quickly gave AI-enabled lawyers and legal operations teams working in-house at corporations the ability to scrutinize every line item, time entry, or source of data on every bill invoiced by an outside party—counsel or otherwise. The ability to instantly analyze invoices and question billing practices with an unprecedented level of speed and accuracy has empowered law department leaders to do exactly that. Corporate law departments are going to start pushing back on what feels like egregious spending and billing from third parties, and corporations empowering AI-adoption will be able to do so in cyclical routine fashion with little human effort. 

AI is giving corporate law departments a new ability to reduce costs and/or press for predictably priced alternative fee arrangements from outside counsel. This skill set is in high demand, specifically for legal operations talent at the program manager level and above. Professionals with demonstrated experience doing so will continue to be in high demand for the foreseeable future. 

AI changes for outside counsel

Legal operations and fiduciary law department stakeholders are also expecting AI-enablement from outside counsel and third-party software or service providers. They are focusing on several recurring desired outcomes: reducing costs, offering actionable insights, and optimizing legal operations.

In line with the trend for in-house counsel, AI-enabled law firm attorneys are also commanding a premium bill rate and compensation. Meaning: Lawyers who have rebranded as AI-centric in how they use technology or give legal counsel related to AI over the last several years have increased their hourly rates. The demand and price for AI-augmented outside counsel is increasing, and the mandate from corporations seems clear when it comes to AI-enabled lawyers: Pay for value, not for volume. So, while hours may decrease for some outside counsel, premiums for AI-enabled counsel may balance law firm profits – for now.

Stay up-to-date. Sign up for the Today's General Counsel Daily Updates newsletter.

Mobilizing an AI-enabled workforce

Corporate leaders aren’t just asking whether they should buy or build AI technology. They’re also asking: should we hire new AI-savvy professionals, or upskill the people we already have?

In 2025, as attorneys and program managers weighed those options, most corporate legal departments took a practical approach. Instead of making big, permanent hires, they added support in smaller increments—usually through contract secondees. Whenever possible, they preferred secondees who weren’t coming from outside counsel (unless those secondees were free).

Secondees most often supported practice areas like product counsel, commercial counsel, privacy, regulatory, and legal operations. Many of the in-house attorney secondees in these roles could realistically have been used full time—either on an ongoing basis or eventually converted into full-time employees. In 2024, over 40% of TruLegal secondees were converted into direct hire employees. In 2025, those roles were much more likely to be structured as fractional, short-term assignments rather than steppingstones to full-time hires. By yearend, less than 8% of contractors deployed through TruLegal were offered conversion.

“The Great Unbundling”

Legal operations programs are experiencing what TruLegal coins “The Great Unbundling”: a shift in which hiring managers no longer seek to hire or develop one individual to handle a wide range of distinct responsibilities. Instead, they engage multiple specialized part-time professionals who bring targeted expertise, drive business impact, and then roll off once the work is complete. Nearly 34% of all Americans are contractors, and legal is no exception. Talent of this caliber, once only available through outside counsel or consulting firms, is now available ad hoc at a fraction of the cost. In corporate data privacy programs last year, TruLegal tracked 83% of jobs filled as secondees or contractor-to-hire. That is the highest ratio of secondee staffing for data privacy since 2020, peak pandemic, when contract utilization at point-of-hire peaked at 60% of the market. 

Just because AI-enabled legal talent is in high demand doesn’t mean it cannot be acquired through contract resources. Quite the opposite. In 2025, desired staff augmentation with the intent to uplevel existing full-time employees using an AI-enabled contract resource was a regularly occurring ask. These freelancers have expertise in AI-technology customization, AI-governance (both operational and regulatory preparedness), or exploration of generative AI. The increasing intent of law departments is to balance a combination of direct hires and contract staff to support the demand for AI-enabled growth while simultaneously reducing costs.

The next wave of AI adoption

Corporate legal teams will target the most expensive, already-commoditized practice areas for the next wave of AI adoption. They will use—or demand—AI to cut costs, improve efficiency, and deliver faster, actionable business insights. The top candidates are eDiscovery, contract analytics, and governance.

These areas already have mature global ecosystems of talent and technology. Major SaaS providers such as Relativity, Disco, Everlaw, DocuSign, Ironclad, and Exterro are racing to roll out AI-driven features to retain clients and prove measurable results.

At the same time, a new generation of AI-native startups is gaining traction. Companies like contracts.ai, Minerva26, and eDiscovery Assistant have built strong adoption and advocacy in recent months—despite far smaller marketing budgets than the industry’s established players.

It’s a Renaissance! Go to salons!

The legal technology ecosystem is currently experiencing an unprecedented explosion of start-ups, burgeoning new dominant players, and a flood of private equity and venture capital pouring into companies of all sizes and niches. As a corporate attorney, exploring the ecosystem is as important as exploring the capabilities of a singular tool. Consider it an ethical obligation to understand what is available technologically, what will be available soon, and what is not possible with current AI infrastructures. 

The best ways to get exposure to advanced technology in today’s post-pandemic, budget constrained, noisy conference-circuit landscape may not always be big-box events. A world of nuanced, intimate gatherings of forward-thinking like-minded lawyers and legal operations professionals are blossoming in response to conference fatigue. These smaller, niche events often feel like salons of the Renaissance days, where key stakeholders from corporate law departments have direct access to founders of growth companies ready to engage with experts in the field with whom they serve.