I facilitated a lunch discussion with about 20 law firm leaders at the International Legal Technology Association’s 2026 annual conference to help answer a question the profession still struggles with:

How do you measure the return on legal AI?

I expected the conversation to raise new issues I had not considered in my research. Instead, the experiences the participants shared validated my overall findings and the ROI measures I identified in a two-part study of 61 law firm and corporate legal participants earlier in 2026. They also reflected another inflection point in deploying legal AI, as legal decision-makers face new pricing concerns.

After all, competition and rapidly expanding technological capabilities are enabling legal tech developers to introduce increasingly advanced, client-centric features that drive adoption and fuel enthusiasm. But while the landscape keeps shifting, the question of ROI remains unsettled. As the discussion refocuses on token pricing, calculating return on investment is back in vogue.

Research Background

In a two-part research study, I interviewed 31 leaders from law firms in 14 countries and 30 from corporate legal departments in 9 countries.

Among law firm participants, 26% are partners, 39% are innovation leaders, and the remainder manage AI initiatives. More than 90% work at firms with more than 200 lawyers.

Among the law department participants, 47% are practicing lawyers, 30% are in legal operations, 17% are innovation leaders, and the remainder focus on compliance and licensing. All work for companies with more than $1 billion in annual revenue and more than 1,000 employees.

They shared a range of perspectives, and as an analyst who has studied the legal market for two decades, I sought to develop a research-based set of recommendations to help leaders across the legal sector better measure the return on their investments, with a focus on individual performance metrics, market-facing measures of value, and indispensability. The ILTACON lunch conversation, described throughout, reinforced and sharpened each of these.

Reframe Productivity to Responsiveness

At the outset, reframe the benefits of initial productivity gains from AI as a transformation in responsiveness and as the advantages it creates.

Ninety-four percent of law firm leaders I interviewed reported that their legal AI platform enables them to respond faster or much faster to clients and stakeholders, with 65% noting that tasks that used to take hours now take minutes. Similarly, 97% of in-house respondents reported responding to stakeholders faster or much faster, 77% noted faster turnaround times, and 90% reduced ramp-up time.

The lunch participants shared their perspectives on how faster legal work translates into better client service. They agreed that speed and quicker turnaround help legal teams work differently, not just faster. They suggested firms track new revenue sources, improved matter preparation, and higher-quality legal work.

As a best practice, gauge AI’s tactical impact by translating speed into responsiveness and time to action. Instead of concentrating on delivery alone, study stakeholder feedback on the turnaround experience from the moment a request is made to the moment it is resolved. Also ask clients or the teams that legal serves for comprehensive feedback on how rapid turnaround times affect their experience.

The lunch participants offered a shortlist of metrics and encouraged their peers to evaluate write-offs, adherence to budget (including the degree of variance above or below it), resourcing and hiring, and client satisfaction. Those suggestions align with the research data, as 35% of law firm participants reported fewer write-downs after adopting their AI platform, and 16% wrote off less junior time.

Convert Capacity Gains into Value

Seventy-four percent of law firm participants in my report noted that their legal AI platform expanded their capacity, and 45% could support more clients in the same amount of time. To maximize this advantage, law firm leaders should closely examine where junior associates have spent their time in the past and whether they are leveraging AI to address a broader portfolio of matters. Compare that data with associates at other levels. Law firms that can support more clients on a greater range of issues often gain a competitive advantage.

The lunch discussion advanced this topic by encouraging law firm teams to evaluate how they use any increased capacity. Their perspectives revealed a tension the survey data did not fully capture, which is a growing conflict between speed and the coaching junior associates rely on to develop judgment. Several emphasized that if AI performs some of the drafting associates previously learned from, firms must replace those mentorship elements to ensure capacity gains do not come at the cost of long-term talent development. The group also framed this as a broader shift from creation to judgment, with the differentiating skill becoming evaluating and directing work rather than producing it.

Track Time More Broadly

Eighty percent of in-house research participants reported accomplishing more in the same amount of time with their legal AI platform. Fifty-three percent support additional business units, and 70% said tasks that used to take hours now take minutes. Those teams can measure ROI by identifying a task or project that would have been impossible without AI, and then assigning a value range to each item based on its prior outsourcing expense or the lost opportunity cost.

For measurements like this, the lunch participants similarly recommended studying data beyond billing entries. First, evaluate turnaround time and touches to a given document, from the first draft to the final deliverable, pulling data directly from the document management system rather than relying on self-reported estimates, which the group noted is common in law firms. Second, evaluate whether the firm is pursuing work that used to be too costly, too slow, or operationally too difficult to accept because, according to several leaders, this effort is increasingly connected to client retention. It is also supporting the shift toward subscription or flat fee options, rather than traditional hourly billing, as firms consider ways to package their AI-enabled capacity into new pricing structures.

Elevate Talent with AI

Beyond revenues and hours, AI is also changing who can produce the best work and how quickly they can execute.

Almost two-thirds (65%) of law firm participants in my research noted that their legal AI platform gives high-performing professionals a significant boost, and almost a third (32%) see meaningful gains across their broader team. Seventy percent of in-house participants reported improved work from high-performing professionals, and 77% said those individuals are more efficient and move projects forward more quickly. Fifty-three percent described improved work from lower performers who use their legal AI platform.

The lunch participants discussed how AI amplifies a high performer’s acumen while standardizing or supporting a lower performer’s work. Several reported that associates using AI generally produce better work, but suggested that firms outline the specific tasks AI typically improves and why, rather than expecting uniform gains, which tend to be unrealistic because skill levels and applicability still vary.

In general, my research revealed that teams at law firms and in law departments can gauge AI’s effect on capabilities by conducting periodic performance reviews after deploying AI in specific practice groups, combining supervisory assessments with self-evaluations to better quantify the technology’s impact on an individual’s work. Use those metrics, collected before and after adoption, to identify high and low performers and the elements of a lower-performing professional’s work that AI can complete. By better assessing strengths and weaknesses, legal teams can assign work based on unique levels of acumen rather than availability alone. Similarly, high-performance metrics may underscore ways AI can accelerate an employee’s career trajectory through greater responsibility and broader exposure to increasingly complex matters.

The lunch participants suggested that law firms would benefit from building this effort into a formal AI competency framework, rather than assessing it informally.

After all, the research shows that AI usage has enterprise-wide effects. Eighty-seven percent of law firm participants said their legal AI platform helped build internal skills, and 48% said it sets them apart from competitors. Seventy-seven percent of in-house participants noted that their legal AI platform has helped their law department build internal skills and share knowledge about using AI in legal work, and 70% said it has had a large or transformational impact on building internal skills, habits, or infrastructure around AI in general.

Capture New Business and Brand Gains

My research and the lunch discussion validated the trend that AI is reshaping how firms and legal departments perceive value in the marketplace. In my report, 39% of law firm participants noted that they took on work that was previously unappealing or too expensive because it required more people or time, and 23% reported taking on work they would otherwise decline. Additionally, 77% of corporate legal participants noted that their company’s leaders view the legal department more positively because of its legal AI platform.

The lunch participants offered two concrete examples. One leader described creating a fractional legal operations group that provides AI consulting to clients and generates independent review for the firm. Another revealed a growing interest in alternative fee arrangements as a result of AI-enabled capacity increases.

Both law firms and law departments are realizing benefits and should continue to collect more data. For example, law firm partners should review their bills to track new, less common matters and those they previously declined to pursue because of staffing constraints or timing concerns. Law department leaders should use more Net Promoter Score-style assessments before and after matters to gauge expectations and identify where they exceeded them.

Track Shifts in Work Allocation

As their roles continue to evolve, law firms and their clients are adapting. Forty-two percent of law firm participants in the research reported winning new work, directly or indirectly, because of their legal AI platform, and 45% expanded existing client relationships by using it. Seventy-seven percent cited AI when explaining pricing, value, or turnaround time.

The lunch participants asked whether firms are taking on more work because AI is genuinely creating new capacity, or because they are compensating for lost billable hours as tasks that once took hours now take minutes. Participants were candid that both dynamics are likely happening at once, and that AI is enabling firms to move faster, which is changing how they practice, not just how quickly they work. Distinguishing between the two requires tracking how much back-and-forth happens within the AI platform itself and how deep that usage actually goes, not just whether a tool is being used.

As work shifts across tools and talent levels, and between the law firm and other settings, it is crucial to revisit client feedback and correspondence to determine whether AI prompted them. Similarly, study new business to better align those matters with your use of AI.

After all, the relationship between lawyers and their clients continues to evolve. Forty-seven percent of corporate legal respondents reported accomplishing more internally with their legal AI platform and engaging outside counsel on complex matters, especially because 87% of in-house participants who use their legal AI platform reported spending more time on higher-value tasks.

For in-house leaders, it is important to develop a value matrix for their law firm’s work to better disaggregate legal tasks and prioritize outside counsel’s expertise over capacity. Similarly, assign risk levels to those assignments and align the two so the in-house team handles low-value, low-risk tasks where appropriate, while outside law firms serve as true counselors on the highest-risk assignments. That risk-based approach lines up with the broader trend that 71% of law firm leaders said their AI platform surfaced issues they would otherwise have missed.

Law firms are seeing this shift and adapting. Sixty-five percent of those saving time are focusing on higher-value analysis, 52% are increasing client interactions, and 42% are redeploying saved time to additional billable work. The challenge is improving billing habits to quantify those benefits in practice. When entering time, supplement the narratives with details on where AI provides support to better calculate the benefits. This does not necessarily need to be for client review, but it will help the firm and the billing professional reassess their work.

The lunch participants recommended structured testing across billing data, document management system data, and time entries so law firms can see where AI usage, work type, and revenue intersect, rather than relying on anecdotes.

Measure Whether Your Tools Are Indispensable

Seventy-four percent of the law firm leaders I spoke with recommend their legal AI platform at 9 or 10 out of 10, while 87% of corporate respondents say removing it from their suite of tools would be disruptive (4/5) or very disruptive (5/5). Study the effects of removing your AI tool as an option for professionals who actively use it on their matters. Beyond productivity loss, monitor the types of matters users may abandon to weigh the true impact of its removal.

One leader at the lunch compared losing access to AI to taking away a calculator, and another remarked: “I could not imagine what our users would do without it.” One even suggested that law firms track what the individual described as a “panic score,” as an organic measure of a team’s reaction to losing the resource. It is unscientific, but it captures what the formal survey data approximates: indispensability is felt in its disruption before it is measured in its investment return.

The Next Frontier of ROI

The lunch concluded with a discussion of where the ROI debate is heading next. Several participants raised tokens as an emerging unit of measurement, noting that pricing models are shifting and will continue to do so.

Ari Kaplan is a legal industry analyst who publishes benchmarking reports on legal trends and is an experienced webinar and conference facilitator.

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