As 2025 comes to a close, it’s hard to ignore how much noise surrounded legal technology this year.

Every conference promised transformation.
Every platform claimed to be “AI-powered.”
Every roadmap pointed toward automation as the answer to scale.

And yet, many firms are ending the year with the same operational challenges they started with—only now wrapped in more tools, more dashboards, and more manual work hiding behind the scenes.

Overpromise, Underdelivery, and Legal Tech Fatigue

2025 exposed a widening gap between promise and practice in legal tech.

We saw AI features layered onto workflows that weren’t ready for them.
Automation applied to fragmented systems.
Speed prioritized over defensibility.

In many cases, technology accelerated activity without improving outcomes.

This wasn’t a failure of ambition. It was a failure of fundamentals.

AI was often positioned as a shortcut around hard problems: inconsistent intake logic, unclear qualification rules, and poor data discipline. But AI can’t fix what isn’t structured. It can only amplify what already exists.

By the second half of the year, a shift was noticeable. Firms weren’t rejecting AI, but they were becoming more skeptical. Less interested in what tools could do, and more focused on whether they actually reduced work, risk, or cost.

That skepticism is healthy—and it sets the stage for 2026.

Call Centers: A Symptom of Broken Automation

One of the clearest signals we saw in 2025 wasn’t about AI at all.
It was how much intake work still flowed through call centers.

Call centers are often framed as a necessary operational layer. But in practice, they’ve become the glue holding disconnected systems together.

When intake isn’t automated end to end, calls fill the gaps:

• Re-asking questions the system didn’t enforce

• Chasing missing exposure details

• Clarifying inconsistent answers

• Re-entering data across tools

That effort is rarely labeled as inefficiency because it feels familiar. But it carries real cost.

Call centers slow intake cycles.
They raise the cost per qualified case.
They introduce variability at the most sensitive point in the process.

Most importantly, they mask weak system design.

When calls are required to “clean things up,” the issue isn’t staffing. It’s structure. The system failed earlier, and human effort compensated for it.

As firms look toward 2026, this model becomes harder to justify. Volume is increasing. Margins are tightening. Scrutiny is rising. Calls should exist for judgment and exceptions—not as the backbone of intake.

Mass Torts in 2026: More Competitive, Less Forgiving

Looking ahead, mass tort litigation is entering a more disciplined phase.

Case volumes remain high, but the environment is tighter. Advertising costs are up. Screening standards are rising. Defendants are pushing harder. Courts are applying more pressure earlier in the lifecycle.

In this environment, intake quality becomes strategic.

The firms that succeed in 2026 will be the ones that:

• Apply consistent qualification criteria across growing dockets

• Capture defensible timelines, exposure histories, and medical details early

• Reduce variance between intake decisions and litigation strategy

• Scale without introducing downstream cleanup

Volume alone won’t be enough. Precision matters more.

Partial Automation Is No Longer Enough

Another quiet lesson of 2025 was that partial automation creates the illusion of progress.

A form without logic still needs follow-up.
A workflow without enforcement still creates rework.
AI layered onto fragmented systems still depends on manual intervention.

In those gaps, firms rely on people to keep cases moving. That effort doesn’t always show up on dashboards, but it shows up in cycle time, burnout, and acquisition cost.

As firms plan for 2026, there’s growing recognition that intake must work end to end. Not to remove humans from the process, but to let them focus on judgment instead of repair.

What Opportunity Actually Looks Like in 2026

The opportunity ahead isn’t about chasing the next feature or trend. It’s about tightening the core.

The firms that gain an advantage in 2026 will:

• Use AI intentionally, where structure already exists

• Treat intake as infrastructure, not a marketing afterthought

• Disqualify earlier and more confidently

• Build systems that scale without losing control

This approach isn’t flashy. But it compounds.

A More Grounded Future for Legal Tech

2025 was a year of ambition, experimentation, and noise. Some of it paid off. Much of it didn’t. What’s clear is that the market is maturing.

Firms are asking harder questions.
They’re less impressed by promises.
And they’re more focused on outcomes they can trust.

That’s what makes 2026 exciting.

Not because everything will change—but because the industry is starting to build on what actually works.