Deloitte's 2026 survey of senior legal leaders, produced in partnership with RSGI, captures an industry that has decisively closed the legal AI adoption debate.
In 2024, 76% of legal leaders reported no AI adoption. Two years on, that figure is 2%. Seven in ten legal departments are now at initial deployment or further ahead, and 79% have raised their AI budgets over the past year. The argument about whether AI belongs in legal work is, in practice, settled. What replaces it is a harder and less flattering question: whether the money is going where it will actually deliver value.
[key-findings]
RSGI worked alongside Deloitte on this study, shaping the survey instrument, running the data analysis, building the charts, and consulting on the findings as they took shape. The 121 senior legal leaders surveyed span nine sectors and four regions, and the work behind the numbers was as much about what to ask as what the answers revealed. Our role was to help turn a large, messy dataset into a defensible read on where the industry actually stands, and to press on the places where the data complicates the easy story.
For a full copy of the report: [Click here]
Key findings
Key findings
