Report also offers a path for Learning & Development (L&D), Knowledge Management (KM), and Innovation teams to work together to bridge those gaps
DALLAS, Aug. 6, 2026 – Even as firms race to deploy AI tools, Learning & Development, Knowledge Management, and Innovation teams at law firms are grappling with measuring and leveraging these rollouts, new research from BARBRI Professional Education reveals.
While nearly every firm has made real progress rolling out AI tools, the organizational infrastructure to sustain training, adoption, and measurable ROI has not kept pace, according to the report, “Driving Change and ROI: Uniting Three Teams to Lead Law Firms into the Future,” which is based on in-depth interviews with 10 leaders across nine firms.
“Either there are too many cooks in the kitchen, or nobody is managing it. It’s feast or famine,” one legal innovation consultant and former L&D director told researchers, describing a dynamic the report found repeated across firms of every size.
Among the report’s key findings:
- No firm has built the AI competency framework its associate pipeline needs.
- Firms grade their own tech rollouts a C.
- Collaboration between Innovation and L&D is improving, but still fragile.
- Firms know who has activated AI tools, but almost none of them know who has actually changed the way they work.
- The billable hour remains the most stubborn barrier to AI adoption and training alone cannot fix it.
“Rolling out the technology is only the first step,” said Lucie Allen, Co-CEO of BARBRI. “The firms that will lead by 2030 are the ones that recognize tool adoption is only part of the transformation required. They will build new frameworks and align around incentives and measurements that turn activation into AI fluency. That requires L&D, KM, and Innovation to collaborate to create new development pathways.”
BARBRI assists all three functions to help firms close these gaps.Two examples include itsWork-Ready series, which equips new associates with practice-ready skills for the modern business of law, and its recent acquisition of Lega extends real-world, build-as-you-learn AI fluency training to law students, legal professionals, and law firms.
The report is based on in-depth interviews with ten leaders across nine firms, ranging from global Am Law 100 partnerships to a tech-enabled firm operating outside the traditional model, and is available here.
