After Legalweek 2026, I reached out to people I met with for their conference observations. Part one was Wednesday, part two was yesterday, here is part three of Legalweek 2026 crowdsourced observations!

FYI, I’m publishing their Legalweek 2026 crowdsourced observations in mostly the order they provided them to me and splitting them over three posts. Note: some observations are split into multiple paragraphs, so only the last paragraph will show attribution.

You can take Legalweek out of the Hilton but you can’t take the passion for legal tech out of the community. The energy in the modern exhibit hall was palpable – no surprise that AI was a major theme, but this time the focus was on real-world applications and measurable ROI. Although the Javits Center was a big change, it really put everyone on the same footing when it came to getting around, finding your bearings, and exploring new haunts. Besides the fact that my feet were killing me by Day 2 and I had to switch to sneakers instead of my signature heeled boots, I would say the week was an overall success, including the splash of our Relativity rebrand. Cristin K. Traylor, Senior Director, AI Transformation & Law Firm Strategy, Relativity

The move to the Javits Center was a solid first-year effort. That said, the space could have used more tables and chairs in common areas — somewhere for attendees to sit between sessions, catch up on work, or connect with peers. The weather was a welcome bonus; the city was beautiful and walkable, which made the back-and-forth to Hudson Yards where many meetings took place genuinely enjoyable. A rainy day might have made me feel differently about Javits and I did miss the ability to run up to my room to get some work done. I do hope to be back next year as the sessions were incredible!

A few themes that kept surfacing at the conference: how legal teams are learning to Delegate work to cross functional teams, the growing need to Communicate AI’s capabilities and limits — to clients and internally — and the challenge of how to Translate technical outputs into meaningful legal outcomes. Last, Velocity, not in relation to the speed at which AI is improving, but the speed at which it needs to be adopted. Shannon Lex Bales, Litigation Technology Support Senior Manager, Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP

The Javits move reflected the scale of what’s at stake in this market right now. What stood out wasn’t the AI hype but the honest reckoning happening beneath it: firms openly discussing how AI compresses 16 hours of associate work into minutes while 80% of arrangements still run on billable hours, and enterprises pushing back hard against forced cloud migrations as legacy platforms sunset. The winners emerging from Legalweek aren’t the ones with the flashiest demos but those embedding AI into workflows lawyers already trust and giving clients real deployment choice instead of dictating infrastructure decisions. Eric Harmon, CEO, Reveal

Accountability is the new fault line in legal AI. The central question in legal AI is no longer about the technology itself but who is accountable for the result. That question touches ethics, malpractice exposure, client trust, pricing, and institutional legitimacy. Governance matters because accountability cannot be outsourced to the machine. Greg Moreman, Partner, Client Solutions, Level Legal

A big takeaway for me was the accelerated rate of change and innovation we’re seeing around AI fluency and the democratization of new technologies. Law firm leaders are starting to gain a much clearer understanding of the massive advantages of AI, and across several panels I heard practicing litigation partners engaging in thoughtful discussions around how they’ve begun to integrate AI into their practices and operations. Even 3 years ago that was virtually unheard of. Katie DeBord, Vice President, Product Strategy, DISCO

We came out of LW impressed by the deeper level of experience lawyers had overall with AI and Agentic AI solutions. Last year was about building trust (“does this actually work”), whereas this year was about transformation (“how can it help me more” and “where can I implement this within my organization”). Implementing this successfully across the litigation lifecycle means they need complete datasets – data and context are the fundamental building blocks of true agentic solutions. Alexis Mitchell, Senior AI Consultant, Syllo

It has been fascinating to watch the evolution and growth curve of GenAI-powered review solutions, and to see how law firms are increasingly becoming more comfortable embracing these new tools to manage tight deadlines and the total cost of resolutions. The sheer volume of data involved in modern litigation is overwhelming, and it’s exciting to see how far the technology has come in tackling sophisticated legal work, providing greater speed to evidence and opening up time for more strategic thinking. Betny Townsend, Senior Director, Product Marketing, DISCO

The economics of legal work are being renegotiated in real time. As AI changes the labor profile of certain tasks, it also changes how clients think about value and price. This does not automatically mean a race to the bottom, but it does mean more scrutiny. Providers that cannot explain where value sits in an AI-enabled workflow may find themselves trapped between client pressure and internal confusion. Daniel Bonner, Partner, Client Solutions, Level Legal

My impression at LW was that lawyers are familiar with agentic document review solutions, and are ready to move toward integrated agentic solutions across their workflows. These are practitioners who know the difference between an AI wrapper and a truly agentic solution – and they know that only the latter can deliver the efficiencies that will take them from ECA through discovery to trial. Margot Feuerstein, Head of Customer Success, Syllo

Moving from Midtown to the Javits Center felt like a physical manifestation of the “unbundling” currently hitting the legal profession. Just as we lost our traditional “home base” at the Hilton, AI is shifting high-leverage analysis away from traditional firm workflows, leaving humans to navigate a sprawling but bright new hall of agentic possibilities. Niki Black, Principal Legal Insight Strategist, 8am

Legalweek made one thing clear: it’s no longer “Are you using AI?” it’s “How are you actually using it?” and how are you making it work in real, defensible workflows. My focus this year was practical implementation, and while I came away with some great ideas, there’s still a lot to figure out. No single tool does it all (yet), and a lot of solutions still sound the same once you get past the buzzwords, but we’re getting closer to something that actually delivers. While I went into the week skeptical of the move to Javits, having all the exhibits in one space made it easier to actually connect and learn, so with a few logistical tweaks, I think I could learn to love (or at least tolerate) Javits. Stephanie Clerkin, Director of Litigation Support, Korein Tillery

There were so many people who provided Legalweek 2026 crowdsourced observations that I couldn’t fit it all into one post! Thanks to all who Legalweek 2026 crowdsourced observations for me – you saved me writing three posts this week! 😀

So, what do you think? Did you attend Legalweek 2026? If so, feel free to comment with your own observations below! And please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by my employer, my partners or my clients. eDiscovery Today is made available solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Today should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.