The 2026 ACC Annual Meeting brought in-house legal professionals to Boston for conversations about AI, enterprise risk, and leadership. Our observation offered a useful starting point: last year’s focus on AI was giving way to more discussion of legal engineering.
AI still featured prominently. But the sessions ACC highlighted raised practical questions about how legal departments organize work, assign accountability, and support change. Taken together, we heard an emphasis on the operational work behind adoption.
Here are six takeaways for your legal department, drawing on our team’s observations and ACC’s published conference highlights.
Legal operations and legal engineering address the execution questions behind technology adoption. Paragon’s Ann-Margaret Dudley summed up the shift:
“There was a theme shift. Last year, everything was about AI, and this year everyone was talking about legal engineering.”
Legal operations bring structure to resources, processes, and technology. Legal engineering focuses more specifically on translating legal requirements into usable workflows and systems. For your department, that might mean defining intake rules, identifying review checkpoints, or building escalation paths before automating a task.
That shift puts the focus on implementation: how to turn legal judgment into workflows people can use, where human review belongs, and who is accountable when a process needs to change. It gives the AI conversation a concrete operational question: how will the work get done?
The same focus appeared in our RLLB recap, which explored hands-on learning, approved tools, and adoption within existing systems.
Moving beyond AI pilots requires decisions about ownership, review, and how technology fits into daily work. ACC’s legal department transformation session brought those questions into focus through governance, talent, accountability, and generative and agentic AI.
The panel included Shannon Thyme Klinger of Moderna, Carolyn Herzog of Elastic, and Hossein Nowbar of ServiceNow. They covered how legal departments are adapting as AI moves from experimentation toward broader organizational change.
For your team, a useful next step is choosing a defined workflow and documenting where AI can assist, where human judgment remains essential, and who reviews the output. Keep those responsibilities visible as the workflow changes.
This AI adoption guide explores those questions in more detail, including use-case selection and governance.
Meaningful board oversight connects AI use to business exposure and clear accountability. ACC’s governance session highlighted third-party risk, regulatory changes, disclosure obligations, and ethical responsibilities as part of that discussion.
For GCs and CLOs, those topics raise a reporting question: can you explain where AI is being used, which risks matter, and who is responsible for addressing them? A board needs enough context to assess management’s approach and ask informed questions.
Paragon’s 2026 AI risk research adds context. Among 294 in-house legal professionals surveyed, 57% reported being asked to assess an AI tool after deployment. That finding underscores the value of establishing review points before implementation.
A practical starting point is agreeing with business and technology stakeholders on which AI decisions require escalation, what information reaches the board, and when that information gets refreshed.
AI connects several risk areas that legal departments already manage. ACC’s enterprise AI session addressed workforce reductions, intellectual property, privacy, cybersecurity, governance, and board oversight within the same conversation.
Aaron Brand of Uber, Kobie Conner of Netflix, Kristy R. Ellmer of BCG, and Cathy Cartieri of Diligent framed the session around responsible innovation, evolving enterprise risk, and accountability.
For your department, the implication is cross-functional: an AI initiative may require employment, privacy, IP, and commercial input rather than a single approval. Define the relevant reviewers early and make responsibility for follow-through explicit.
That broader remit also echoes our Economist GC Summit recap, which examined specialized expertise and the growing complexity of the GC role.
High-stakes investigations make organizational preparation a legal leadership priority. ACC’s session featuring Michael Bopp, Katherine Maher of NPR, and AnnaLou Tirol of TikTok explored responses to congressional investigations and regulatory pressure.
Enterprise value, policy outcomes, and compliance were front and center in the conversation. For legal leaders, those themes provide a reason to examine how legal strategy connects with broader organizational readiness.
For your team, preparation could include reviewing document preservation responsibilities, escalation protocols, and coordination among legal, communications, and government affairs. Sensitive investigations also call for a deliberate decision about what stays in-house and where outside counsel is needed.
One question worth asking before a crisis: if your senior legal leaders had to focus on an investigation tomorrow, who would handle ongoing work, and which decisions would still need their attention?
Trust and resilience remain central to legal leadership as responsibilities expand. ACC’s featured keynotes brought those human dimensions into focus.
Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, connected collaboration, information governance, and trust. His perspective brought a different lens to the questions legal leaders face about reliable information and collective decision-making.
Briana Scurry, a former goalkeeper for the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team, two-time Olympic gold medalist, 1999 FIFA Women’s World Cup champion, and National Soccer Hall of Fame inductee, drew on competing at the highest level and rebuilding after a career-ending injury to discuss leadership, resilience, and performing under pressure.
For your department, the practical reflection is about how people work together through uncertainty. Clear communication, reliable information, and room to exercise judgment matter alongside new systems and processes.
The operational implications of AI provide a useful thread through these conference highlights. Governance, workflow design, board communication, and leadership each require someone to own the work and enough capacity to follow through.
A useful starting point is one workflow or risk that needs attention. Identify who owns it, where decisions get delayed, and what information people need to move the work forward. Then decide how you will tell whether the changes help.
Our observation brings the discussion back to execution. As legal operations and legal engineering gain attention, the question becomes how to translate technology’s potential into a way of working your team can sustain.
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