If 2025 was the year that many UK law firms tightened their processes, 2026 is shaping up as the year those processes get put to the test. Clients are asking harder questions about how firms manage risk, regulators are increasingly focused on which policy controls work in practice, and compliance regulations for UK legal teams keeps expanding.

Looking back across the cybersecurity landscape during 2025, it was a year of misconfigurations, technical debt, and unresolved flaws coming home to roost. Most importantly, we’ve learned that ransomware isn’t the cause of catastrophic failures. It’s a symptom.

Harvey’s latest updates help make legal work faster, more intuitive, and more connected.

We are excited to announce that Aderant has partnered with First AML, a leading provider of anti-money laundering (AML) and client due diligence solutions. This partnership expands access to modern, automated compliance technology for law firms seeking to streamline regulatory workflows, reduce risk, and improve operational efficiency. 

Enterprise AI conversations have moved on from model comparisons. The more consequential question is whether your assistants can connect to the right systems, retrieve authoritative context, and operate inside clear governance boundaries.

A monumental shift is taking place in the UK legal market – one that will affect every part of the profession.

For most law firms, the Practice and Case Management System (PCMS) sits at the very heart of the business. It touches everything: fee earners and support staff, client onboarding, matter management, finance, compliance, reporting, and operations. Quite simply, if the PCMS is unavailable or unreliable, the firm cannot function effectively.

Draftwise will enable lawyers to align a complete suite of documents with a term sheet in a single motion. This removes the manual data entry that causes errors and version drift, ensuring every document is perfectly reconciled from the first turn.

If you have ever watched a fee earner wrestle with a manual conveyancing quote, you will know the feeling. The spreadsheets. The emails. The quick checks with colleagues. The back-and-forth that takes longer than anyone wants to admit.

Associate career paths in large law firms are at a turning point. Changing expectations, persistent retention challenges and emerging alternative models are forcing firm leaders to rethink how they attract, develop and retain senior associate talent while maintaining profitability and client service excellence.

Move seamlessly from document intake to polished outputs with legal agents, scalable review tables, and in-platform Word editing.

Automation has become a defining priority for the legal sector, driven by rising client expectations, economic pressure, and rapid advances in legal technology. Yet, as our Legal Trends Report 2026 highlights, many firms remain caught between ambition and execution, struggling to turn investment into impact.

Law firms are investing more than ever in brand. New positioning. New visual identities. Refined tone of voice. Confident launches. And then, quietly, things start to wobble. Not because the strategy was wrong. Not because the design wasn’t strong. But because no one really talked about what happens next.