Last week, more than 4,000 professionals from across the legal industry gathered at National Harbor for ILTACON 2025. The atmosphere was electric — hands-on product labs, crowded panel rooms, and hallway conversations all centered on one theme: how AI is reshaping legal work.
If one thing was clear, it’s that AI is no longer a sideshow. It’s becoming the backbone of how legal teams deliver, measure, and evolve their work. Here are four big themes that stood out.
1. AI Everywhere, From “Basic” to Agentic
Late last year, a Microsoft/IDC survey of large businesses found that 75% are already using GenAI, and for every $1 invested, they’re seeing an ROI of $3.70. The survey also noted a shift from pre-built tools toward custom-built solutions tailored to each firm’s workflows.
That dynamic played out at ILTACON this year. Big law firms are pushing ahead with measurement and customization, while smaller firms are rediscovering the value of “basic AI” — automating routine tasks, saving hours of staff time, and redeploying resources to higher-value work.
But the buzzword of the week was agentic AI: systems that can manage multi-step legal workflows autonomously, not just generate text. From intake to drafting to review, the promise of agentic AI is reducing human “handoffs” and cutting down the friction that makes legal services so costly.
With budgets under the microscope, legal ops and knowledge management leaders are now central to technology strategy. Firms and in-house legal departments alike are leaning on those functions to:
In other words: it’s no longer enough to simply buy AI. The differentiator is implementing it sustainably.
Law firms spent much of ILTACON wrestling with a core anxiety: if clients can access AI tools directly, where does that leave the traditional firm model?
Many sessions highlighted how firms are responding by:
As one speaker put it, firms don’t just need to sell advice anymore; they need to sell access to their knowledge
The most provocative framing came from Reena SenGupta’s keynote. She described the legal industry as a fungal network: adaptive, data-driven, and interconnected. Her message was that the real challenge isn’t just adopting new technology, but rethinking the entire legal ecosystem to break silos and evolve collectively.
That vision landed as both a warning and an invitation. Tools are important, but the real test is whether law firms, clients, and vendors can move beyond incremental improvements to embrace structural change.
All of these threads point to one clear conclusion: the legal industry is moving past the AI hype stage. From just adopting AI to measuring and customizing it, from siloed tools to integrated ecosystems, and from one-off experiments to agentic systems handling workflows end-to-end.
Over the next year, expect to see:
To keep pace, legal teams should:
Lay strong foundations. Invest in AI literacy, governance frameworks, and internal change management before rolling out flashy tech.
Be intentional about adoption. Map out workflows where AI provides measurable ROI instead of chasing hype.
Integrate, don’t isolate. Avoid tool sprawl; push for systems that connect with existing knowledge and matter management platforms, and tools such as Word.
Legal tech isn’t just keeping pace with the rest of the AI world; it’s defining its own future. ILTACON 2025 showed that AI, legal ops, and knowledge management aren’t side projects anymore. They’re central to how legal teams will thrive in a rapidly changing environment.
Want to see how your team can use AI to automate routine tasks and get back some of those hours to devote to higher-value work? Book a demo of BoostDraft today.