Who could have predicted what 2025 would bring? As the legal profession kicked off last year, we expected another tour de force of Biglaw standing up for those targeted by the Trump administration like the firms did in 2017, we figured that AI hallucinations would become a thing of the past as lawyers learned from others, and we felt confident that at least we wouldn’t be talking about summer associates biting people at elite law firms.
We flopped on all of those.
In fact, this year managed to throw doubt on the Third, Fourteenth, and Twenty-Second Amendments, foiling many a 2025 Bingo card.
But 2026 is a new year! With hours to go on this steaming dumpster fire of a year in legal, let us usher in the next year with a bolus of positivity and gaze into our crystal balls to predict the many ways the legal profession will make the world better over the coming year. Though to avoid the graveyard of whiffed predictions we’ll discuss this time next year, let’s focus exclusively on the predictions that in any rational profession would come true in 2026, with the full understanding that — as lawyers — absolutely none of this will actually happen.
The Death Of The Billable Hour
Rumors of the billable hour’s demise have been greatly exaggerated for decades. Forecasting the end of hourly billing is a cheap way to spice up a prediction roundup. The thousand, “well, actually, the billable hour isn’t going anywhere” takes this item will trigger generates enough smug self-satisfaction to keep offices warm for weeks. But there’s something different about it this time, right? Famous last words in the prediction racket… but that’s why we’re focused on predictions that aren’t going to come true.
Billing by the hour remained strong in 2025, and probably will into 2026. But it has shown some cracks and the chisel is the growing adoption of artificial intelligence.
Every previous death sentence for time-based billing rested upon client pressure and firm competition, two factors that grossly underestimate the legal profession’s fear and laziness. Or “caution” or “commitment to tradition” or whatever kinder euphemism you want. Clients might have thought alternative fee arrangements made more sense, but it’s daunting work to go to the Board and justify handing over lump sums of money when hourly billing is a tried and true methodology. And firms might have wanted to seek some advantage over their rivals by offering less burdensome pricing, but it’s scary to commit to a fixed price that could leave the firm underpaid on an assignment.
Artificial intelligence provides an exogenous kick in the ass. According to the Harbor Law Department Survey, clients spent 2025 jumping on the AI bandwagon. Some 85 percent of corporate legal teams now have dedicated AI resources, and they’re using that newfound capacity as leverage to demand alternative fee arrangements, consolidate their panels, and pull work in-house. Outside counsel spending projections cratered from 58 percent expecting increases to just 37 percent. At the same time, law firms have watched AI eat into many of the time-consuming tasks that used to be the bread and butter of law firm leverage. A DISCO white paper found that even as law firms embrace AI tools, there’s one lingering fear: “the premise that speed will reduce revenue remains a challenge.”
Ethics rules prevent law firms from billing for the time that might have been in an alternate universe without an AI tool crunching deposition transcripts. While clients would love to see the firm’s 300 hour bill drop to 30, law firms aren’t in the business of giving away money like that.
Law firms finally face genuine pressure to work out the value of the output instead of charging clients for inputs.
But instead, they’ll probably just adopt a $10,000 billable hour. Because if lawyers invented the internal combustion engine, we’d be driving mechanical horses instead of cars.
Law Schools End The Accelerated Recruiting Pipeline
Remember when law school grades mattered? Maybe not for the Yalies out there, but for the rest of us. Back in the day, employers actually waited to see how students performed before hiring them.
“OK Boomer,” say current law students.
But it’s true! We used to wait for a whole year’s worth of grades before getting an offer for the summer before 3L year. The current law school recruiting timeline now begins roughly fifteen minutes after orientation. Biglaw has started handing out offers before students finish their first final, replacing grades with vibe recruiting — complete with firms handing out walking around money to students that they’ve already worked with, asking these older students to identify and recruit promising potential summers.
The weird part is that nobody wants this. The law schools hate it. The law firms aren’t enthusiastic about it. The students are overwhelmed. And yet no one can do anything about it.
Any solution would involve collective action — from either the law schools, the law firms, or both — and no one appears willing to risk being accused of collusion. Without action from the participants in this catastrophe, the only alternative would be the regulators. If state licensing authorities created some sort of minimum check on law clerk qualifications it could put the brakes on the accelerated cycle, but the pressure on licensing is currently arrayed toward reducing obstacles to practice rather than imposing more.
In a sane 2026, the law schools manage to get together and impose a requirement that firms can’t recruit students until the first semester grades arrive.
The Supreme Court Will Go Back To Writing Actual Opinions Instead Of Post-It Notes
In a probably apocryphal story, Andrew Jackson said of the Supreme Court, “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.” And that was before a bunch of late-1970s, early-1980s law review articles invented “unitary executive theory.”
Even if the Jackson quote never actually happened, the point remains sound: the Supreme Court’s authority derives entirely from the persuasive power of its written opinions. That’s it. Nine unelected people in robes reshape American life because we collectively accept that they’ve issued reasoned opinions.
Faced with the daunting task of imposing ideas like the unitary executive theory — concepts divorced from any reasonable textual or historical reading — the current Court simply dispensed with the “persuasive power of written opinions” thing and decided to just issue rulings under the doctrine of “because we said so.”
The shadow docket became the primary vehicle for reshaping American law this year, with terse orders issued without briefing, argument, or explanation. Once upon a time, these orders were understood to be glorified preliminary injunctions, but this year the Supreme Court majority voiced its frustration when lower courts kept applying actual written precedent instead of divining the vibes from unsigned orders. Calvinball par excellence. It probably doesn’t hurt that issuing all their rulings this way affords them flexibility to run it all back under a future Democratic president and say, “hold on, we didn’t actually RULE on any of this stuff.”
The Supreme Court majority’s embrace of legislating by post-it note carries dangerous consequences. Several federal judges called bullshit, placing the rise in violent threats aimed at lower court justices in part on the Supreme Court’s unwillingness to articulate its decisions. When SCOTUS overturns lower courts without explaining itself, it allows the administration free rein to drag judges as wild-eyed activists worthy of going to “war” against. As one judge told NBC News: “They don’t have our backs.”
As the threats mount and the administration places the Supreme Court in increasingly uncomfortable positions with its loony requests, 2026 should bring out the latent pride of the Court’s conservatives.
The majority made its decision; now let them explain it.
But they won’t.
More States Will Consider Sidelining The Bar Exam
The bar exam is a flaming sack of Scantron-bubbled garbage. We’ve known this for decades. It’s a generalist exam in an era of specialists. It’s a doctrinal memory test in a profession that — rightly — considers practicing off the dome as malpractice. The bar exam exists to limit the supply of attorneys and protect incumbents from competition.
This year, Utah went ahead and created an actually sensible alternative licensing path. Imagine an exam based on the principle that an experienced, competent attorney should be able to pass it without studying… because that’s what minimum competence would suggest. What a concept!
Utah’s proposal allows prospective lawyers to replace the bar exam with a combination of formal education, supervised professional experience, and this real minimum competence exam.
Other states should follow. But then we wouldn’t have as many Rule Against Perpetuities jokes.
Biglaw Firms Realize That Cooperation With Authoritarianism Isn’t Sustainable
Throughout 2025, Biglaw firms mostly operated between the art of strategic quiet and active collaboration.
After law firms frustrated his first term’s wildest acts of overreach, Trump entered the White House in 2025 in full “kill all the lawyers” mode. Firing off executive orders designed to destroy global law firms, Trump managed to get his wish with nine Biglaw firms confessing past disloyalty to the crown and pledging millions in pro bono commitments to conservative causes. Other firms took the opportunity to erase references to diversity or other vaguely progressive work from their websites. And many more just stopped representing vulnerable clients facing the administration’s wrath.
The surrendering firms took their lumps. Paul Weiss chair Brad Karp got heckled at a Bar Foundation gala, with another attendee yelling “FOR TRUMP?!” every time he mentioned their public service accomplishments. Young lawyers were not happy. Clients pulled business from firms that showed no willingness to stand up for themselves.
When it all shakes out, the firms will likely end the year no worse for the ordeal.
The legal profession is supposed to be the last line of defense for the rule of law. Lawyers in other countries have marched through tear gas to defend judicial independence. Many of America’s most elite legal institutions could barely muster a strongly worded op-ed.
But the thing about Faustian bargains is that they’re rarely one-time transactions. As we warned when these deals were announced, dealing with a bad faith actor means they own you. Even if they don’t alter the deal further, the fear guides the relationship.
Perhaps the administration has moved on from harassing law firms. Probably not though. In 2026, we should see firms start pushing back against the White House.
However, given the expected financials from the surrendering firms, it’s more likely other firms decide complicity has its perks.
Lawyers Will Stop Falling For AI Hallucinations
Honestly, one would’ve thought lawyers could’ve cleared this one in 2025, but apparently not. When the first AI hallucination story broke in 2023, the intense public ridicule led many to believe the whole profession had been duly chastened. Some 700 hallucination filings later, that didn’t pan out.
AI burned lawyers across the industry this year. The MyPillow lawyers got dinged. K&L Gates and Ellis George got dinged. Butler Snow got kicked off a case. A California court declined to award fees to opposing counsel for failing to spot the other side’s fake citations. The judges got in on the action too. A Georgia case got decided based off of hallucinated caselaw. Two federal judges had to withdraw hallucinated opinions.
This should not be hard. The rule is simple: if you cite a case, verify that the case exists. This was true before AI. It’s true after AI. The existence of a technology that confidently fabricates sources does not relieve you of the obligation to check your work.
Everyone understands this in theory. But in practice, AI may well be making us dumber.
This should end in 2026. Between technological advances to reduce hallucinations and lawyers rightfully worried about their reputations, this should end.
But I said that of 2025 too.
Kim Kardashian Will Finally Give Up On The Bar Exam
Kim Kardashian’s ongoing quest to become a lawyer through California’s apprenticeship program hasn’t worked out so far. She failed the bar exam.
Even though the psychics promised she’d pass.
The bar exam is a problematic professional gatekeeper, but Kardashian is the best argument for the existence of an exam of some form. Not the stupid one we have, but if the system is going to allow a path to licensure that doesn’t run through law school there has to be a test of genuine minimum competence. Perhaps she could try her hand at Utah’s new system?
But assuming California isn’t junking the bar exam — and they’ve already disastrously tried to fix the bar exam and then committed to the worst of all possible outcomes by going BACK to the old bar exam — could 2026 be the year that Kardashian refuses to keep investing her energy in this busted system?
Kardashian wants to help the wrongfully convicted and excessively sentenced, and the best way for her to do that is to keep being a billionaire and funding the lawyers who are already out there doing this important work. There should be no shame in becoming the deep pocketed philanthropist behind a noble cause.
The Kim Kardashian Center For Justice has a nice ring to it.
The Point Of All This
The legal profession has a remarkable capacity to identify problems and then do absolutely nothing about them. But we can hope. Hey, sometimes, if people keep pointing out the right path loudly and repeatedly, things can change.
Maybe in 2027.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.