LPM Frontiers is pleased to provide our law firm leader readers with a vivid, data-led picture of how this market has moved on each year: big drivers ploughing through the intensely competitive, often thorny landscape, the trickiest business challenges encountered on the ground — from cost, to client acquisition, to compliance — and clear views about how solutions are helping (although occasionally also, ironically, hampering) efforts along possible paths to meet them.

It’s fascinating that, for the first time, automation is seen here as the number-one priority for fresh investment or introduction of more process improvement in pursuit of growth goals. It may be tempting for firms, often authentically driven by a sense of clear purpose as well as profit, to see themselves as either human-first or effectively technology-driven.

But if it’s done right, a well-managed, carefully measured, and of course properly monitored programme of automation or AI adoption, ought to power up some more opportunity for meaningful human connection. It could be trusted with the job to be done from a risk perspective and transform various experiences of work for the better. A significant number of our 60+ responding leaders also say they do see potential for genAI, in particular, to improve or add innovation to their client service. So, it’s not all about the savings, but now could be the time.

This year’s LPM Frontiers findings arrive with very helpful perspectives on all the challenges, each in the relevant place, from experts at our five partners: Actionstep, LEAP UK, OneAdvanced, Softwerx and Tessaract. Thank you to all of them — and to you, of course — for engaging in our research and responding to our analysis and questions with insight and experience.

Read the full report on our LPM community platform, or download the PDF.

INSIDE LPM FRONTIERS

• Research summary: A bird’s eye view of findings from this year’s flagship SME legal business research
• Automation power, to the people: The biggest priorities for more business investment or change
• Cloud controls: Approaches to the technology supporting firm-wide transformation
• Time of essence for genAI? The latest on firm plans to introduce AI augmentation
• Exclusive insights from our partners: Tessaract, OneAdvanced, LEAP UK, Softwerx, Actionstep

Automation power, to the people

Little wonder then the actions leaders are most likely to name priorities for 2026 investment/improvement (p11) are process automation — seeking to remove friction from components of delivery (42%) — and client experience generally, whether powered by technology platforms and digital channels (35%) or human touchpoints at different stages of a transaction, or indeed when engaging between them (34%).

Cloud controls

One of the very top LPM Frontiers findings in 2025 was a simply huge jump in the number of leaders saying they would ‘only choose cloud’ as a platform foundation (from 20% to 59%). The enthusiasm for this scalable approach has held, with over half (52%) saying so again and a consistent almost third (30%) describing the overall position as ‘cloud-first’, which is that ‘systems will ultimately move, or should be replaced’.

Time of essence for genAI?

In 2025, over a third of leaders (37%) said the firm had an official plan for generative AI (genAI) to be used somewhere in the process of producing legal work or running the business efficiently — up from just over a quarter (26%) saying so in 2024. The proportion saying there were no plans to bring it in plummeted from 71% to 24%