More automation and clarity could be coming to the e-discovery space in 2026, with many expecting generative artificial intelligence to change first-pass review, privilege log preparation, investigations and other processes over the next 12 months. After all, gen AI e-discovery pricing is becoming much more affordable, a trend many expect to continue. Still, it will not be a smooth transition—gen AI’s prominence in litigation is likely to bring more “discovery-on-discovery” and other battles surrounding its use and place in e-discovery.

This year could also see court rulings on gen AI, which may finally offer clarity on complex issues around gen AI data ownership, custody and whether prompts are discoverable.
Here’s a look at experts’ predictions for what’s in store for the e-discovery industry in 2026:

Ethan Ackerman, Of Counsel, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius: The Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice will approve a gen AI review workflow as part of a Second Request submission. Historically, the Division has been at the forefront of predictive coding, approving and occasionally rejecting such workflows. We predict that the Division will (or may already have, by the time you are reading this) approve a workflow explicitly incorporating a gen AI review workflow. Although these TAR (or gen AI) protocols are not publicly accessible like those in civil litigation, the Division’s approval and any associated restrictions have significantly influenced the acceptance and rejection of certain review practices.

Kevin Albert, Director of Sales Engineering, Casepoint: In 2026, e-discovery will be less about collecting data and more about proving you haven’t changed it along the way. With many platforms summarizing messages automatically, expect courts to start asking for a clear record of how data was collected and processed to ensure nothing has been altered. Organizations will need to document how they handle ephemeral data—like Slack or Teams messages set to auto-delete or disappearing messages in WhatsApp or Signal—to avoid sanctions. The first major ruling will likely require parties to turn over audit logs from any tool that alters data, even for standard tasks like redactions.

Tom Barce, Managing Director, FTI Technology: First pass document review will never be the same. Gen AI enabled classification, in cooperation with predictive coding, will permanently change the landscape for document review, yielding a new standard for reliability (higher precision and recall). At the same time, over-reliance on AI is going to cause a discovery problem. It is only a matter of time before someone blames a large language model for a privilege waiver or inadvertent production of highly confidential information. Most likely, the issue will come down to a (perceived) failure of lawyer supervision. The advice: keep the human in the loop.”

Shannon Capone Kirk, Managing Principal and Global Head, Advanced E-Discovery and AI Strategy, Ropes & Gray: In 2026, gen AI will continue to be integrated into traditional litigation workflows to aid in investigations and litigations to aid in document review, research, and privilege log preparation, generating summaries, presentations, and other content for human improvement and approval. I anticipate opposing parties will attempt to weaponize AI tools and developments, including through “discovery-on-discovery” and efforts to capitalize on perceived cybersecurity or data vulnerabilities. Advocacy that is designed with AI strategy in mind will be of critical importance at every stage of litigation, from negotiating ESI protocols, to discovery and motion practice, to trial and settlement.

Jamie Caramanica, Senior Vice President, Engineering, DISCO: To ensure data governance, regulatory compliance, and e-discovery readiness, organizations will increasingly restrict employee use of tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude to their enterprise-tier solutions instead of free or consumer versions. This is necessary to retain custody and control over interaction data (prompts and generated output) in anticipation of litigation and will force legal technology companies to develop expertise in the defensible collection/export of this structured data, either directly from the AI providers or through corporate retention systems to properly process and host it for legal review.

Benjamin Chi, Director of Litigation Technology, Finnegan: E-discovery retail customers will benefit as AI-assisted review shifts from a premium add-on to a standard, low-cost utility. Relativity’s October 2025 move to include unlimited AI-assisted review in AI triggered a prisoner’s dilemma, prompting rivals to follow. Weeks later, Everlaw announced plans to bundle most AI features into core pricing. Providers are cutting fees, driving per-document costs sharply down and differentiating with tools like chat-with-evidence, AI timelines, and workflow enhancements. This price war mirrors the stock brokerage industry’s 2019 race to zero trading commissions, with law firms and clients gaining through predictable budgets and richer bundled services.

Jared Coseglia, Founder and CEO, TruLegal: The e-discovery job market will undergo its most dramatic, industry altering shift in fifteen years. With private equity rapidly exiting the services space for greener pastures in AI-enabled legal software, salaries and the volume of jobs for project managers, analysts, review managers, and other mid-market staff will continue to decrease at vendors. Corporations will use flex talent secondees instead of relying on MSA-provided vendor talent to decrease cost and increase caliber. Meanwhile, aggressive law firm adoption of RelativityOne will usher in a platinum era of law firm litigation support opportunity with salaries and job volume increasing incrementally but meaningfully.

Nicole Gill, Chair and Managing Member, CODISCOVR: In 2026, courts are expected to grapple with and provide guidance on the role of gen AI in the context of possession, custody, and control—particularly as AI-generated content complicates authorship and data ownership. This will have implications on privilege as counsel increasingly leverage gen AI tools. Additionally, we anticipate clearer rulings on whether hyperlinked files constitute attachments, prompting technological innovation designed to preserve version-in-time documents. Lastly, a greater emphasis on information governance will continue to grow in light of the EDRM 2.0 project, the proliferation of cybersecurity breaches, and the demand for data organization to limit risk and create efficiencies.

Brad Kolacinski, Partner, Control Risks: Early case assessment will finally live up to its name. Within hours of a data upload, AI will surface communication clusters, custodians and key facts — complete with sentiment and timeline analysis. Lawyers will know within a day whether to settle, litigate or investigate further. The new competitive edge: speed to clarity.

Bobby Malhotra, Partner and Chair, eDiscovery and Information Governance Practice, Winston & Strawn: AI transcription rollouts will drive a surge in privacy-based wiretap litigation in 2026. Expect a continued uptick in suits against both AI transcription vendors and deploying organizations alleging unlawful interception, defective notice, and opaque third party processing. Many enterprises will underappreciate these exposures and overlook safeguards, including clear disclosures about transcription and related data uses, targeted employee training, and well defined acceptable use policies. Even with baseline measures, meaningful residual risk will persist given variability in state consent regimes, evolving interpretations of “interception,” reliance on external processors, and divergence in tool capabilities and data flows. The practical result will be heightened litigation risk for deployers and users, increased compliance spend, and a premium on carefully staged, defensible implementations that align notice, consent, vendor management, and information governance with applicable law.

Tandy Mathis, Senior Counsel, Litigation, E-Discovery & Information Governance, and Privacy & Data Security at Moore & Van Allen: In 2026, legal teams will face unprecedented complexity as enterprise AI tools become embedded in daily operations. These technologies will generate vast, dynamic datasets that must be managed under tightening global privacy regulations and emerging AI governance laws. The ability to rapidly identify, preserve, and produce relevant data, including AI-generated content, will become a core differentiator for in-house counsel and outside firms. As AI accelerates innovation, it also amplifies legal risk. The winners in 2026 will be those who pair cutting-edge technology with robust information governance and compliance strategies.

Jon Robins, Chief Technology Officer and Vice President of E-Discovery, Level Legal: With “documents” evolving from emails into dynamic objects and AI making volume and speed more affordable, traditional per-document, per-gigabyte, and hourly models for e-discovery pricing will begin to lose credible links to effort or value. In their place, providers will price around engagement scope, complexity, and risk. Fees will begin to be tied to deliverables rather than raw counts. Corporate clients will increasingly demand this volume-agnostic, outcome-based structure, and those clinging to legacy per-unit pricing will look, by comparison, both opaque and misaligned with the real economics of modern e-discovery.

Alison Shier, VP Client Success, Lighthouse: In 2026, the era of hand-offs between EDRM stages will end. Integrating AI-driven orchestration layers into the existing end-to-end e-discovery process will begin to blur the boundaries between collection, processing, analysis, and review. Generative and agentic systems will identify patterns across stages to bring about new automation with fewer pause points. Corporations will want integrated intelligence rather than discrete workflows and law firms will expect this AI to increase speed to knowledge. The linear standards of the past will simply cease to apply.

Paul Weiner, Shareholder and National E-Discovery Counsel, Littler Mendelson: FRCP rule 34 should require data security measures: Cybersecurity risks to law firms are pervasive. The ABA has warned that data breaches and cyber threats are a major threat facing the legal profession, as firms hold highly sensitive information and are prime targets for hackers. In 2025, one in five U.S. law firms faced a cyberattack, and nearly one in ten lost data or suffered exposure. In 2026, there will be efforts to amend Rule 34 to require parties making requests to implement reasonable technical and organizational safeguards to prevent unauthorized access, use, or disclosure of personal, confidential, or proprietary information they receive.

Stephanie Wilkins, Director of Content, Legaltech Hub: As AI-generated materials and chatbot outputs increasingly find their way into e-discovery datasets, the question of whether prompts are discoverable or protected as work product will inevitably come to a head. I predict that, in 2026, at least one court will issue a definitive ruling regarding the applicability of the work product doctrine to gen AI prompts, most likely in the context of prompts used to locate and identify data responsive to e-discovery requests.

Article from LAW.COM, Legal Technology News, January 2026, Rhys Dipshan