For the past three years the legal technology industry has moved at relative breakneck speed, from initial curiosity around generative AI to pilot programmes, firm-wide rollouts and now, agentic experimentation.

Across conversations with senior leaders at iManage, NetDocuments, LexisNexis, Intapp, Harvey, Aderant and others, a common set of themes repeatedly surfaced: context engineering, data quality, governance, agent orchestration and a growing focus on ROI. There’s been huge progress since last year, but transformation remains the hard part.

If there was a single word that defined ILTACON 2026, it was probably “context”.

Virtually every major AI announcement in the run up to and during the conference centred on providing legal AI systems with the information, history and organisational knowledge needed to become a useful assistant.

NetDocuments in May launched a Legal Context Graph and speaking to Legal IT Insider at the conference, CEO Josh Baxter said: “Context matters, otherwise it’s like instructing an associate, then that associate goes away and you get someone who knows nothing. Agents will speed up work, so you really need the context.” With the cost of moving from subsidised use of tokens to a consumption-based model on everyone’s mind, NetDocuments’ director of product marketing Michael Hill added: “The answer isn’t less AI, but AI that’s more effective in getting to that right answer faster.”…

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