From law firms to in-house legal teams, the rules of value are being rewritten. The question is: Who's ready to lead the change? In the first episode of 2026 for the UpLevel View podcast, Stephanie Corey and Ken Callander sit down with Rita Gunther McGrath, Columbia Business School professor and Wall Street Journal columnist, to talk about how AI is forcing professional services to price outcomes instead of hours.
When legal headlines talk about AI, it's usually all hype or all fear. Either we're replacing lawyers with robots or bracing for doomsday. But back on Earth, where work still has to get done, AI is a business decision, not an existential dilemma. An important decision that legal departments, especially lean ones, need to make with clarity, not chaos. Enter the Hanna Center: a nonprofit that treated AI not as a headline but as a workflow challenge.
While headlines have focused on the gap between the 31 percent with no plans for adoption and everyone else, the more pressing concern might be the 43 percent just winging it.