Peer to Peer: ILTA's Quarterly Magazine
Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/1544492
The real risk is waiting too long while others learn to operate in the new environment, while you are still building the foundation. P E E R T O P E E R M A G A Z I N E · S P R I N G 2 0 2 6 15 WHY WAITING IS THE WRONG STRATEGY 5 Faced with this complexity, some firms have adopted a cautious posture. They are watching developments closely but prefer to move slowly until the technology stabilizes. That instinct is understandable. Legal work carries real risk, and large organizations rarely benefit from chasing every new technological trend. But waiting is not the right strategy. Organizational capability does not appear overnight. Training programs must be designed. Knowledge infrastructure must be curated. Governance frameworks must be established. Lawyers must learn how to work effectively with new systems and integrate them into real workflows. These capabilities develop gradually through experimentation, iteration, and experience. Firms that build these capabilities earlier gain a learning advantage. Their lawyers become comfortable with AI. Their knowledge systems evolve to support retrieval and reasoning. Their governance models mature through real-world use rather than theoretical debate. This learning advantage compounds over time. When useful applications become widely recognized, firms with mature capabilities can deploy them immediately. There is a counterargument worth considering: early adopters might waste resources on ineffective approaches, while late movers can learn from their mistakes and adopt proven methods. This is true with immature technologies. Two factors make that logic less compelling here. • The underlying capabilities being built (governance frameworks, knowledge infrastructure, training programs) remain valuable regardless of which tools succeed. A firm that learns to curate its institutional knowledge for AI retrieval benefits from that investment, whether it uses Claude, GPT, or something not yet released. • The rapid change means waiting for clarity may take too long. In the three years since ChatGPT's release, individual adoption among legal professionals has increased to 79%. By the time consensus emerges about "best practices," firms without institutional capability will be significantly behind.