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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 61 Judgment maturity is becoming a market expectation. In-house departments are not passive observers. They see the value of integrating AI capabilities and are increasingly seeking ways to bring legal work in-house, as borne out in the Association of Corporate Counsel's survey results, "Generative AI's Growing Strategic Value for Corporate Law Departments." As a result, corporate legal teams are critically evaluating how law firms deploy generative AI and report a perceived lack of awareness regarding outside counsel's use of the technolo- gy on their legal matters. Some even expect to push for changes to billable hour arrangements with outside counsel because of generative AI's impact. The challenge is converting system awareness and industry pressure into personal professional judgment. SHIFTING FROM TOOL TRAINING TO JUDGMENT DEVELOPMENT Clearly, a majority of law firms recognize that AI is the biggest technology pushing significant change in the industry over the next 3-5 years, but there is a great deal of variation in the approaches firms are taking in response to this realization. Early AI enablement efforts at law firms focused on core elements of access, security policies centered around proper use, and basic prompting techniques. Prudence dictated building a solid training foundation. But there is emerging recognition that the legal AI journey requires evolving beyond the basics toward something less technical, and yet just as fundamentally important and substantive: developing human judgment and instinct that guides our use (and at times, intentional non-use) of AI. Recent initiatives by law firms and legal AI providers have included: • Evolving approaches to junior associate training to encourage and facilitate development of the lawyer's "judgment" muscle through multi-modal, scenario-based training models, as highlighted in "Reinventing Associate Training for the Age of AI" • Treating AI training as a continuing education responsibility of firms, core to associate and attorney development. According to "The Grace to Dabble: Two Biglaw Firms Look to an AI-First Future," some firms are even putting skin in the game by providing billable hour credit to associates. • The growth of AI-specific leadership roles within firms to inject context and oversight at the practice level within practice groups, rather than centralizing AI governance solely as an IT function • Practice-specific training simulations teaching and guiding attorneys to know and practically apply the limitations of AI-generated work product, including identifying hallucinated citations, comparing AI- generated drafts to human drafts, and conducting structured verification reviews. Embedding AI directly into the DMS is crucial to maintain data security and compliance, rather than risking data integrity by using disconnected AI tools.

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