What’s Next for Litigation Support: 2026 Industry Outlook

As a leading provider of litigation support services, U.S. Legal Support has a finger on the pulse of the legal industry’s concerns, needs, and considerations. Each year, we publish results from a detailed survey completed by more than 2,000 legal professionals and leaders from single-market, regional, and AmLaw firms and, to a lesser extent, Fortune 1000 organizations. 

Our 2025 survey results indicate that the industry is at the intersection of digital maturity and AI acceleration. As firms prepare for 2026, priorities are shifting from experimentation to long-term optimization. This year’s findings reveal growing investments in technology, renewed focus on security, and a measured approach to hybrid proceedings.

Demographics and Roles of Survey Participants

We expanded our respondent pool this year, from 1,232 in 2024 to 2,011 individuals in the 2025 survey. By employer type, these broke down to: 

• 72% from single-market or regional law firms 
• 17% from AmLaw 100 firms
• 4% from Fortune 1000 organizations 
• 7% indicated “other”

The majority of legal professionals identified their role as: 

• Legal Assistant (33%) 
• Paralegal (31%)
• Attorney (7%)
• Associate Attorney (6%)
• Partner (5%)
• Managing or Senior Partner (4%) 

Respondents work in various practice areas and specialties, with the highest concentrations in:

• Personal Injury (39%)
• Insurance (28%)
• Medical Malpractice (17%)
• Labor and Employment (14%)
• Construction (13%)
• Contracts (13%)

In addition to these practice areas, we also heard from legal professionals specializing in real estate, product liability, class actions, intellectual property disputes, environmental law, securities fraud, and many others. 

Consolidation and Efficiency in Vendor Partnerships

Outsourcing is the norm for litigation support services. This year’s respondents indicated they routinely depended on vendors for multiple services: 

• Court reporting (84%)
• Interpreting and translations (55%)
• Record retrieval (48%)
• Transcription (40%)
• Trial graphics and exhibits (32%)
• Trial presentation technology (20%)
• Jury research and consulting (17%) 
• eDiscovery (13%)

The most common footprint is two to four vendors per category, a pattern that holds in both 2025 and 2024 survey results. 

When asked about their firm’s approach to controlling litigation support service vendor costs, the lion’s share—54%—identified using a limited number of vendors. Only a small minority of respondents (5% – 6% per support category) noted using 11 or more vendors.

This reflects a post-pandemic stabilization phase, where efficiency—not expansion—drives outsourcing choices.

Firms aren’t expanding their supplier lists. Instead, they’re curating small, reliable rosters across court reporting, record retrieval, and trial services to reduce administrative load and security risk, a pattern that’s consistent year over year.

Litigation Support Budgets Are Set to Grow — Selectively

When it comes to budgeting for litigation support, 32% of respondents expect increased spending in 2026—up slightly (about 3%) from last year’s survey results. Only 5% anticipate a decrease in litigation support spending, with the remainder split between 42% who believe spending will stay the same and 21% in the “not sure” camp.

Budget growth is concentrated in technology-enabled services, including: 

• Remote proceedings – 37% of respondents expect the use of remote court reporting and depositions to increase in 2026, and 36% anticipate growth in virtual mediations, arbitrations, and trials.

• eDiscovery – 37% of respondents note that firm members currently use eDiscovery tools, and 40% believe that advanced eDiscovery tools will have the biggest impact on litigation support in the next five years. 

• AI-driven tools – 77% of respondents anticipate an increased use of AI in the next five years, and 26% note AI and machine learning as among the top three technology or digital transformation priorities into 2026. 

In 2026, there will be more targeted investment in tools that demonstrate measurable ROI and resilience. Firms will seek litigation support providers who demonstrate leadership in digital transformation systems and protocols.

Responsiveness Remains the Top Differentiator

What are firms looking for when it comes to partnering with outside support providers? 77% of respondents cited responsiveness as their top vendor selection factor, following the same trend as previous years.

Security and privacy standards were cited as critical to vendor selection by 29.8% of respondents, essentially unchanged from the 29.6% reported in 2024. 

However, security shows up more strongly in a separate question on tech-vendor due diligence, with responses indicating: 

• 70% consider data privacy policies essential in vetting tech vendors
• 51% require compliance with major HIPAA standards 
• 46% ensure tech vendors utilize end-to-end encryption

Law firms—particularly small and mid-sized—are increasingly at risk for cyberattacks due to the highly sensitive data they hold, including client records, financial information, intellectual property, and litigation strategies.¹ Attackers target them in multiple ways, posing threats to both encrypt and leak their data, resulting in operational downtime, data loss, reputational damage, regulatory penalties, and ransomware payouts.

Speed still wins the shortlist, but security is a baseline requirement that’s enforced during technology vendor vetting, rather than being a general vendor preference. For 2026, expect responsiveness and transparent pricing to remain the day-to-day tiebreakers, while formal privacy certifications continue to be gatekeepers.

Technology Integration and Digital Transformation

Digital workflows are the standard across the litigation landscape. The majority of firms now use one or more core digital tools and platforms to manage tasks including:

• Legal research (69%)
• Billing (65%)
• eSignatures (62%)
• Timekeeping (61%)
• Records management (55%)
• eDiscovery (37%)
• Document review (35%)
• Practice management (25%)

2026 will be defined by connected systems that seek to eliminate silos between discovery, deposition, and trial. Integrated systems will facilitate unified workflows and analytics, enabling seamless workflows through integration across various platforms. 

Preparing for an AI-Enabled Litigation Landscape

Firms increasingly view AI not as an optional innovation, but as a competitive necessity.

Our 2025 survey reveals a significant increase in the adoption of AI for document review and predictive analysis. Twice as many firms this year—26%, vs. just 13% in 2024—said AI and machine learning adoption would be a top initiative for the next year.

When asked which trends will have the biggest impact on litigation support in the next five years, increased use of AI topped the list at 77%. Additionally: 

• 43% expect their firm’s use of AI tools to increase in 2026
• 31% of respondents hope to see better use of AI case chronology generators
• 22% anticipate greater use of generative AI

Our results were slightly more conservative than those from the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) 2025 Technology Survey, which yielded an 80% “yes” to the question of whether their firm was either using or exploring generative AI tools as basic as ChatGPT (note the “or exploring” makes this a much broader inquiry).² Of additional interest was their firm-size breakdown, with the “yes” responses incrementally larger in parallel with firm size, up to 100% from firms of 700+ lawyers.

Firms may also want to consider findings from the 2025 Vals Legal AI Report (VLAIR), which benchmarked the performance of leading legal AI tools across a range of common legal tasks. The study found that while AI continues to enhance accuracy and speed across key functions such as document summarization, transcript analysis, and Q&A, human expertise remains essential for complex and nuanced areas of legal work.

Even in tasks where results were comparable, AI demonstrated significant efficiency gains — performing analyses up to 80 times faster than traditional review methods. For legal professionals, this underscores the value of integrating AI to surface information and insights quickly, allowing attorneys to focus on higher-level strategy, interpretation, and client engagement.³

Key Takeaway 

2026 is shaping up to mark the beginning of AI maturity. Policy, training, and productivity will converge as more firms integrate and optimize their adoption of AI-enabled tools. ROI is key, with firms keeping an eye on both performance and efficiency when identifying tasks that are ripe for AI completion.

Looking Toward 2026 and Beyond

Legal operations are entering a new era of measured modernization where agility, compliance, and intelligent automation define success.

U.S. Legal Support delivers responsive, secure, and future-ready litigation support services built for 2026 and beyond. We can connect you with over 5,000 professional court reporters and transcriptionists nationwide for in-person, remote, and hybrid proceedings. Our services also include process serving, interpreting, records retrieval, organization, and analysis, AI-powered medical records summarization, and litigation consulting. 

Plus, you can count on us for trial support, including voir dire and jury research and consulting, mock trials, witness preparation, trial graphics and demonstratives, animations, and trial presentation and technology services. 

To view our survey results, download the infographic here:

Sources

1. International Legal Technology Association. Ransomware-as-a-Service: A Growing Threat to Cybersecurity for Law Firms. https://www.iltanet.org/blogs/katie-turnbloom/2025/10/22/ransomware-as-a-service-a-growing-threat-to-firms
2. eDiscovery Today. ILTA 2025 Technology Survey Results Released Today: Legal Technology Trends. https://ediscoverytoday.com/2025/09/16/ilta-2025-technology-survey-results-released-today-legal-technology-trends/
3. Intellek. Best Legal AI Tools Comparison 2025: VLAIR Benchmark Study Shows AI Better Than Lawyers at Key Legal Tasks. https://intellek.io/blog/legal-ai-outperforming-lawyers/

Julie Feller

Julie Feller is the Vice President of Marketing at U.S. Legal Support where she leads innovative marketing initiatives. With a proven track record in the legal industry, Juie previously served at Abacus Data Systems (now Caret Legal) where she played a pivotal role in providing cutting-edge technology platforms and services to legal professionals nationwide.