AI pressure grows for law firm business models as adoption accelerates across Europe. In six months’ time, says Adrian Bell, the new managing partner of CMS UK, “we won’t be talking about AI specifically. It will be embedded across everything we do.” Research for the 2026 FT Innovative Lawyers Europe report found that a significant and growing number of commercial law firms are increasing their use of AI at pace.

Not only are they building bespoke legal products and deploying agents, but they can measure its adoption, use it in work for clients and generally generate revenue. The AI leaders are mostly big international law firms — such as A&O Shearman or Freshfields — and legal arms of the Big Four accountancy firms, such as Pw C. They had the scale to invest early.

That said, some smaller European firms such as Noerr, Ecija and Three Crowns are also leaders in adopting AI. Most firms that feature in the report can now quantify the impact of AI through adoption rates, prompt volumes and hours saved. Pw C Tax & Legal, Spain, for example, claims to have saved more than 19,000 hours over a six-month period across nearly 900 Spanish professionals.

International law firm Dechert says average use of AI in 2026 so far is double that of 2025. Decisions about the business model corollaries — pricing, client relationships and hiring strategies — are becoming imperative. Antonio Herrera, managing partner of Spanish law firm Uría Menéndez since January, says he has always questioned the billable hour. “We are not a manufacturing facility that churns out hours and then puts a price on it to clients.

Value has many more angles, and AI is just an acceleration to that conversation.” But clients argue with growing force that the era of AI should upend the persistent billable-hour model. The law firms counter that it is hard to offer pricing alternatives when their own costs have not yet changed enough. Intensifying discussions on pricing come at a time of big shifts at the top of the legal industry.

Three of the law firms in the FT index (below) are mergers of UK-originated international law firms with US firms in the past 16 months: Ashurst Perkins Coie, Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer and Hogan Lovells Cadwalader. The deals reflect the continued expansion of US law firms in the UK and Europe, but also the perception that to be an elite commercial law firm requires scale in critical jurisdictions and $3bn-plus in revenues as a target. Miguel Zaldivar, chief executive at Hogan Lovells Cadwalader, says: “Globalisation as we knew it is done.

But people will still do business in every jurisdiction, and you still need a global mindset to act for global players.” But geopolitical instability creates uncertainty for firms betting on cross-border bonanzas. Georgia Dawson, senior partner at Freshfields, which tops the FT law firm index for 2026, notes a growing worry over how far multi-jurisdictional data sovereignty rules, for instance, could make international trade harder.