The Largest Legal Issue for 2026 – According to Lawyers

As 2026 gets up to full speed, it’s a good time to pause and consider what might be the biggest challenges to face your company in the next 12 months.  Lawyers are only 1 constituent group in the conversation; and they admittedly tend to identify issues on which they are interested in working.  This being said, the chatter in the legal community is likely on point right now.  Whether it’s first on the list or not, the impact of AI is certainly near the top of everyone’s list of challenges this year.

I’ll get an obligatory but important statement out of the way first:  artificial intelligence brings immense benefits with it and is a good thing.  The trouble, however, is that many people are so enraptured with its benefits that they fail to see the dangers that come with it.  To say that there is a plethora of them is an understatement.  It would take an entire year of newsletter articles to even scratch the surface of this issue.  As a way to help MBCEA members spot where the issues arise and ask the right question, here’s a sampling of potential issues.

1. Regulatory framework – the federal government previously issued guidance on artificial intelligence that helped manage its use.  Those guidelines have lapsed though, so individual states are writing their own policies that are creating a patchwork for companies to navigate as they work across state lines.
2. Bias and Discrimination – some people are concerned that AI is exclusively a data driven decision making process. Stated differently, it removes the element of human judgment.  AI does not see things like bias and discrimination because it cannot read the metaphorical room.  There is concern about how to manage this, particularly in the employment and HR context.
3. Trade Secrets – AI does not see or know whether it’s implementing information that is protected by trade secrets.  Using it blindly could violate someone else’s rights to a trade secret or unknowingly result in the disclosure of your own.
4. Privacy Rights – AI collects massive amounts of data, including personal and confidential information.  There are concerns about whether this is legal and, perhaps more importantly, what happens to this data once it’s collected and integrated into an AI system.
5. Surveillance – AI lurks in the background watching people in many spaces.  It’s already being used to monitor how employees do their work and what they are up to during the day.  This creates questions about a “surveillance” culture that is linked to the aforementioned right to privacy.
6. Worker Classification – if a worker is using AI to do his or her job, are they an employee or an independent contractor working on their own?  If the AI is advanced and works independent of human interaction, does it fit into one of these categories or does an entirely new one need to be created?

These are just some of the boundaries being stretched and tested by artificial intelligence.  This is not to say you should avoid using AI.  Rather, pause and consider the potential risks in addition to the benefits.  If you can successfully identify the issues by asking the right questions and then mitigate the risk, AI can be an exceptionally useful technology to support the operations and growth of your company.