February 2, 2026
AUTHOR Inside Practice
Most firms will arrive in 2026 with no shortage of AI tooling. The harder problem is what sits underneath it: whether your firm’s knowledge foundations, governance, and operating model are strong enough to make AI reliable, scalable, and defensible in practice.
That’s the premise of AI x KM 2026: positioning Knowledge Management as infrastructure, not support, and treating the “knowledge backbone” as the real differentiator in the next phase of legal transformation.
Hosted by Inside Practice as a one-day, in-person forum, AI x KM 2026 is built for senior KM, innovation, and operational leaders who are done with abstract AI talk, and ready to compare notes on what it actually takes to move from experimentation to sustained capability.
The conversations to watch
- Adoption isn’t a rollout. It’s alignment.
Featuring Barbara Taylor and Elisabeth Cappuyns of DLA Piper our day opens with a direct attack on the #1 execution risk: tools that don’t stick because workflows, roles, and incentives never changed. “Driving Adoption in Law Firms: Aligning Knowledge, Workflows, and AI” is framed around selection, implementation, feedback loops, and change management, so AI becomes a usable part of practice, not another tab attorneys ignore. - KM “lifecycle” models are being replaced by living systems.
Moderated by Katya Linossi of Clearpeople, “From Lifecycle to Living System: Reimagining Knowledge in the AI Era” pushes on a key tension: the moment AI reshapes how knowledge is created and reused, static models break. Expect a discussion centered on capture, governance, reuse, culture, and continuous transformation. - The vendor question is really a taxonomy and curation question.
AI success hinges on what you feed it, how you structure it, and who decides. “KM, Lawyers, and Vendors Working Together: Partnering with AI to Power Law Firm Expertise” is oriented around building effective taxonomies, deciding which assets become AI-ready, and translating outputs into lawyer-ready playbooks and workflow artifacts, done well, this is where KM becomes a multiplier. Panelists come from Ballard Spahr. - Pilot design is strategy, because vendor evaluation is now a core capability.
“Designing Pilots with Purpose: Turning AI Vendor Evaluations into Scalable KM Solutions” is a case study Led by Tom Trujillo of McGuireWoods LLP, built around the unglamorous work: vetting, selecting, proving value, planning financially, and avoiding adoption theater. - Future-proofing means planning for tool depreciation and governance debt.
AI stacks won’t stand still. The “Future-Proofing Your AI Strategy” led by Morgan Llewellyn of HIKE2 tackles total cost of ownership, the speed of tooling change, and why strong knowledge/data foundations are the only sustainable hedge.
The afternoon then turns to where KM strategy becomes visible to users: search, UX, and matter-level intelligence:
- “Aligning Knowledge Strategy with AI” with Michael Korn of Paul Hastings LLP
- “Reimagining Enterprise Search” with Nicole Bradick of Factor Law
- “Transforming Legal Knowledge into AI-Driven Case Intelligence” with Scott Kaiser of Mayer Brown
- (And yes, there’s a networking reception to close.)
Key details at a glance
Date: Wednesday, April 29, 2026
Time: 9:00 AM – 5:30 PM (EST)
Location: New York
Early bird: Confirm by February 13, 2026 to save $300 (code AIKMNYC)
Bottom line: If your firm’s AI story is starting to sound like “we bought tools,” AI x KM 2026 is designed to pull the conversation back to what actually determines outcomes: knowledge design, governance, adoption, cost, and the operating model required to make AI trustworthy in practice.
