LMA 2026: Four themes from the floor

We came to LMA New Orleans with a team on the ground and a lot of conversations to have. Two days later, we left with a clearer picture of what the legal BD and marketing community is excited about, struggling with, and still trying to figure out.

These are four themes we heard consistently across the floor.

How the best firms turn client data into coordinated growth

Lynn Tellefsen Stehle, Head of Client Collaboration at Nexl, started her session at LMA with an observation that resonated with most of the room: BD and marketing teams are working with more demand than they have capacity to meet. The firms that handle it well are intentional about where attention goes rather than letting urgency decide for them.

The solution is focus. Firms that spread effort evenly across too many accounts tend to generate a lot of activity without much to show for it. The firms growing faster tend to concentrate resources on a smaller number of clients and commit to them consistently over time.

This observation is backed by research from Gardner & Co. Clients served by coordinated teams generate up to five times the revenue of those managed by a single partner. That brings the conversation to a more practical challenge: where does coordinated investment make sense?

Lynn's framework for answering it draws on three data layers most firms already have access to. Financial data shows current value through revenue, realization, and practice mix. Relationship data reflects how strong the firm's network around a client is, like who knows whom, how recently they've been in contact, and where coverage is sparse. Collaboration data captures how the firm operates around the client in practice, including matter overlap, team composition, and external signals like regulatory changes or news. Individually, each layer is useful. Together, they give a much clearer picture of where additional coordination is likely to generate return.

What tends to get less attention, Lynn noted, is what happens after those accounts are identified, and specifically how they get managed once selected. The firms getting the most from their key account programs are the ones with a consistent operating rhythm behind them: a defined team, a shared brief prepared before each review, and a structured conversation that covers current matters, new intelligence, opportunities, and next actions.

Why CRMs keep failing law firms

Ask any BD or marketing leader at a law firm about their CRM history and you'll usually hear some version of the same story. A system was chosen, the project kicked off, and somewhere between the initial enthusiasm and the moment partners were supposed to start using it, things went sideways. Studies put the failure rate for CRM implementations at around 70%, and the conversations we had at LMA suggested that number is about right.

Behind the failure rate, technology is rarely the problem.  The breakdown tends to happen earlier, in the decisions made about what the system should do before anyone has tested those decisions against how partners work.  

When a firm replaces an old system, the instinct is to use the moment to fix everything at once. The new platform should do what the old one did, plus the things the old one couldn't, plus a few things the BD team has always wanted. By the time the configuration is finished, the system is sophisticated enough that using it properly requires time and attention that most partners don't have.

Attorney adoption was the thread running through almost every CRM failure story we heard at LMA. The firms with successful CRM implementations launched with a narrower scope than they thought they needed, earnt partner engagement before expanding, and treated adoption as something that requires ongoing attention long after the system goes live.

The AI question no one can fully answer

If there was one word that came up more than any other at LMA this year, it was AI. It featured in keynotes, panel discussions, booth conversations, and the questions attendees were asking each other over coffee. The enthusiasm was genuine, but clarity was harder to find.

While practice of law has made real progress, the business of law is still developing. The BD and marketing leaders we spoke to know AI is going to change how they work, but most of them are still searching for the use case that makes change feel real rather than theoretical. So far, a lot of what they've found is content-related: faster drafting, better summaries, quicker turnaround on routine writing tasks.

Part of the reason BD has been slower to find its AI moment is structural. The inputs are messier than on the practice side which has well-defined workflows. The firms getting the most traction with AI in their BD work are being deliberate about where they start. They're identifying workflows where partners are already engaged and looking for ways to make those workflows better, rather than trying to use AI to create engagement where it doesn't yet exist.

When every pitch sounds the same, service stands out

Something happened at our booth that we weren't expecting.  At one point, someone with no connection to Nexl struck up a conversation with a prospect who'd never heard of us and made the case for our product based on their observation that Nexl customers are happy.

We think that comes down to how we treat our clients and run implementations. Most vendors sign the contract and hand delivery to a third-party partner. That works until something goes wrong and the firm finds itself between two organizations that don't fully share accountability for the outcome. Nexl handles our own implementations, which means the people who sold the project are the people who see it through. We see ourselves as a long-term partner to every firm we work with, and that starts from day one of implementation, rather than after it's complete.