October 29, 2026
Generative AI is spreading through eDiscovery faster than the operational guardrails around it.
In ComplexDiscovery’s 1H 2026 survey, 69 percent of respondents said they are deploying generative AI. Only 14 percent described AI governance they actually put into practice and review. The panel was small, 49 people, and those were two separate questions, so this is a signal, not a measurement.
A second survey points the same way. In eDiscovery Today’s 2026 State of the Industry Report, lack of eDiscovery competence ranked as the field’s top problem for the sixth year in a row.
I recently read a thread where an eDiscovery professional asked others which tools they use to preserve and export Slack data. The answers named a range of tools, and the people using them described different setups for each. One person uses an AI assistant to write conversion scripts, testing them on sample data rather than client data. Another asked what quality checks confirm the output matches the input, and whether the process can be defensibly replicated. Nothing in the thread read as a standard, settled way of doing it.
That is where this shows up in disputes. When a process is not standardized, some discovery fights stop being about the facts of the case. They become fights about whether the other side searched properly, and once that door opens, each side starts pointing at every other missing best practice too: how the data was collected, how it was converted, who checked the output, what got written down. Search terms and custodian lists leave a trail both sides can point to. An AI step leaves a trail only if someone decided ahead of time what to record. At least for now, until the tools mature, that depends on the people doing the work understanding why the trail matters, or on someone in the process requiring it before the work begins.
Without that trail, there is less to point to. And the parties usually still have the rest of the case to get through together.
The tools are moving faster than the habits around them.
Sources
ComplexDiscovery OÜ, 1H 2026 eDiscovery Business Confidence Survey (published July 9, 2026; 49 respondents).
eDiscovery Today, 2026 State of the Industry Report (released February 10, 2026).
Ariadne Latorre is a Florida Supreme Court certified mediator and a software engineer. She mediates business and commercial, insurance and risk allocation, LegalTech and information governance, HOA and community, and court-ordered matters, in English and Spanish, in Miami and virtually worldwide.