The Blickstein Group’s 2026 law firm COO survey has produced results described as startling, interesting, and downright disheartening by those analysing its findings.
Now in its fifth year, the survey gathered responses from 213 chief operating officers or those in equivalent roles across North American law firms.
Because dedicated COO positions tend to exist primarily at larger firms, the respondent pool likely skews toward bigger, more established legal practices.
The survey carries particular weight because it captures the views of business professionals rather than the lawyers who typically dominate such studies.
COOs are charged with running the operational side of law firms, giving them a candid and commercially grounded perspective on how their organisations actually function.
Unlike partners or associates, these non-lawyer executives are considered less tied to the romantic and traditional notions of what law firms are supposed to look like.
The survey’s most striking tension is the gap between what COOs identify as their biggest problem and where they plan to direct resources in the coming year.
COOs cite talent capacity as the biggest constraint on growing profitability, and talent recruitment and retention as the single greatest operational challenge their firms face.
Yet despite this, the majority of respondents identified technology investment and adoption, not talent acquisition, as the primary initiative planned for the year ahead.
Compounding that contradiction, 63% of respondents said they expect headcounts at their firms to remain the same in the coming year rather than grow.
Critics of this approach would argue that treading water on headcount while citing talent as the central constraint represents a fundamental failure of strategic planning.
The survey also exposed significant shortcomings in how firms are approaching artificial intelligence, which has become a dominant talking point across the legal industry.
When asked how their firms were measuring AI-related efficiency gains, 66% of COO respondents said their firm was not formally documenting those gains at all.
That finding is particularly notable given that technology investment and adoption is supposed to be the sector’s top priority heading into the near term.
Without formal measurement frameworks in place, law firms have no reliable way to assess whether their technology spending is delivering any meaningful return.
The results paint a picture of an industry that is aware of its challenges but struggling to translate that awareness into coherent, joined-up action on the ground.