Canada: Law Department Performance

Efficiency has become one of the defining priorities for legal teams. The 2026 ACC Chief Legal Officers Survey found that 53% of CLOs rank operational efficiency among their top three strategic initiatives for the next 12 months, ahead of regulatory compliance and technology implementation.

High-stakes work doesn’t follow a clean process. Requirements shift, context changes, and what’s important isn’t always visible upfront. What begins as a straightforward request can quickly become something more complex. A legal contract revision expands after new stakeholders weigh in. A regulatory filing changes as new requirements emerge.

Gavin Tighe and Stephen Thiele dissect Mazaheri v Law Society of Ontario, 2026 ONLSTH 112, the first case in which "hallucinated" AI-generated authorities were placed before the Law Society Tribunal.