Bloomberg Law 2026 features more than 30 articles from our legal analysts that look ahead to what 2026 has in store for legal professionals and the legal industry. This year’s iteration features deep dives into the latest data and trends in Litigation, Executive Orders & Authority, Corporations & Transactions, and Artificial Intelligence.
Pay raises negotiated by unions fell to a four-year low in the third quarter, according to a Bloomberg Law report. Q3’s first-year wage increase averaged only 5.0%, suggesting that union negotiators may have reached a limit on how much they can expect employers to pay.
As 2025 comes to a close, litigators say goodbye to several trusted fixtures, restructuring templates, and once-routine forum and discovery assumptions. Their demise is a reminder of how quickly legal practice can shift as we begin 2026.
The data privacy framework that governs cross-border data transfers from the EU to the US has successfully defeated a legal challenge. But, on appeal, an EU court with a history of dismantling such frameworks will be considering two central issues about US privacy safeguards.
The FTC’s recent loss in its monopolization case against Meta is another data point on the curve suggesting that antitrust enforcement might not work against tech platform monopolies—or at least, can’t possibly work at the pace markets move.
The FTC’s recent loss in its monopolization case against Meta is another data point on the curve suggesting that antitrust enforcement might not work against tech platform monopolies—or at least, can’t possibly work at the pace markets move.
Pay raises negotiated by unions fell to a four-year low in the third quarter, according to a Bloomberg Law report. Q3’s first-year wage increase averaged only 5.0%, suggesting that union negotiators may have reached a limit on how much they can expect employers to pay.
As 2025 comes to a close, litigators say goodbye to several trusted fixtures, restructuring templates, and once-routine forum and discovery assumptions. Their demise is a reminder of how quickly legal practice can shift as we begin 2026.
The data privacy framework that governs cross-border data transfers from the EU to the US has successfully defeated a legal challenge. But, on appeal, an EU court with a history of dismantling such frameworks will be considering two central issues about US privacy safeguards.
23andMe’s bankruptcy illustrates the collision between maximizing value and maintaining privacy when a debtor’s primary asset is PII. Privacy statutes and consent flows narrowed what 23andMe could sell under the bankruptcy code, signaling that future data-centric restructurings will hinge on provenance, cohort segmentation, and regulator engagement.
Bloomberg Law 2026 features more than 30 articles from our legal analysts that look ahead to what 2026 has in store for legal professionals and the legal industry. This year’s iteration features deep dives into the latest data and trends in Litigation, Executive Orders & Authority, Corporations & Transactions, and Artificial Intelligence.
After decades of hand-wringing and much spilled ink, antitrust cases and new enforcement tools against the technology platform behemoths are finally starting to bite. Which means that, in 2026, we’re about to see whether ongoing attempts to rein in the platform monopolies will succeed in denting their market power. It’s not a foregone conclusion.
Law firms are lagging behind their corporate counterparts in using generative AI and agentic AI. Next year, law firms must bridge the gap because of agentic AI’s potential to solve pressing issues and because clients—and legal ethics—demand technological competency.
The Trump administration’s Health Technology Ecosystem will establish baseline privacy protection for health apps, but those protections will fall short of consumer expectations. Incentives will drive participation in the ecosystem and innovation in health tech in 2026, but public pressure will force companies to act to protect patient information.
The federal judiciary faces a crisis in 2026. Stresses stemming from litigation involving the Trump administration litigation and the Supreme Court’s response to those cases have made federal litigation less predictable. State court, forum choice, and a “multi-front” approach help mitigate those risks for litigants.
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