A few years ago, adopting AI could make a law firm look innovative. In 2026, some practitioners are going much further: building their own AI around the way they practise. With AI now available to almost every firm through a growing field of legal technology vendors, the more telling question is what a firm does with that access, how deliberately it builds AI into its own operating model, and how much control and governance it retains along the way. Faculti Lawyers offers a considered answer to what it means to be an innovator in law, with the firm named a finalist for innovator of the year (company) at the 2026 Lawyers Weekly Australian Law Awards.

A finalist among the country's leading legal innovators

Ben Lehman, Chief Innovation Officer at Faculti, said the category itself is the part worth noting. “Faculti was not a law firm that acquired an AI tool and bolted it on. The firm was designed around the technology from the outset, four years ago, when doing so was a considerably less obvious decision than it is now.”

He said recognition from within the profession carries particular weight. “Recognition from within the profession is the useful kind, because the people assessing it understand what the work involves and what it costs to get wrong.”

The Australian Law Awards drew a record 1,206 submissions this year, with 330 finalists selected across 36 categories, and judged against criteria that include growth, leadership, business excellence and contribution to the profession, alongside innovation itself. Recognition in a field this competitive reflects sustained work rather than a single project.

Building Fai, rather than buying it

That distinction shows up in the way the Faculti team works day to day. “Practising lawyers sit on the platform build alongside our engineers, and our engineers sit with clients configuring workflows to how those clients actually operate,” said Ben. “The boundary between delivering the legal work and building the system that delivers it is deliberately blurred.”

Faculti created the Chief Innovation Officer role in December 2024, specifically to be held by someone with both a legal and a computer science background, a combination Lehman brings to the position himself.

What innovation means in law in 2026

Innovation in legal practice in 2026 has less to do with which technology a firm has adopted, and more to do with whether that technology changes how the work itself gets done. Ben put it plainly, “our test is whether something changes how the work is produced and what the client is charged for.”

He said the nomination speaks directly to Fai, the AI platform Faculti built in-house, and to the national leasing portfolios now running on it. “Unstructured client instructions arrive by email and convert into jurisdiction-compliant lease documentation, with agents progressing the workflow and qualified lawyers retaining carriage of every judgement call and sign-off.” On one national portfolio, Ben said drafting time fell by around 70 per cent within three months of go-live.

Bringing trusted data into the workflow

The most recent step in Fai’s build is the integration of InfoTrack’s Model Context Protocol layer, which brings verified, government-sourced data, including Australian registries, ASIC and identity verification frameworks, directly into the workflows Faculti’s lawyers are already using, subject to firm permissions and approval controls.

“AI in legal work is only as good as the data it can reach,” Ben said. “The difference between a model that generates plausible text and one that produces something a lawyer will sign is usually the quality of what it is drawing on.”

What comes next

Ben said the next phase of Faculti’s innovation will look less like new capability and more like connection. “Every integration of the kind we have done with InfoTrack removes another block of manual handling from a legal file, the searching, the re-keying, the switching between systems that consumes a surprising share of the day. That is the least glamorous part of this and probably the most valuable.”

The other direction of growth is depth rather than breadth. “Leasing is our most developed workflow, but the same architecture already runs retirement village contract management and institutional recoveries and disputes, and every additional client configuration makes the platform better at that client’s matters.”

Ben said he expects volume legal work to move toward outcome-based pricing supported by AI within a few years. “Firms with the data, the governance and the workflow already connected will find that shift considerably easier than those still deciding whether to start.”

If innovation in law in 2026 is measured by adoption alone, most firms are already there. Faculti’s recognition as a finalist for innovator of the year points to a higher bar, one where AI is not simply present in a firm’s workflows, but embedded into its operating model, governed on the firm’s own terms, and built on data the firm can trust. That is a harder standard to meet, and a more durable one.

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