With First-of-its-Kind Benchmarking Initiative, B+B Formally Announces Launch of LexFusion Intelligence
NEW YORK (January 27, 2026)—Baretz+Brunelle, the growth advisory firm to elite businesses in the legal industry, today announced the launch of L.E.G.A.L. (Leaders Exploring Generative AI in Law), a collaborative market intelligence initiative examining the commercial impact of generative AI in legal services. Inaugural participants include Ford Motor Company, Microsoft, and CrowdStrike, among others, who are anchoring the effort—coordinated through B+B—to establish a shared, commercially grounded benchmark for the market designed to advance clarity, alignment, and informed decision making across the industry.
Beginning today, participating corporations are inviting more than 300 law firms worldwide—including at least 85% of the Global 20 and more than 60% of the Am Law 100—to participate in the L.E.G.A.L. survey. Any corporate law department may now join the initiative, alongside the 12 founding law departments, by requesting standardized survey responses from their legal service providers. Law departments are also invited to complete a mirrored survey that helps surface where client expectations and provider realities diverge. Additional information for law departments and law firms interested in participating, at no cost, is available here.
L.E.G.A.L. was created to address a growing pain point. As interest in generative AI has surged, law firms have been inundated with duplicative surveys, one-off questionnaires, and inconsistent claims about impact—producing more effort and more noise, but little shared understanding of what is actually changing. L.E.G.A.L. replaces that fragmentation with a single, standardized set of questions, establishing a reliable baseline for understanding how generative AI is affecting legal work, costs, delivery models, and market expectations.
Refined with input from more than 20 Am Law 100 firms, L.E.G.A.L. gives providers a safe forum to surface misalignment between client expectations and observed behavior. Analyzed in aggregate by B+B, reusable and updatable responses will reveal structural market gaps without compromising firm–client relationships. All participants will receive a complimentary report with anonymized peer benchmarks to support informed dialogue.
L.E.G.A.L. also marks B+B’s formal launch of LexFusion Intelligence, a practice that delivers market and competitive insight to guide strategy, decision making, and investment across the legal ecosystem. LexFusion Intelligence, headed by B+B partner and LexFusion co-founder Casey Flaherty, complements the firm’s existing advisory capabilities by grounding forward-looking decisions in real, behaviorally anchored market data.
B+B’s LexFusion innovation portfolio now encompasses three interconnected capabilities:
- LexFusion Acceleration, led by B+B partner and LexFusion co-founder Joe Borstein, B+B’s established tech growth advisory, super-charging all revenue functions for category-leading legal technology companies;
- LexFusion Labs, led by Dan Szabo and announced last week, provides AI advisory and applied innovation capabilities for both off-the-shelf and custom AI applications—accelerating deployment and supporting the rollout, governance, and adoption strategies required to make AI work in reality; and
- LexFusion Intelligence, which delivers market and competitive insight to guide strategy, decisions, and investment.
“Right now, clients and firms often talk past each other about GenAI,” said Flaherty, head of LexFusion Intelligence and lead architect of L.E.G.A.L. “Corporate law departments expect to see efficiency and cost impact. Law firms are being asked to invest in technologies that may not yet be ready for prime time—or, to the extent the tech is already there, may disrupt the firm’s economics. L.E.G.A.L. is not about amplifying hype. It’s about creating a shared, safe way to tell the truth about what’s actually happening, and where expectations are misaligned.”
Designed as an ongoing intelligence platform, L.E.G.A.L. will surface evolving benchmarks and market insights over time—supporting more informed, durable conversations across the legal industry.
“Every day B+B is privileged to help the legal industry navigate opportunities for growth within periods of disruption, and no development consumes the oxygen of the moment more than generative AI,” said Mike McNamara, CEO of B+B. “With the launch of LexFusion Intelligence and Casey’s pioneering foresight to bring L.E.G.A.L. to life, we are proud to equip leaders in legal with the clarity and confidence they need to compete in a changing market.”
About Baretz+Brunelle
B+B is a growth advisory firm to elite businesses in the new legal economy. We focus on the things that drive growth in the legal industry—reputation, talent, revenue, leadership, capital, innovation, and intelligence. For over 20 years, we have helped our clients build market-leading reputations, merge and acquire, manage crises, hire and accelerate top talent, make transformational business decisions, improve financials and operations, raise capital, deploy technology, launch new services, secure new clients, and dominate geographies and industry niches.
Our global clients are Am Law 100 and 200 law firms, elite boutiques, alternative legal services providers, legal technology companies, private equity firms and litigation funders, legal information and analytics companies, and other leading service providers and counterparties to the legal industry.
Founded in New York, our team includes former Am Law 100 C-suite executives and lawyers, marketing and communications mavens, award-winning journalists, corporate finance experts, digital marketing visionaries, legal technology gurus, management consultants, intelligence professionals, and legal talent advisors. For more information, visit www.baretzbrunelle.com.
