It is never too early to start worrying about how the legal world will impact your business in 2026. That said, I foresee the key legal issues in 2026 to largely mirror those from 2025. This is not intended to be a comprehensive list; rather, this is a “greatest hits” of generally applicable issues businesspeople need to be alerted about.
- AI-Generated Provisions and Liability Contracts drafted or reviewed with AI tools risk hidden errors, hallucinations, or inconsistent language. Drafters must build in human-review checkpoints, disclaimers around AI use, and explicit liability allocations for AI-related drafting mistakes. Make sure your attorney understands these issues.
- Multi-Jurisdictional Compliance is more important that ever. Contracts need to specify data residency requirements, transfer mechanisms (e.g., Standard Contractual Clauses), breach-notification timelines, and carve-outs for lawful government access. Likewise, employment contracts must address choice-of-law for remote employees, tax and benefits obligations in multiple states, intellectual property ownership of remote creations, and protocols for local regulatory compliance. Better get yourself a good accountant.
- Cybersecurity and Vendor Security Obligations arising from supply-chain and other attacks have made cybersecurity clauses central. Well-drafted contracts will include minimum security standards, periodic audit rights, incident-response obligations, and indemnities for third-party breaches originating with vendors.
- Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Commitments Investors are expected to enforce warranties and performance milestones to a greater degree to claw back investments. Challenges that will be raised include failure to perform key metrics (e.g., carbon intensity targets), timely reporting cadence, and regulatory changes that affect these investments.
- Dynamic Pricing and Smart Clause Adjustment contracts can auto-adjust pricing based on predefined triggers (e.g., raw material index changes). Drafters need to ensure triggers are transparent, data feeds are reliable, and dispute-resolution paths exist for erroneous adjustments.
- Force Majeure and Supply-Chain Resilience clauses have been pushed to their limits by climate-driven disruptions. Modern contracts require expanded language covering cyber-attacks, semiconductor shortages, extreme weather, pandemics, and tier-n supplier failures, with graduated relief measures.
- Integration with Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) Systems will continue to automate obligations and deadlines, contracts need machine-readable metadata tags for key dates, parties, financial terms, and renewal options. Poorly structured clauses can’t be ingested correctly, undermining workflow automation.
- Trade Secret Protection in Collaborative Projects demand robust confidentiality regimes. Drafting pitfalls include overbroad non-use restrictions, vague definitions of “confidential information,” and failure to carve out rights for independently developed improvements.
And here is a bonus longer term issue that businesspeople do not need to worry about just yet:
With quantum computing on the horizon, contracts will stipulate encryption standards that withstand quantum attacks. Clauses must specify algorithm upgrades, certification timelines, audit rights, and consequences for failure to adopt quantum-safe protocols.
David Seidman is the principal and founder of Seidman Law Group, LLC. He serves as outside general counsel for companies, which requires him to consider a diverse range of corporate, dispute resolution and avoidance, contract drafting and negotiation, and other issues. In particular, he has a significant amount of experience in hospitality law by representing third party management companies, owners, and developers.
He can be reached at david@seidmanlawgroup.com or 312-399-7390.
This blog post is not legal advice. Please consult an experienced attorney to assist with your legal issues.
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