A recent Thomson Reuters article highlights how corporate legal departments are evolving from traditional cost centers into strategic business partners. Key priorities for 2026 and beyond include leveraging legal technology and AI, improving contract workflows, managing budgets more strategically, and building strong, collaborative legal teams.

For paralegals, this shift brings new opportunities to play a critical role in contract management, legal operations, compliance tracking, and technology adoption. As legal departments focus on efficiency, data-driven decision-making, and proactive risk management, paralegals will be essential in helping teams demonstrate value, streamline processes, and support innovation across the organization.

Staying current on these trends will position paralegals as indispensable contributors to the modern legal department—today and in the years ahead.

A seemingly extra, innocent sentence in a Supreme Court order just ignited major legal intrigue. In South Carolina v. Doe, the Court denied emergency relief in a transgender bathroom case — but inserted a puzzling line: “The denial … is not a ruling on the merits.” Too banal to be accidental. Why slip it into a controversial ruling?

This post dives into how that superfluous sentence may signal internal bargaining, hidden messaging, or a warning shot to lower courts — opening a rare window into how the Court maneuvers behind the scenes.

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A California jury has slammed Google with a stunning $314.6 million verdict, finding the tech giant secretly harvested cellular data from idle Android phones without user consent. The class-action suit, representing 14 million Californians, claimed Google used this data to power its advertising empire—all while draining users’ data plans. Google insists users agreed to the data collection and plans to appeal, calling the verdict a fundamental misunderstanding of how Android works. Meanwhile, a nationwide trial is looming in 2026, threatening even bigger consequences for the company.