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.
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.
Digital asset treasuries, the firms built to sit on piles of crypto, are starting to merge. Will this create a new era of DAT lawsuits?
The SEC is transforming into an agency that emphasizes promoting innovation, reducing regulation, and relatively deemphasizing its traditional role of investor protection. Once the federal government shutdown is fully resolved, the SEC will move faster than it has since the 2008 financial crisis to create a legal framework for crypto.
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 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.
In 2026, deal volumes for North American target companies will exceed those from 2025 and will surpass the bar set in 2021. Furthermore, buyers in the Middle East and Africa will do more deals with North American target companies, increasing the deal volumes for these cross-border transactions.
In 2026, President Donald Trump’s executive orders against “debanking” requiring banks to serve all customers create a compliance challenge for banks, where prudential concerns about customer risk must be balanced with the possibility of enforcement for denying service.
In 2026, litigation funders will play a key role in accelerating the pace of nonlawyer investment in law firms. In turn, key stakeholders, including state regulators, will capitalize on these options to modernize and promote investment in the legal industry, particularly by nonlawyers.
Get the latest legal, regulatory, and enforcement news and analysis, as well as in-depth business and industry covering in the following areas:
