Alternative and New Law Business Structures Committee newsletter – winter 2026

Saranya Mishra
Senior Associate, Khaitan & Co, Chennai
saranya.mishra@khaitanco.com

Dear members,

The IBA Alternative and New Law Business Structures Committee begins 2026 at a moment of profound transition for the global legal profession. Across jurisdictions, lawyers are navigating overlapping waves of regulatory reform, technological acceleration, market restructuring and heightened expectations around sustainability, governance and value delivery. This edition of the Committee’s e-Bulletin reflects these dynamics, offering perspectives that sit at the intersection of law, innovation and strategy.

We are pleased to open this issue with a message from Paul D Paton, Co-Chair of the Committee. His message captures key insights from the Committee’s successful panel discussions at the IBA Annual Conference 2025 in Toronto, spanning cross-border law firm mergers, regulatory sandboxes and the integration of carbon markets into legal practice. Looking ahead, he also outlines the Committee’s priorities for 2026 as he continues into a third term as Co-Chair, reflecting on the strength of its global membership and its enduring commitment to thinking ‘outside the box’ on the future of legal services.

This issue brings together a diverse set of contributions examining how law intersects with broader economic, regulatory and strategic developments:

• ‘The AI-native law firm’ explores a more radical reimagining of legal service delivery, examining emerging models enabled by artificial intelligence and assessing both their regulatory implications and the challenge they pose to traditional firm structures.
• ‘The legal architecture of carbon markets’ examines the shift from technical market mechanisms to enforceable legal frameworks, highlighting the expanding role of lawyers in governance, compliance and corporate accountability as carbon markets underpin global climate policy.
• ‘Where law meets strategy’ analyses the evolution of business development within law firms, exploring how data, insight and execution are converging to reshape client relationships and competitive positioning in an increasingly globalised market.
• ‘Should law firms only be managed by lawyers?’ challenges conventional assumptions about professional leadership, drawing on lessons from other sectors to consider whether empowering non-lawyer professionals can strengthen governance, strategy and operational resilience.
• ‘Foreign law firms in India: evolution, regulation and the road ahead’ traces a long and complex regulatory journey, analysing judicial developments and policy shifts that continue to influence market access, collaboration and cross-border legal practice.

Together, these contributions underscore a central theme: alternative and new law business structures are no longer peripheral experiments, but are now increasingly integral to how legal services are organised, delivered and regulated worldwide. We hope this edition provides both insight and provocation, and we encourage readers to continue engaging with the Committee’s work throughout the year.

Warm regards,

Saranya Mishra

Publication and Newsletter Officer, IBA Alternative and New Law Business Structures Committee