The Technology
Adoption Index
Before diving into each topic, it helps to have a whole picture: how advanced is each organization, on average? To answer that, we built the Technology Adoption Index, the tool that orders and gives context to the rest of the report.
Law firms and legal departments are, on average, equally mature. What truly sets them apart is not the type of organization, but what each one does behind closed doors (and, very particularly, whether it has already adopted artificial intelligence).
What the index measures and why those ingredients were chosen
Digital transformation is not a single thing: it is the sum of several signals that, together, distinguish a mature organization from one that is just starting. The index combines precisely those signals, grouped into six families.
| Ingredient | What maturity signal it captures |
|---|---|
| Effective tool usage | Contracting software is not enough; what matters is how often it is used. |
| Use of AI tools | Effective presence of AI in daily work. |
| Team training | Sustained investment in people knowing how to use technology. |
| KPI maturity | Discipline to measure; without metrics there is no directed improvement. |
| Team knowledge | Effective understanding of management and technology. |
| Perception of impact | Whether the organization feels that technology improves efficiency, clients, and AI. |
Obstacles subtract: infrastructure that slows down digitalization, compatibility problems, or the absence of defined digital leadership lower the score.
The index summarizes some ingredients, not all. A specific analysis is recommended to support specific conclusions.
What the published calculation includes. The formula retains professional adaptation items, including beliefs about human connections and supervision, as well as infrastructure and ethics. Missing values count as zero, which may reduce scores when positive answers are missing.
Two ways to read the index numbers (do not confuse them)
This chapter uses two different scales on purpose:
- The Index is a summative score: it brings all the ingredients together into one large number. In this study, the observed scores range from 38 to 279. It serves to compare organizations against one another (who is higher up).
- The profile by dimensions (the radar chart) uses the original 1 to 5 scale of each block of questions. It serves to see in which areas an organization is strong or weak, in the same units in which the questions were asked.
They are two views of the same phenomenon: one for the total, one for the breakdown.
How maturity is distributed
Law firms and legal departments have a maturity level that is statistically indistinguishable (averages of 155 and 145 points). What is striking is not the difference between audiences (there is none) but the enormous dispersion within each one: in both, very advanced organizations coexist with others that are just beginning. Maturity, then, is not defined by the type of organization, but by what each one does behind closed doors.
The factor that separates the most: having implemented AI
Organizations that implemented AI score clearly higher on the index. But this comparison has a trap worth clearing up: since AI usage is part of the index, those who do not use it start at a disadvantage by construction. When we recalculate the index removing the AI ingredients, the differential shrinks but holds and remains solid.
In other words: those who adopted AI do not have “double” the maturity, but they are more mature in everything else (firms 1.43×, departments 1.33×). AI adoption acts as a signal of a broader path of modernization, not as an isolated component.
The profile by dimensions
| Dimension | Firms | Depts. |
|---|---|---|
| Infraestructura | 3.07 | 3.24 |
| Adaptation | 4.11 | 3.96 |
| Efficiency | 3.45 | 3.68 |
| Exp. cliente | 3.43 | 3.78 |
| Impacto IA | 3.58 | 3.49 |
| Ethics | 3.51 | 2.98 |
In this view (each axis on the original 1 to 5 scale), the two audiences have different profiles: although both firms and departments are stronger in efficiency and professional adaptation, firms have their lowest mean in infrastructure (3.07), while in departments, although infrastructure is equally low, ethics has the lowest mean (2.98).
Methodological note. Adaptation measures agreement with professional convictions and should not be interpreted as demonstrated performance.
What accompanies a high index (corrected predictors)
Which characteristics go hand in hand with a higher index? Here we must be careful: since each ingredient is part of the index, correlating it with the total inflates it artificially. That is why we present the corrected version, in which each ingredient is compared against the index excluding itself (the honest measure of how central each factor is).
In law firms: team knowledge
In legal departments: management and governance
In summary
The two audiences reach maturity by somewhat different paths: the law firms through knowing (team knowledge), the legal departments through orderly doing (management, governance, and effective usage). In both, the percentage of digitalized documents has almost no relation to maturity: digitalizing is not, on its own, modernizing.
How to cite
Prince Tritto, P., Villa Berger, P., Salmon, L., Muñoz Ponce, M., & Limón González, J. B. (2026). Technology Maturity Index for the Legal Industry: pilot study (data from Mexico, 2025). Law and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Universidad Panamericana; KermaPartners; Lemontech. https://labderia.up.edu.mx/en/legaltech-report
Prince Tritto, P., Villa Berger, P., Salmon, L., Muñoz Ponce, M., Limón González, J. B.. 2026. Technology Maturity Index for the Legal Industry: pilot study (data from Mexico, 2025). Law and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Universidad Panamericana; KermaPartners; Lemontech. https://labderia.up.edu.mx/en/legaltech-report.
Prince Tritto, P., et al. Technology Maturity Index for the Legal Industry: pilot study (data from Mexico, 2025). Law and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Universidad Panamericana; KermaPartners; Lemontech, 2026, https://labderia.up.edu.mx/en/legaltech-report.
@techreport{princetritto2026legaltech, author = {Prince Tritto, Philippe and Villa Berger, Patricia and Salmon, Luciana and Muñoz Ponce, Marcela and Limón González, José Briam}, title = {Technology Maturity Index for the Legal Industry: pilot study (data from Mexico, 2025)}, institution = {Law and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Universidad Panamericana; KermaPartners; Lemontech}, year = {2026}, url = {https://labderia.up.edu.mx/en/legaltech-report} }