As legal tech tools proliferate, firms and in-house teams are often in a hurry to buy or license the newest software. The Thomson Reuters Institute’s recently released 2025 Report on the State of the US Legal Market raised the possibility that in their pursuit of new tools, law firms may risk stumbling into technological debt.

Technological debt emerges when an organization prioritizes short-term expediency over long-term planning for tech acquisitions, and it manifests in making purchasing decisions that incur greater costs down the road.