[EDRM Editor’s Note: This article was first published here on April 15, 2026, and EDRM is grateful to Rob Robinson, editor and managing director of Trusted Partner ComplexDiscovery OÜ, for permission to republish.]

ComplexDiscovery OÜ Editor’s Note: Confidence across the eDiscovery sector is running at its highest level in years—but that optimism is now colliding with operational questions that demand sharper answers. The 1H 2026 eDiscovery Business Confidence Survey, the 39th edition of this long-running industry benchmark produced by ComplexDiscovery OÜ in collaboration with EDRM, opens today with an expanded 17-question instrument that reflects where the conversation has moved. New questions on AI governance probe whether organizations have built formal oversight frameworks to match their deployment velocity, while a new organizational revenue-size dimension allows the dataset to segment confidence and AI maturity by scale for the first time. For cybersecurity, information governance, and eDiscovery professionals, this edition connects the dots between adoption momentum and accountability—the gap the 2H 2025 results exposed when nearly a third of respondents flagged accuracy as their top AI barrier, even as two-thirds reported active deployment. The survey is open through May 29, and every response sharpens a dataset that professionals across the ecosystem rely on for planning and peer comparison.

The 1H 2026 eDiscovery Business Confidence Survey—the 39th edition—is open today, April 15, 2026, through May 29, 2026.

ComplexDiscovery OÜ, in collaboration with EDRM, has launched the latest eDiscovery Business Confidence Survey and is inviting professionals across cybersecurity, information governance, and eDiscovery to share their insights into the current market landscape. The instrument is concise by design yet consistent enough to track change across cycles. It takes just a few minutes and asks how conditions look today, where they are likely headed over the next six months, which single risk is most pressing, and how teams are operating against finance and technology markers that matter—revenue and profit direction, awareness of Days Sales Outstanding, the direction of monthly recurring revenue, and the practical status of generative AI and large language model use.

Take the 1H 2026 Survey Now – or read on for context, insights from the most recent results, and details on what’s new in this edition.

What’s New: AI Governance and Organizational Revenue Size

This 39th edition expands the instrument to 17 multiple-choice questions, adding targeted questions that reflect where the industry conversation has moved since the 2H 2025 cycle. Two areas stand out.

First, the survey introduces questions on AI governance. The 2H 2025 results showed that 64.06 percent of respondents had moved generative AI and LLM initiatives from pilot into active deployment, yet accuracy remained the dominant concern at 32.81 percent. Deployment without governance is deployment without guardrails. The new AI governance questions ask whether organizations have established formal policies for generative AI use, how those policies are enforced, and what oversight structures—if any—are in place. These questions move the conversation from adoption velocity to adoption accountability, giving the dataset a read on whether the industry is building the control frameworks its AI ambitions require.

Second, the survey now captures organizational revenue size. Prior editions tracked role, function, and geography, but left a gap in understanding how business conditions and technology posture vary by the scale of the organization reporting them. A 15-person consultancy and a global service provider with $500 million in annual revenue may both rate conditions as “good,” but the operational meaning of that rating diverges sharply. Adding a revenue-size dimension allows the dataset to segment confidence, AI maturity, and financial visibility by organizational scale—producing a finer-grained read that leaders can benchmark against peers of comparable size.

Why Business Confidence Matters

The survey focuses on business confidence because confidence—stated plainly as “good,” “normal,” or “bad” today and “better,” “the same,” or “worse” tomorrow—collects the planning signals leaders use to hire, price, invest, and sequence projects. The question set translates sentiment into operational choices, creating a shared dataset that peers can reference without having to wade through conjecture.

This 1H 2026 edition continues a program now in its tenth year. Since its launch in 2016, the survey has captured over 3,590 responses across 38 prior editions, averaging roughly 95 respondents per cycle. ComplexDiscovery and EDRM maintain a semi-annual cadence, keeping the read current while reducing frequency to prevent fatigue.

What 2H 2025 Revealed

The preceding 2H 2025 edition, which ran from Sept. 30 through Nov. 15, 2025, secured 64 responses through targeted outreach. Results showed an industry that has moved beyond post-pandemic volatility into a hardened state of resilience, with practical nuance worth tracking into 2026:

Current sentiment surged. A robust 59.38 percent of professionals rated conditions as “good”—a marked shift from prior cycles where “normal” was often the ceiling. Only 3.13 percent rated conditions as “bad.” Looking forward, optimists outpaced pessimists by a three-to-one margin, with 42.19 percent projecting higher revenues over the next six months.

AI moved from pilot to production at scale. A commanding 64.06 percent reported active deployment of LLMs, with the “Considering” phase shrinking to 18.75 percent. Improved service and product delivery remained the primary driver at 54.69 percent—not cost savings, which registered at just 12.50 percent. Accuracy, however, remained the leading barrier at 32.81 percent, far outpacing concerns over cost or unclear return on investment.

The financial visibility gap persisted. While 69.49 percent reported monthly recurring revenue as stable or increasing, 33.90 percent admitted they did not know the trajectory of their organization’s Days Sales Outstanding—a vulnerability in any environment where AI infrastructure costs are front-loaded and client payments may lag.

Risk presented a three-way tie. Increasing data volumes (23.44 percent), expanding data types (21.88 percent), and budgetary constraints (21.88 percent) created a statistical deadlock, confirming that no single force dominates the risk landscape. Data security, at 9.38 percent, drew notably low prioritization despite the expanding attack surface that comes with LLM integrations and third-party tooling.

What We’re Asking in 1H 2026

The purpose of the 1H 2026 survey is to preserve continuity while sharpening the picture of where the industry has moved. For cybersecurity teams, the questions connect collaboration data, short-form messaging, and cloud telemetry to incident trends and downstream discovery needs. For information governance leaders, the survey frames the question of how policy and retention should adapt without creating exposure. For eDiscovery operations, the instrument captures throughput, staffing, tooling, and the growing role of AI-assisted workflows, offering a way to compare what is planned with what is being delivered.

The expanded 17-question set adds the AI governance and organizational revenue dimensions described above while preserving the core questions that make the time series valuable: current conditions, six-month outlook, top risk, revenue and profit direction, MRR trajectory, DSO awareness, and generative AI adoption status and barriers.

The ask is straightforward: take a few minutes to record the conditions you see, the outlook you expect, the single risk you are actively managing, and the status of your AI adoption and governance posture. Before you begin, it helps to confirm whether your monthly recurring revenue is trending up, down, or holding steady, and whether your team has clear visibility into Days Sales Outstanding. It also helps to identify whether your AI posture sits in evaluation, pilot, or deployment, and to note whether your organization has a formal governance framework in place for generative AI use.

If you have contributed before, keep your role and region framing consistent to strengthen the time series. If you are new to the instrument, your perspective broadens the sample and improves the read for everyone.

ComplexDiscovery and EDRM will publish the results after the window closes, continuing a practice of presenting the data in a concise, comparable format that teams can use for planning and peer comparison. The value compounds each cycle because the questions remain stable enough to track change without adding noise.

Start Now

The survey is now open and will close on May 29, 2026. It takes minutes, and it travels further when you invite one colleague from a different function to participate—security and governance voices enrich the legal and operational view, and vice versa.

What are you seeing right now on budgets, data, AI governance, and organizational readiness that others should factor into planning for the balance of 2026?

Read the original article here.

News Sources

• Confidence Meets Complexity: Full Results from the 2H 2025 eDiscovery Business Confidence Survey (ComplexDiscovery OÜ)
• 1H 2025 eDiscovery Business Confidence Survey Results Released by ComplexDiscovery OÜ and EDRM (ComplexDiscovery OÜ)
• eDiscovery Survey Archives (ComplexDiscovery OÜ)
• EDRM – Empowering the Global Leaders of E-Discovery (EDRM)

About ComplexDiscovery OÜ

ComplexDiscovery OÜ is an independent digital publication and research organization based in Tallinn, Estonia. ComplexDiscovery covers cybersecurity, data privacy, regulatory compliance, and eDiscovery, with reporting that connects legal and business technology developments—including high-growth startup trends—to international business, policy, and global security dynamics. Focusing on technology and risk issues shaped by cross-border regulation and geopolitical complexity, ComplexDiscovery delivers editorial coverage, original analysis, and curated briefings for a global audience of legal, compliance, security, and technology professionals. Learn more at ComplexDiscovery.com.

Source: ComplexDiscovery OÜ
Assisted by GAI and LLM Technologies per EDRM’s GAI and LLM Policy.