State of Consumers & Professionals 2026: How Client Expectations Are Redefining Legal and Accounting Relationships

When people hire a lawyer or an accountant, they are often dealing with life’s highest‑stakes decisions. They bring trust and high expectations to those relationships, relying on professionals not just for technical expertise but for guidance, clarity and reassurance at critical moments. Whether navigating complex legal matters or managing sensitive financial decisions, clients turn to these professionals when the consequences matter most, and the relationship itself carries real weight.

Increasingly, clients also bring a benchmark shaped by the best digital interactions they experience elsewhere. In much of their everyday life, interacting with services feels straightforward, responsive and secure. Clients increasingly expect the same level of ease and clarity when working with legal and accounting professionals. When experiences feel overly manual, fragmented or unclear, the friction is immediately noticeable and can overshadow even strong advice.

At the same time, legal and accounting remain among the most regulated, complex and rapidly evolving professions. Technology has helped firms keep pace with shifting regulations and growing workloads, but outdated processes and disconnected systems can still get in the way of the advisory role clients are seeking. Rather than supporting the advisory relationship, technology can make early interactions feel harder than they should, long before advice is actually delivered.

That tension sits at the center of the State of Consumers & Professionals 2026 report, commissioned by Progress ShareFile and based on insights from 707 U.S. consumers who worked with a lawyer or an accountant in the past five years. The findings show that trust in professionals remains strong, but experience increasingly shapes how clients evaluate those relationships and what they expect next from legal and accounting teams.

Clients Still Trust the Expertise. Experience Is Where Relationships Are Being Tested.

Trust in legal and accounting professionals remains high. Around nine in ten clients still see their lawyer or accountant as a trusted advisor rather than just a service provider.

What is changing is how quickly that trust can become strained. Sixty percent of clients say professionals sometimes assume a level of understanding clients do not have, and 44 percent say they do not always feel fully heard. These moments do not reflect poor advice. They reflect experiences that feel harder than they should.

That distinction matters. When communication feels overly technical, when processes interrupt conversations or when clients feel rushed or uncertain, confidence begins to slip even before substantive work begins.

The implication is clear. Expertise still earns trust, but experience determines whether that trust holds. Clients want judgment and empathy, delivered through interactions that feel understandable, attentive and human.

The rest of the report explores where those expectations are being met, where they are falling short and what it takes to close the gap.

Download the full report to explore the data, compare your clients’ experiences with national benchmarks and identify where unnecessary effort is undermining trust before advisory work even begins.