Skills Information Professionals Need to Acquire for the Future

There has been a lot of focus on the technology that will impact librarians and knowledge managers over the next few years, but less attention has been paid to what this means for the skills required to thrive alongside it.

As roles continue to evolve, ensuring you have the right knowledge and capabilities to adapt to this new landscape is essential. While the legal sector has traditionally been slow to adopt new technologies, the pace of change is clearly accelerating, and information professionals must be prepared.

So, what skills should you be developing now to future-proof your role and your team?

Artificial intelligence

We knew we wouldn’t get far into any conversation about the future of legal tech without mentioning AI. Research from Globalization Partners suggests that organizations will increasingly introduce AI as a collaborative tool designed to support, rather than replace, human expertise.

With this in mind, developing skills to support effective AI adoption will be hugely beneficial for any knowledge team. This includes understanding how to engineer prompts to achieve accurate and useful outputs, building awareness around the ethical use of AI, and learning how to embed these tools into organizational culture. In addition, upskilling in tool integration will be key to ensuring that AI solutions work seamlessly alongside existing, sometimes legacy, systems and workflows.

Being prepared for AI with the right skills will place information professionals at the centre of strategic conversations about how these technologies are adopted and governed across the firm.

Trust, Governance, and Compliance

As content intelligence becomes more automated, library and knowledge leaders must develop the skills required to oversee increasingly machine-led processes.

Despite the growing reliance on technology, the need for transparency and trust has never been higher. Between misinformation and AI hallucinations, the value of informed human judgment remains absolutely essential.

Information professionals will need to strengthen their skills in information governance, including validating sources, maintaining data quality, and ensuring clarity around how information is created, managed, and used. Alongside this, a solid understanding of risk, compliance, and regulation will become increasingly important as rules around data protection, intellectual property, and AI continue to evolve.

Developing confidence in ethical oversight will also be critical. The ability to question automated outputs, challenge bias, and provide reassurance around the reliability of information will help position information professionals as trusted advisers in a complex and fast-moving environment.

Soft Skills

Often overlooked in discussions about future skills, but growing rapidly in importance, are so-called soft skills. As knowledge and library functions become more strategically embedded within organizations, teams will rely increasingly on adaptability, critical thinking, and creativity.

Information professionals will need to be adaptable, with the ability to learn new systems quickly and adjust to changing responsibilities. Critical thinking will be essential for evaluating AI outputs, breaking down complex problems, and questioning assumptions. Creativity, meanwhile, will play a key role in finding practical ways to embed new technologies into legacy systems that were not designed with AI in mind.

The most valuable information professionals of the future will not simply be technical specialists, but well-rounded “know-it-alls” capable of managing complex, automated systems while retaining the human judgment required for ethical, strategic, and organizational decision-making.

Looking ahead

While technology will continue to reshape the way information is created and managed, it is the skills behind the systems that will ultimately determine success. By investing in a combination of technical understanding, governance expertise, and human judgment, information professionals can ensure they remain relevant, trusted, and influential as the landscape evolves. The future of the profession will belong to those who are prepared not just to adopt new tools, but to lead their organizations in using them wisely.