Professional Services Firms Bet Big on AI but Skills Gaps Are Holding Them Back, General Assembly Survey Finds

Most firms have had to abandon at least one AI initiative due to a lack of skills in the past year

NEW YORK, NY / ACCESS Newswire / March 24, 2026 / Most professional services firms (61%) have had to abandon at least one AI initiative in the past year due to a lack of internal skills, with more than a third (35%) abandoning multiple initiatives, according to new research from General Assembly, the global leader in practical AI skills training and an LHH company.

"Professional services firms face a capability paradox," said Ash Khanna, Head of Professional Services at General Assembly. "AI can accelerate output, but it can't replace the judgment that comes from doing the hard work. We're seeing junior talent generate recommendations faster than ever, but struggle to defend the reasoning behind them. Firms must invest in the durable human skills that make AI output credible and defensible. Upskilling can't be an afterthought; it has to be as central to a firm's AI strategy as the technology itself."

General Assembly surveyed 258 leaders with director and above titles at consulting, accounting and legal firms with at least 1,000 employees in the United States and the United Kingdom in February. The research found that most firms are investing in AI that augments human capabilities and drives efficiencies, but they need to invest more into upskilling the professional services workforce to achieve their AI ambitions.

Key Findings

• Professional services firms prioritize human augmentation: 70% said their AI strategies rely on efficiency, while only 30% are focused on building AI-first products. Less than one in five (17%) are moving toward a model where AI agents do the heavy lifting, while 73% are keeping headcount flat or hiring more people to scale. However, 57% of consulting firms said they would invest more in AI-first products and solutions than human augmentation in 2026.

• AI drives pricing pressures: Roughly 8 in 10 firms (79%) said AI is changing pricing conversations, with 42% saying clients are questioning their pricing model while 37% are already proactively addressing it. Consulting firms felt pricing pressures most acutely.

• Leaders are over-confident on AI: While 88% say their workforce is very to extremely prepared to meet leadership's AI ambitions, and 94% believe they are ahead of their clients on AI adoption, only 26% feel "great" about selling their firm's AI solutions (while 71% feel just "OK" due to AI not necessarily delivering as promised).

• Projects abandoned amid a mounting skills gap: US firms (65%) and consulting firms (73%) were most likely to have abandoned an AI initiative due to a lack of skills. Meanwhile, half of respondents said their partner compensation model makes it harder to invest in AI, a particular pain point for 57% of larger firms with 5,000+ employees.

• Partners lack AI skills: More than half (55%) said partners are least prepared to use AI effectively, a problem felt most acutely by 74% of legal firm respondents. By contrast, associates and analysts were most likely to be seen as best prepared, by 44% of respondents. The biggest skills gap was change management and stakeholder communication, selected by 58% of respondents, followed by prompting and using gen AI tools in daily work (31%), AI governance, risk and compliance (30%) and translating client problems into AI use cases (28%).

• New roles emerge: Most respondents (63%) said junior roles will evolve with different responsibilities and skill sets. And in the next 12 months, firms plan to hire for new, AI-centric roles like integrity layer leads (73%), workflow engineers (47%) and agent orchestrators (42%).

"Producing work is becoming a commodity, and the premium now is on accountability and judgment," said Khanna. "The firms that thrive will be the ones that help mid-level professionals-historically the QA layer between juniors and partners-reinvent themselves as workflow engineers: people who take the firm's unique, unscalable human expertise and industrialize it into a scalable digital asset."

Read more about this research on the General Assembly blog.

About General Assembly

General Assembly (GA), an LHH brand, is the leading talent and upskilling partner that helps individuals and businesses acquire the real skills required to succeed in an increasingly complex technological era. Founded in 2011 to make tech-centric jobs accessible to anyone and meet the demand of fast-growing tech companies, GA evolved into a center of excellence in training people from all backgrounds to upgrade their practical knowledge of tech skills now required in every company and in any role. With a global presence, hands-on instruction, and a passionate alumni community, GA gives learners 360-degree support as they take the next step in their career journey. General Assembly is part of LHH, the professional talent solutions arm of The Adecco Group, the world's leading talent advisory and solutions company. GA matches the right talent to business needs. All day, every day: GA puts real skills to work.

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SOURCE: General Assembly (GA)

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