Authorized business analyst Ari Kaplan hosted his inaugural Ari Kaplan Advisors Authorized Tech GC/CLO Roundtable to replicate on the authorized business in 2025 and talk about key challenges, traits and alternatives more likely to have an effect on strategic priorities in 2026.
Ari Kaplan: Welcome to the inaugural authorized tech normal counsel roundtable. For a few years, I’ve centered on developments in authorized know-how and supplied analysis for the annual normal counsel report produced by Relativity and FTI. I believed convening a dialogue amongst main GCs and CLOs at authorized know-how corporations may yield insights that profit our total group.
Beth Kallet-Neuman: I’m Beth Kallet-Neuman from Relativity.
Marla Crawford: I’m Marla Crawford from Cimplifi.
Dennis Garcia: My identify is Dennis Garcia. I’m a vp and normal counsel for Litera, based mostly in Chicago.
Clint Crosier: My identify is Clint Crosier, the final counsel of iManage.
JP Son: JP Son, I’m at Verbit based mostly in New York.
John Patzakis: John Patzakis, CLO at X1.
Colin Levy: Colin Levy, normal counsel of Malbek.
Jason Barnwell: Jason Barnwell, CLO at Agiloft.
Jenny Hamilton: I’m Jenny Hamilton. I’m the GC at Exterro.
Ari Kaplan: Is there one thing distinctive about being the final counsel of a authorized know-how firm?
Colin Levy: I feel there may be as a result of if you’re the GC of a authorized tech firm, authorized turns into intertwined with so many different sides of the corporate, from growth and product to governance and knowledge privateness regulation. It’s plenty of totally different areas that converge. And whereas I feel this isn’t essentially remoted to authorized tech, I do suppose authorized tech is, in some methods, uniquely positioned to come across all these points, notably given how briskly authorized tech tends to maneuver and the way a lot quicker it may transfer when issues like AI develop into ever-present.
Dennis Garcia: Being a part of a authorized tech firm, I discover that my enterprise shoppers, who’re legal professionals, regulation companies and company authorized departments, have a deep appreciation for what legal professionals do and the worth we offer. I’ve additionally seen cases the place, as a authorized tech firm, our shoppers are legal professionals. They will not be working towards legal professionals, however they hopefully have a wholesome respect for what legal professionals do. However by the identical token, legal professionals will not be the simplest shoppers, in order that’s an attention-grabbing dynamic. Being a GC at a authorized tech firm offers us an actual alternative to function ambassadors for our corporations. Our group has been utilizing Litera’s merchandise. We’re turning into energy customers of our options, and I wish to evangelize to different company, in-house authorized groups about how we’re utilizing them and hopefully interact in enterprise growth on behalf of Litera.
Jason Barnwell: It is vital for us to showcase what we make and function ambassadors however to really display the best expression of the worth our merchandise create for our prospects. Like Dennis, I’m going to determine the way to run Agiloft authorized on Agiloft, and I’m going to inform tales and present the recipes. I’m going to present away as a lot as I can, and in that course of, hopefully earn a bit consideration from the market. That spotlight can then affect the product roadmap, bending it nearer to the highest-value buyer situations which are on the market, in order that we will preserve delivering extra worth to our prospects and finally flip that into a really virtuous cycle the place we’re studying quicker the sorts of issues we will go after with what we make and switch that into options which are helpful for patrons, in order that they be ok with being our prospects.
Marla Crawford: Being a normal counsel at a authorized know-how firm is a singular expertise as a result of what number of normal counsels are as accustomed to the product their firm sells as customers are? I used to be one of many first e-discovery legal professionals. My profession has been in authorized know-how, and it was a pure development to develop into the GC of a authorized know-how firm. It allowed me to get began quite a bit quicker.
Beth Kallet-Neuman: What’s attention-grabbing is having that distinctive perception into your buyer persona. You actually perceive how they suppose and what they need. On the subject of product growth, you may shortly establish gaps, and you may shortly see potential for different use instances. You actually get into your buyer’s thoughts. At different tech corporations, you may not really feel as snug being within the thoughts of the client as a result of it’s totally different to grasp that authorized persona and the way we expect.
John Patzakis: The wonderful thing about being a CLO at a authorized tech firm is that you simply additionally put on an working hat. On the product aspect, I get dragged into key product growth conferences. The gross sales group, particularly on the excessive finish, desires to convey me in to talk with the legal professionals on the opposite aspect who want to procure an answer, so I really feel like I’m a twin government, which is nice. The one factor on the extra stress-related aspect is that I’ve seen courts maintain authorized tech corporations to a better commonplace for discovery. So it’s one thing to pay attention to in the event you get entangled in litigation.
JP Son: As a normal counsel or chief authorized officer at any firm, you’re going to have a really huge view of what’s happening. You’re there to attach the dots to your colleagues and administration basically. That’s heightened much more at a authorized tech firm. You find yourself being not simply the difficulty spotter for authorized compliance but in addition the operator’s hat, drawing in your connections within the enterprise and the business. Even simply utilizing the authorized tech instruments and understanding the place they’re, you can provide steerage that’s distinctive to your product, your R&D, your gross sales and advertising and marketing groups, steerage they could not have by advantage of you being that material knowledgeable.
Clint Crosier: On this function, it’s crucial so that you can perceive the market and what your opponents and friends are doing from a product standpoint since you probably see what they’re releasing prior to most individuals at your organization. Jokingly, one draw back is that each one your mates wish to name you about fixing the product.
Ari Kaplan: The place did you uncover a possibility that stood out and that you simply’re going to hold into 2026? Or is there one thing particularly that you simply felt was transformative within the authorized area?
Clint Crosier: 2025 was undoubtedly the yr when individuals stopped questioning AI. It’s occurring. There’s nothing you are able to do at this level, and we have to be ready on all sides to make sure it’s performed in accordance with the frameworks and insurance policies we’ve established, that are nimble sufficient to adapt.
Colin Levy: Over the past month, I’ve been concerned in a pretty big variety of negotiations, particularly round AI, not essentially centered on functionality, though that’s nonetheless current, however extra on reliability and accuracy, which displays rising acceptance of generative AI. Now, how can we cope with it? How can we make use of it in a manner that’s productive? There’s additionally a rising realization that it’s right here, however we shouldn’t be utilizing it for every thing. But when we will use it, how ought to we be utilizing it? There’s a good quantity of schooling for authorized tech corporations to do, educating our prospects and potential prospects about what we will do and the way we may help them. That begins with listening, having a dialog with them, and understanding what they want to see, what they know, and what they want to be doing sooner or later.
Marla Crawford: 2025 is the pivot second for the change in our total authorized ecosystem, particularly, who’s doing what. We’re seeing totally different worker classes taking over new duties. We’re seeing a shift within the human facet of who’s engaged on what initiatives, and that’s going to proceed to vary.
John Patzakis: I’ve been fascinated by plenty of developments in AI. One factor I’ve observed over the previous six months is that many enterprises are gradual to undertake AI. AI is adopted the place knowledge is already centralized. A fantastic instance is e-discovery. It’s a must to accumulate knowledge and put it upstream. As soon as it’s on the evaluate platforms, it is sensible to use AI to that dataset as a result of it’s already there. However corporations are reluctant to shift giant swaths of their knowledge, for compliance or different causes, as a result of it should go off-site and poses important safety dangers. You don’t understand how the fashions are being educated, and there could possibly be intermingling, which introduces safety dangers. We are able to deal with that by holding the AI on-prem as a lot as doable. For authorized tech, I feel your resolution a minimum of must be on-premises-capable.
Beth Kallet-Neuman: I feel on-prem options are going to be a bit bit dated as a result of they received’t have the ability to sustain with the cloud, particularly the progress that’s been made in cloud and the safety components, that are clearly essential for legal professionals. In case you discover a resolution that’s scalable, safe, protects privateness, retains the information the place it needs to be and raises no questions on privilege, that’s going to maneuver in a short time when it comes to progress and when it comes to getting the form of know-how that’s going to maintain issues on the leading edge.
John Patzakis: There are two flavors of cloud. There’s multitenancy, which, to simplify, is bolted onto your Amazon setting and requires your shoppers to retailer knowledge in your setting. It’s hard-coded there. Then there’s what’s known as single-tenancy cloud, which is extra versatile. You’ll be able to host it in your shopper’s non-public cloud or on-premises. To me, it’s about single-tenancy versus multitenancy within the cloud.
Jason Barnwell: From a sensible standpoint, if we expect there can be machine intelligence-powered workloads, I don’t see how these will run in a traditional on-premises setting since you’re not going to have the compute infrastructure or capability there. I additionally don’t see how any subscale operator will have the ability to run their very own devoted machine intelligence-focused compute, given the restricted provide. Working the infrastructure at scale could be very difficult. It’s laborious for me to see a future by which extra machine intelligence is utilized to workloads that don’t align with the long run Beth described.
JP Son: We’ve heard from shoppers and prospects that they might worth having an on-prem or on-device resolution, so there could also be edge instances the place that issues. On the whole, I agree that the cloud is best.
Jason Barnwell: The true query is what prospects are literally keen to pay for. What premium are you keen to pay for this that we’re going to must do particular for you? If there’s sample energy within the want, then it turns into a really scalable product. However the place prospects are outliers, they need to count on to pay a premium for us to successfully tailor how we create our product to accommodate a really small set of consumers.
John Patzakis: On the subject of compute energy, the single-tenancy cloud is the place you might have probably the most throughput. The rationale many CTOs desire multitenant cloud is that it permits them to scale throughout many purchasers and produce them on, however their workloads are throttled. So the computing energy is greatest in situations the place you might have a big firm with its personal non-public, safe cloud setting and might allocate all out there sources to a single operation. That’s how you actually scale. Additionally, in terms of AI, one factor I didn’t respect till six months in the past, once we have been moving into this, is that it’s all in regards to the giant language fashions. LLMs are the digital element of AI and have develop into more and more transportable. Now you can deploy and run them on-prem. That’s the place the magic occurs proper now. Coaching them is one other factor.
Jason Barnwell: There’s something value teasing aside, particularly the forms of fashions that may run and why that is essential for us to grasp and take into consideration. More and more, the merchandise we construct will reap the benefits of long-running machine intelligence processes. It is not going to be a single immediate forwards and backwards. As a substitute, it’ll contain delegating a context window right into a compute house and having these processes do actual work.
Ari Kaplan: Is there an expectation that the final counsel of a authorized tech firm can go toe to toe with any product salesperson within the group? That’s how granular and deep your understanding of the product needs to be.
Colin Levy: It takes a particular form of individual to be in authorized tech, and which means being intellectually curious, keen to experiment, keen to be taught and keen to acknowledge what and what you don’t know. That doesn’t imply it’s a must to be a programmer to be the GC of a authorized tech firm and even work in authorized tech. On the similar time, it requires fluency within the language of know-how, so you may communicate confidently with departments throughout your organization, whether or not it’s engineering, product or gross sales. It’s a must to be a connector and a translator as a result of, as a lawyer, you typically must translate your authorized understanding into one thing that another person will perceive and know the way to act on. That always signifies that for the GC, it’s a must to be snug delegating and leveraging others’ experience, which, traditionally, will be powerful for a lawyer as a result of legal professionals generally wish to be in charge of actually every thing. You want a sure degree of belief. That doesn’t imply you shouldn’t have understanding; you must, however you additionally want belief.
Marla Crawford: We should always have the ability to hear and listen to otherwise from the opposite division heads in our firm. Once we meet with our shoppers, we must always have the ability to translate extra successfully, perceive what they’re saying, and make a larger impression. Larger than a GC at one other firm as a result of we must always hear these buzzwords that imply one thing particular to us.
Dennis Garcia: All GCs and in-house legal professionals want to grasp the enterprise in addition to doable. If they’ll perceive the merchandise and options, that’s nice. I don’t suppose you essentially have to be an knowledgeable in these options. I can’t go toe to toe with our product groups on our merchandise and even with our gross sales groups. One factor I’ve observed is that the gross sales people undoubtedly wish to lean on me to see how they’ll leverage the relationships I’ve constructed over a protracted time frame with in-house legal professionals at our prospects or different corporations or with regulation companies or authorized enterprise decision-makers. I feel a big value-add is leveraging {our relationships} with authorized decision-makers. Our senior enterprise leaders love that, and that’s the place they need me to be when it comes to uncovering new alternatives.
Ari Kaplan: Are there issues that persons are enthusiastic about for subsequent yr or involved about in any manner?
Beth Kallet-Neuman: I’ve spoken with regulation agency companions about this. How are we going to coach the following technology of legal professionals? Everybody on this name has probably seemed by Iron Mountain bins, reviewed paperwork and printed supplies. They’re not doing a few of this as a result of they don’t must. The AI will deal with the baseline work nobody desires to do, which will be painful at occasions. So I’m very curious to grasp how we are going to practice them. The coaching will look totally different. There’ll have to be a shift, as skipping it isn’t the reply.
Clint Crosier: The important thing query will not be that AI’s altering regulation; it’s altering how they make cash. What’s altering is the leverage-based mannequin they’ve relied on for years, which has billed associates out for far more than they’re value and never given them the “10,000 hours” to develop into consultants. We learn by paperwork in a Redweld at a kitchen desk and discovered the way to a minimum of take a look at them. Some companies mentioned AI has helped them create real-world simulations they may not have constructed earlier than, together with the power to centralize their paperwork, examples, mock situations, responses, reverts and redlines. They couldn’t have constructed that previously with out 1000’s and 1000’s of man hours. Now, AI can construct that and consider it, and it may change. It’s like a battle recreation. You reply; it adjustments one other manner. Then they are often judged on that. AI is widening the hole between good and dangerous associates as a result of the nice ones are already good, and now they’re simply getting higher. Determining the way to assist the opposite associates is the place they have to be, however they’re falling farther behind.
Jason Barnwell: One of many issues that’s extremely highly effective about simulations and situations is that you simply’re not sure by an natural charge of schooling and progress. Prior to now, you needed to have a sure variety of offers or instances, and people needed to organically seem, so the speed at which you could possibly purchase abilities had a basic restrict. You have been additionally restricted by the quantity of suggestions a accomplice would really present. That is what I feel underlies the divergence you’re seeing. For some individuals, it’s giving them rocket packs, and so they’re simply taking off. For people who find themselves actually motivated, curious and wish to be on their progress edge, hastily, they’ve this factor that may keep awake with them so long as they wish to go and as laborious as they wish to go. That could be very totally different. Then you might have different individuals who got here to only grind out what was put in entrance of them. The enterprise used to function that manner very effectively for nearly all of its existence. If it immediately turns into, “I would like to determine how I’m going to create worth earlier,” that doesn’t work with the previous mannequin. I recall having this dialog with somebody from our store. She actually liked the regulation agency’s lockstep promotion for associates. So long as I stayed round, I used to be assured to maneuver up, she recalled. I mentioned the factor I actually hated in regards to the regulation agency was the lockstep promotion as a result of regardless of how good a job I did, I used to be principally constrained. She noticed it as a ground, and I noticed it as a ceiling. It’s time for us to begin desirous about how we take the lid off, and the individuals who suppose like which are going to get wonderful outcomes from this stuff.
Dennis Garcia: All I need from my regulation companies is to pay much less, and I hope they use extra AI instruments, to allow them to supply me extra fixed-fee choices. I feel we’ll see extra corporations searching for a return on their AI investments. AI will not be low-cost, and I feel bigger and midsize in-house authorized groups are asking themselves how they’ll get a return on funding. Perhaps which means having fewer staff in a authorized division. As a substitute of a 10-person observe group, in the event that they’re embracing AI instruments, they could want solely eight individuals. That’s a development we’re going see extra of this yr and transferring ahead. We count on to see some authorized groups, yr over yr, with budgets which will stay flat and even lower. I don’t know in the event you’ll see many authorized groups with budgets that may improve over the following yr or two.
Ari Kaplan: The place do you see the authorized market heading in 2026?
Jenny Hamilton: I hope we practice the following technology to not disguise behind creating technical experience, like we’d have if we labored at a agency. It’s a must to put your head down, be taught the mechanics of working towards regulation and the grunt work, and construct that basis to construct on—after which fear about the way to advocate, the way to talk together with your shoppers, who are sometimes in-house counsel, and the way to develop a status as a trusted adviser, begin connecting the dots, and truly add worth. I noticed plenty of regulation agency associates disguise behind the event of their authorized experience however not learn to go to courtroom, the way to win and argue motions, or the way to develop a trusted relationship with a shopper, so the shopper would name them first and more and more depend on them to assist them muddle by a few of these complexities. This is a chance for youthful associates and in-house counsel to begin creating these abilities earlier, now that a number of the heavy lifting will be performed by AI. After all, you’ll want to be taught your craft, perceive the observe of regulation, be strategic, and add strategic worth to the enterprise. However that may come prior to it has for the earlier technology. So I’m nonetheless optimistic however provided that we’ve got a bunch of authorized leaders like us who’re keen to exit and message. That’s what we’d like. Immediately, we’d like regulation agency attorneys to have the ability to present up and provides us choices which are business-friendly, that transfer us ahead—to not equivocate, to not bury us in complexity, to not ship us three-page memos by e mail that don’t get us to a solution. And on this function, that turns into essential as a result of I can’t revert to being a second- or third-year and attempt to parse a senior affiliate’s three-page memo on this murky space we’re in and provides us steerage. That’s not the job anymore, if it ever was.
JP Son: Training is a basic problem, however some abilities will stay foundational, whereas others received’t be abilities in any respect for turning into an legal professional. We’re additionally seeing an increase in using ALSPs. Doc evaluate was beforehand dealt with by first-year associates. I feel it’s been separated out from the regulation agency right into a doc evaluate specialist function. The know-how will allow this type of bifurcation of duties between what’s performed in a standard regulation agency and what’s performed in an ALSP. It’ll be attention-grabbing over the approaching years to see how the definition of what constitutes an legal professional at a regulation agency evolves and the way some abilities fade whereas new abilities and competencies emerge, shifting the definition and, in flip, the schooling paradigm.
Ari Kaplan: Thanks all so very a lot.
Hearken to the whole interview at Reinventing Professionals.
Ari Kaplan often interviews leaders within the authorized business and within the broader skilled companies group to share perspective, spotlight transformative change and introduce new know-how at his weblog and on Apple Podcasts.
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