Authorized business analyst Ari Kaplan hosted his inaugural Ari Kaplan Advisors Authorized Tech GC/CLO Roundtable to mirror 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 common counsel roundtable. For a few years, I’ve centered on developments in authorized know-how and offered analysis for the annual common counsel report produced by Relativity and FTI. I assumed convening a dialogue amongst main GCs and CLOs at authorized know-how corporations may yield insights that profit our total neighborhood.
Beth Kallet-Neuman: I’m Beth Kallet-Neuman from Relativity.
Marla Crawford: I’m Marla Crawford from Cimplifi.
Dennis Garcia: My title is Dennis Garcia. I’m a vp and common counsel for Litera, based mostly in Chicago.
Clint Crosier: My title is Clint Crosier, the overall 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, common 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 overall counsel of a authorized know-how firm?
Colin Levy: I believe there’s as a result of while you’re the GC of a authorized tech firm, authorized turns into intertwined with so many different aspects of the corporate, from growth and product to governance and information privateness regulation. It’s a number of completely different areas that converge. And whereas I believe this isn’t essentially remoted to authorized tech, I do suppose authorized tech is, in some methods, uniquely positioned to come across these kinds of points, notably given how briskly authorized tech tends to maneuver and the way a lot quicker it will possibly transfer when issues like AI grow to be ever-present.
Dennis Garcia: Being a part of a authorized tech firm, I discover that my enterprise shoppers, who’re attorneys, regulation companies and company authorized departments, have a deep appreciation for what attorneys do and the worth we offer. I’ve additionally seen cases the place, as a authorized tech firm, our shoppers are attorneys. They might not be working towards attorneys, however they hopefully have a wholesome respect for what attorneys do. However by the identical token, attorneys might not be the best shoppers, in order that’s an fascinating 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 need 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 can be crucial for us to showcase what we make and function ambassadors however to really exhibit the best expression of the worth our merchandise create for our clients. Like Dennis, I’m going to determine learn how to run Agiloft authorized on Agiloft, and I’m going to inform tales and present the recipes. I’m going to offer away as a lot as I can, and in that course of, hopefully earn a little bit consideration from the market. That focus can then affect the product roadmap, bending it nearer to the highest-value buyer situations which might be on the market, in order that we are able to maintain delivering extra worth to our clients and finally flip that into a really virtuous cycle the place we’re studying quicker the sorts of issues we are able to go after with what we make and switch that into options which might be priceless for patrons, in order that they be ok with being our clients.
Marla Crawford: Being a common counsel at a authorized know-how firm is a singular expertise as a result of what number of common counsels are as aware of the product their firm sells as customers are? I used to be one of many first e-discovery attorneys. My profession has been in authorized know-how, and it was a pure development to grow to be the GC of a authorized know-how firm. It allowed me to get began loads quicker.
Beth Kallet-Neuman: What’s fascinating is having that distinctive perception into your buyer persona. You actually perceive how they suppose and what they need. In the case of product growth, you may shortly establish gaps, and you may shortly see potential for different use circumstances. You actually get into your buyer’s thoughts. At different tech corporations, you may not really feel as comfy being within the thoughts of the shopper as a result of it’s completely different to grasp that authorized persona and the way we predict.
John Patzakis: The beauty of 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, needs to deliver me in to talk with the attorneys on the opposite aspect who need to procure an answer, so I really feel like I’m a twin govt, 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 customary for discovery. So it’s one thing to concentrate on when you get entangled in litigation.
JP Son: As a common counsel or chief authorized officer at any firm, you’re going to have a really extensive view of what’s happening. You’re there to attach the dots on your colleagues and administration normally. That’s heightened much more at a authorized tech firm. You find yourself being not simply the problem 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 may give 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 subject material professional.
Clint Crosier: On this function, it’s crucial so that you can perceive the market and what your rivals and friends are doing from a product standpoint since you doubtless see what they’re releasing earlier than most individuals at your organization. Jokingly, one draw back is that every one your folks prefer to name you about fixing the product.
Ari Kaplan: The place did you uncover a chance that stood out and that you simply’re going to hold into 2026? Or is there one thing specifically that you simply felt was transformative within the authorized discipline?
Clint Crosier: 2025 was positively the yr when folks stopped questioning AI. It’s taking place. There’s nothing you are able to do at this level, and we must be ready on all sides to make sure it’s accomplished in accordance with the frameworks and insurance policies we’ve established, that are nimble sufficient to adapt.
Colin Levy: During the last 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 will we take care of it? How will 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 all the pieces. But when we are able to use it, how ought to we be utilizing it? There’s a good quantity of training for authorized tech corporations to do, educating our clients and potential clients about what we are able to do and the way we may also 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 completely different worker classes taking up new duties. We’re seeing a shift within the human facet of who’s engaged on what tasks, and that’s going to proceed to vary.
John Patzakis: I’ve been fascinated by a number of developments in AI. One factor I’ve seen over the previous six months is that many enterprises are sluggish to undertake AI. AI is adopted the place information is already centralized. An ideal instance is e-discovery. It’s important to acquire information and put it upstream. As soon as it’s on the evaluate platforms, it is smart to use AI to that dataset as a result of it’s already there. However corporations are reluctant to shift giant swaths of their information, for compliance or different causes, as a result of it should go off-site and poses important safety dangers. You don’t know the way the fashions are being skilled, and there might be intermingling, which introduces safety dangers. We are able to handle that by protecting the AI on-prem as a lot as attainable. For authorized tech, I believe your resolution at the least must be on-premises-capable.
Beth Kallet-Neuman: I believe on-prem options are going to be a little bit bit dated as a result of they gained’t have the ability to sustain with the cloud, particularly the progress that’s been made in cloud and the safety parts, that are clearly important for attorneys. In case you discover a resolution that’s scalable, safe, protects privateness, retains the information the place it must be and raises no questions on privilege, that’s going to maneuver in a short time by way of progress and by way of 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 atmosphere and requires your shoppers to retailer information in your atmosphere. 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 consumer’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 predict there shall be machine intelligence-powered workloads, I don’t see how these will run in a standard on-premises atmosphere 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. Operating the infrastructure at scale could be very difficult. It’s onerous for me to see a future during 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 circumstances the place that issues. Basically, I agree that the cloud is best.
Jason Barnwell: The actual query is what clients are literally keen to pay for. What premium are you keen to pay for this that we’re going to should do particular for you? If there’s sample energy within the want, then it turns into a very scalable product. However the place clients are outliers, they need to anticipate to pay a premium for us to successfully tailor how we create our product to accommodate a really small set of consumers.
John Patzakis: In the case of compute energy, the single-tenancy cloud is the place you’ve probably the most throughput. The rationale many CTOs desire multitenant cloud is that it permits them to scale throughout many purchasers and convey them on, however their workloads are throttled. So the computing energy is greatest in situations the place you’ve a big firm with its personal non-public, safe cloud atmosphere and may allocate all accessible assets 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, after we had been entering into this, is that it’s all in regards to the giant language fashions. LLMs are the digital part of AI and have grow to be 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 price teasing aside, particularly the varieties of fashions that can 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 backwards and forwards. 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 overall 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 must be.
Colin Levy: It takes a particular form of particular person to be in authorized tech, and meaning being intellectually curious, keen to experiment, keen to study and keen to acknowledge what you already know and what you don’t know. That doesn’t imply it’s important 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 important to be a connector and a translator as a result of, as a lawyer, you usually should translate your authorized understanding into one thing that another person will perceive and know learn how to act on. That always signifies that for the GC, it’s important to be comfy delegating and leveraging others’ experience, which, traditionally, could be robust for a lawyer as a result of attorneys typically need to be answerable for actually all the pieces. You want a sure degree of belief. That doesn’t imply you shouldn’t have understanding; it’s best to, however you additionally want belief.
Marla Crawford: We must 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 should always have the ability to translate extra successfully, perceive what they’re saying, and make a better influence. Greater than a GC at one other firm as a result of we should always hear these buzzwords that imply one thing particular to us.
Dennis Garcia: All GCs and in-house attorneys want to grasp the enterprise in addition to attainable. If they’ll perceive the merchandise and options, that’s nice. I don’t suppose you essentially must be an professional 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 seen is that the gross sales of us positively need to lean on me to see how they’ll leverage the relationships I’ve constructed over an extended time period with in-house attorneys at our clients or different corporations or with regulation companies or authorized enterprise decision-makers. I believe a major 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 by way of uncovering new alternatives.
Ari Kaplan: Are there issues that individuals 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 attorneys? Everybody on this name has doubtless appeared by Iron Mountain bins, reviewed paperwork and printed supplies. They’re not doing a few of this as a result of they don’t should. The AI will deal with the baseline work nobody needs to do, which could be painful at occasions. So I’m very curious to grasp how we’ll practice them. The coaching will look completely different. There’ll must 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 become profitable. 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 price and never given them the “10,000 hours” to grow to be consultants. We learn by paperwork in a Redweld at a kitchen desk and realized learn how to at the least take a look at them. Some companies mentioned AI has helped them create real-world simulations they might not have constructed earlier than, together with the flexibility 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 will possibly 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 unhealthy associates as a result of the nice ones are already good, and now they’re simply getting higher. Determining learn how to assist the opposite associates is the place they must 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 certain by an natural charge of training and progress. Up to now, you needed to have a sure variety of offers or circumstances, and people needed to organically seem, so the speed at which you might purchase expertise had a elementary restrict. You had been additionally restricted by the quantity of suggestions a companion would really present. That is what I believe underlies the divergence you’re seeing. For some folks, it’s giving them rocket packs, and so they’re simply taking off. For people who find themselves actually motivated, curious and need to be on their progress edge, impulsively, they’ve this factor that can keep awake with them so long as they need to go and as onerous as they need to go. That could be very completely different. Then you’ve different individuals who got here to simply 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 all of a sudden turns into, “I want to determine how I’m going to create worth earlier,” that doesn’t work with the outdated mannequin. I recall having this dialog with somebody from our store. She actually cherished 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 fascinated about how we take the lid off, and the individuals who suppose like which might be going to get wonderful outcomes from this stuff.
Dennis Garcia: All I would like 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 believe we’ll see extra corporations looking for a return on their AI investments. AI will not be low cost, and I believe bigger and midsize in-house authorized groups are asking themselves how they’ll get a return on funding. Possibly meaning having fewer staff in a authorized division. As a substitute of a 10-person follow group, in the event that they’re embracing AI instruments, they could want solely eight folks. That’s a development we’re going see extra of this yr and transferring ahead. We anticipate to see some authorized groups, yr over yr, with budgets that will stay flat and even lower. I don’t know when you’ll see many authorized groups with budgets that can enhance 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 important to put your head down, study the mechanics of working towards regulation and the grunt work, and construct that basis to construct on—after which fear about learn how to advocate, learn how to talk along with your shoppers, who are sometimes in-house counsel, and learn how to develop a popularity as a trusted adviser, begin connecting the dots, and really add worth. I noticed a number of regulation agency associates disguise behind the event of their authorized experience however not learn to go to courtroom, learn how to win and argue motions, or learn how to develop a trusted relationship with a consumer, so the consumer 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 expertise earlier, now that among the heavy lifting could be accomplished by AI. In fact, it’s essential to study your craft, perceive the follow of regulation, be strategic, and add strategic worth to the enterprise. However that can come earlier than it has for the earlier technology. So I’m nonetheless optimistic however provided that we’ve a bunch of authorized leaders like us who’re keen to exit and message. That’s what we’d like. In the present day, we’d like regulation agency attorneys to have the ability to present up and provides us choices which might be 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 important 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 elementary challenge, however some expertise will stay foundational, whereas others gained’t be expertise in any respect for turning into an legal professional. We’re additionally seeing an increase in the usage of ALSPs. Doc evaluate was beforehand dealt with by first-year associates. I believe 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 accomplished in a conventional regulation agency and what’s accomplished in an ALSP. It’ll be fascinating over the approaching years to see how the definition of what constitutes an legal professional at a regulation agency evolves and the way some expertise fade whereas new expertise and competencies emerge, shifting the definition and, in flip, the training paradigm.
Ari Kaplan: Thanks all so very a lot.
Hearken to the whole interview at Reinventing Professionals.
Ari Kaplan recurrently interviews leaders within the authorized business and within the broader skilled companies neighborhood to share perspective, spotlight transformative change and introduce new know-how at his weblog and on Apple Podcasts.
