Authorized trade analyst Ari Kaplan hosted his inaugural Ari Kaplan Advisors Authorized tech GC/CLO Roundtable to replicate on the authorized trade in 2025 and focus on key challenges, tendencies and alternatives prone to have an effect on strategic priorities in 2026.
Ari Kaplan: Welcome to the inaugural authorized tech basic counsel roundtable. For a few years, I’ve targeted on developments in authorized know-how and offered analysis for the annual basic counsel report produced by Relativity and FTI. I assumed convening a dialogue amongst main GCs and CLOs at authorized know-how firms might yield insights that profit our whole 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 vice chairman and basic 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, basic 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 may be 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 improvement and product to governance and knowledge privateness regulation. It’s numerous totally 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, significantly given how briskly authorized tech tends to maneuver and the way a lot sooner it may possibly transfer when issues like AI turn into ever-present.
Dennis Garcia: Being a part of a authorized tech firm, I discover that my enterprise purchasers, who’re legal professionals, legislation corporations and company authorized departments, have a deep appreciation for what legal professionals do and the worth we offer. I’ve additionally seen situations the place, as a authorized tech firm, our purchasers are legal professionals. They might not be practising legal professionals, however they hopefully have a wholesome respect for what legal professionals do. However by the identical token, legal professionals might not be the best purchasers, 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 firms. Our workforce 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 improvement on behalf of Litera.
Jason Barnwell: It will be significant for us to showcase what we make and function ambassadors however to actually show the very best expression of the worth our merchandise create for our prospects. Like Dennis, I’m going to determine run Agiloft authorized on Agiloft, and I’m going to inform tales and present the recipes. I’m going to provide away as a lot as I can, and in that course of, hopefully earn a little bit consideration from the market. That spotlight can then affect the product roadmap, bending it nearer to the highest-value buyer eventualities which are on the market, in order that we will maintain delivering extra worth to our prospects and finally flip that into a really virtuous cycle the place we’re studying sooner the sorts of issues we will go after with what we make and switch that into options which are invaluable for purchasers, so that they be ok with being our prospects.
Marla Crawford: Being a basic counsel at a authorized know-how firm is a novel expertise as a result of what number of basic counsels are as acquainted with 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 turn into the GC of a authorized know-how firm. It allowed me to get began lots sooner.
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. Relating to product improvement, you possibly can rapidly determine gaps, and you may rapidly see potential for different use instances. You actually get into your buyer’s thoughts. At different tech firms, you may not really feel as snug being within the thoughts of the shopper as a result of it’s totally 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 facet, I get dragged into key product improvement conferences. The gross sales workforce, particularly on the excessive finish, desires to deliver me in to talk with the legal professionals on the opposite facet 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 facet is that I’ve seen courts maintain authorized tech firms to the next normal for discovery. So it’s one thing to concentrate on for those who become involved in litigation.
JP Son: As a basic counsel or chief authorized officer at any firm, you’re going to have a really broad view of what’s happening. You’re there to attach the dots to your colleagues and administration normally. That’s heightened much more at a authorized tech firm. You find yourself being not simply the difficulty spotter for authorized compliance but additionally the operator’s hat, drawing in your connections within the enterprise and the trade. Even simply utilizing the authorized tech instruments and understanding the place they’re, you may give steering that’s distinctive to your product, your R&D, your gross sales and advertising and marketing groups, steering they might not have by advantage of you being that subject material skilled.
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 doubtless see what they’re releasing prior to most individuals at your organization. Jokingly, one draw back is that every one your pals 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 particularly that you simply felt was transformative within the authorized discipline?
Clint Crosier: 2025 was undoubtedly the yr when individuals 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 finished 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 reasonably large variety of negotiations, particularly round AI, not essentially targeted 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 method 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 will use it, how ought to we be utilizing it? There’s a good quantity of schooling for authorized tech firms 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 whole 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 side of who’s engaged on what tasks, and that’s going to proceed to alter.
John Patzakis: I’ve been fascinated by numerous 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. An excellent instance is e-discovery. It’s a must to gather knowledge and put it upstream. As soon as it’s on the assessment platforms, it is smart to use AI to that dataset as a result of it’s already there. However firms are reluctant to shift massive swaths of their knowledge, for compliance or different causes, as a result of it should go off-site and poses vital 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 conserving the AI on-prem as a lot as doable. For authorized tech, I believe your resolution no less than 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 received’t be capable of sustain with the cloud, particularly the progress that’s been made in cloud and the safety parts, that are clearly vital for legal professionals. For those who discover a resolution that’s scalable, safe, protects privateness, retains the info the place it must 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 type 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 purchasers to retailer knowledge in your atmosphere. It’s hard-coded there. Then there’s what’s known as single-tenancy cloud, which is extra versatile. You may host it in your consumer’s personal 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 will probably be machine intelligence-powered workloads, I don’t see how these will run in a traditional 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 be capable of run their very own devoted machine intelligence-focused compute, given the restricted provide. Working the infrastructure at scale may be very difficult. It’s onerous for me to see a future by which extra machine intelligence is utilized to workloads that don’t align with the longer term Beth described.
JP Son: We’ve heard from purchasers 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. Generally, 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 should do particular for you? If there’s sample power within the want, then it turns into a very scalable product. However the place prospects 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 shoppers.
John Patzakis: Relating to compute energy, the single-tenancy cloud is the place you may have essentially the most throughput. The explanation many CTOs desire multitenant cloud is that it permits them to scale throughout many shoppers and produce them on, however their workloads are throttled. So the computing energy is greatest in eventualities the place you may have a big firm with its personal personal, safe cloud atmosphere and might allocate all out there assets to a single operation. That’s how you actually scale. Additionally, in the case of AI, one factor I didn’t admire till six months in the past, once we had been stepping into this, is that it’s all concerning the massive language fashions. LLMs are the digital element of AI and have turn into more and more moveable. 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 sorts of fashions that can run and why that is vital 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 won’t be a single immediate backwards and forwards. As an alternative, it should 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 type of individual to be in authorized tech, and meaning being intellectually curious, keen to experiment, keen to study and keen to acknowledge what you realize and what you don’t know. That doesn’t imply you must be a programmer to be the GC of a authorized tech firm and even work in authorized tech. On the identical time, it requires fluency within the language of know-how, so you possibly can converse 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 usually should translate your authorized understanding into one thing that another person will perceive and know act on. That always implies that for the GC, you must be snug delegating and leveraging others’ experience, which, traditionally, may be powerful for a lawyer as a result of legal professionals generally need to be answerable for actually all the pieces. You want a sure stage 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 be capable of hear and listen to in a different way from the opposite division heads in our firm. Once we meet with our purchasers, we must always be capable of translate extra successfully, perceive what they’re saying, and make a larger influence. 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 will perceive the merchandise and options, that’s nice. I don’t suppose you essentially must be an skilled 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 of us undoubtedly need to lean on me to see how they will leverage the relationships I’ve constructed over a protracted time frame with in-house legal professionals at our prospects or different firms or with legislation corporations or authorized enterprise decision-makers. I believe 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 individuals are enthusiastic about for subsequent yr or involved about in any method?
Beth Kallet-Neuman: I’ve spoken with legislation agency companions about this. How are we going to coach the following technology of legal professionals? Everybody on this name has doubtless appeared via 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 desires to do, which may 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 must be a shift, as skipping it’s not the reply.
Clint Crosier: The important thing query just isn’t that AI’s altering legislation; it’s altering how they generate profits. 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 turn into consultants. We learn via paperwork in a Redweld at a kitchen desk and realized no less than have a look at them. Some corporations stated 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 eventualities, 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 possibly change. It’s like a warfare recreation. You reply; it modifications one other method. 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 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 eventualities is that you simply’re now not certain by an natural price of schooling and development. Up 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 possibly can purchase abilities had a basic restrict. You had been additionally restricted by the quantity of suggestions a associate would truly present. That is what I believe underlies the divergence you’re seeing. For some individuals, it’s giving them rocket packs, they usually’re simply taking off. For people who find themselves actually motivated, curious and need to be on their development 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 may be very totally different. Then you may have different individuals who got here to simply grind out what was put in entrance of them. The enterprise used to function that method very properly 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 outdated mannequin. I recall having this dialog with somebody from our store. She actually liked the legislation agency’s lockstep promotion for associates. So long as I stayed round, I used to be assured to maneuver up, she recalled. I stated the factor I actually hated concerning the legislation 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 eager about how we take the lid off, and the individuals who suppose like which are going to get superb outcomes from these items.
Dennis Garcia: All I would like from my legislation corporations is to pay much less, and I hope they use extra AI instruments, to allow them to provide me extra fixed-fee choices. I believe we’ll see extra firms searching for a return on their AI investments. AI just isn’t low-cost, and I believe bigger and midsize in-house authorized groups are asking themselves how they will get a return on funding. Possibly meaning having fewer workers in a authorized division. As an alternative of a 10-person observe group, in the event that they’re embracing AI instruments, they might want solely eight individuals. That’s a pattern we’re going see extra of this yr and shifting ahead. We anticipate to see some authorized groups, yr over yr, with budgets that will stay flat and even lower. I don’t know for those who’ll see many authorized groups with budgets that can 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 growing technical experience, like we’d have if we labored at a agency. It’s a must to put your head down, study the mechanics of practising legislation and the grunt work, and construct that basis to construct on—after which fear about advocate, talk together with your purchasers, who are sometimes in-house counsel, and develop a popularity as a trusted adviser, begin connecting the dots, and really add worth. I noticed numerous legislation agency associates disguise behind the event of their authorized experience however not learn to go to court docket, win and argue motions, or 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 via a few of these complexities. This is a chance for youthful associates and in-house counsel to begin growing these abilities earlier, now that a few of the heavy lifting may be finished by AI. In fact, you must study your craft, perceive the observe of legislation, be strategic, and add strategic worth to the enterprise. However that can come prior to it has for the earlier technology. So I’m nonetheless optimistic however provided that we have now a gaggle of authorized leaders like us who’re keen to exit and message. That’s what we want. At the moment, we want legislation 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 vital 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 steering. That’s not the job anymore, if it ever was.
JP Son: Training is a basic difficulty, however some abilities will stay foundational, whereas others received’t be abilities in any respect for turning into an lawyer. We’re additionally seeing an increase in the usage of ALSPs. Doc assessment was beforehand dealt with by first-year associates. I believe it’s been separated out from the legislation agency right into a doc assessment specialist function. The know-how will allow this type of bifurcation of duties between what’s finished in a standard legislation agency and what’s finished in an ALSP. It’ll be attention-grabbing over the approaching years to see how the definition of what constitutes an lawyer at a legislation 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 tech-gc-clo-roundtable”>Reinventing Professionals.
Ari Kaplan usually interviews leaders within the authorized trade and within the broader skilled companies neighborhood to share perspective, spotlight transformative change and introduce new know-how at his blog and on Apple Podcasts.
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