ELM Amplify 2026 opened with a direct message for the legal operations community: success in this new era won't come from intelligence alone, it comes from turning intelligence into action. During the opening session in Scottsdale, Dean Sonderegger and Brian Jorgenson explored how legal departments can combine trusted data, deep expertise, and AI to make better decisions, improve efficiency, and create measurable business value.
Legal operations is at a pivotal moment. AI is increasingly part of everyday work, expectations on legal departments continue to rise, and organizations are under pressure to do more with available resources. The session set an energetic tone for the conference, and both speakers emphasized that the organizations that succeed will be focused on outcomes, not technology for its own sake.
Where is legal operations along its technology transformation journey?
Opening the conference, Dean reflected on the challenges facing legal operations leaders. AI adoption has accelerated rapidly across the legal industry, but organizations are still determining how to govern these technologies responsibly and use them effectively.
According to the 2026 Future Ready Lawyer survey, 92 percent of legal professionals now use at least one AI tool in their daily work. What was once emerging technology is now a business reality.
As AI adoption grows, legal leaders are focused on several critical questions:
- How can organizations govern AI responsibly?
- How can they increase efficiency without adding complexity?
- How can teams make faster, better-informed decisions?
- How can they improve legal spend management?
- How can they better demonstrate legal's value to the business?
These challenges are reshaping the role of legal operations and creating new opportunities to drive business impact.
What does “intelligence in action” mean for legal ops?
Against this backdrop, Dean introduced the theme of Amplify 2026: "Intelligence in Action." The message was simple: data, analytics, and AI create value only when they lead to action.
As legal departments become more strategic, leaders need more than information. They need tools that help them act quickly, make better decisions, and deliver measurable outcomes. Throughout his remarks, Dean emphasized that expertise, data, and trust remain the foundation of meaningful innovation.
How does AI reduce human work while increasing human impact?
Building on that foundation, Brian explored what intelligence in action looks like in practice. His presentation centered on a simple principle: agents act, people decide.
Rather than replacing human expertise, AI can handle repetitive work and free legal professionals to focus on higher-value activities. The goal is straightforward: reduce human work and increase human impact.
That means spending less time on administrative tasks, reporting, and manual reviews, and more time:
- Advising the business
- Negotiating with stronger evidence
- Selecting the right outside counsel
- Making decisions faster
- Demonstrating legal department value to stakeholders
As Brian noted, the opportunity is not simply to do existing work faster, but to enable legal operations professionals to contribute more strategically across the organization.
Why is the foundation that underpins AI so important?
A recurring theme throughout the session was that successful AI depends on far more than the model itself. Both Dean and Brian emphasized the importance of expertise, data, governance, and context.
For legal operations teams, trust is essential. Organizations need confidence that recommendations are based on governed information, reliable business context, and consistent definitions. They need technology that can explain outcomes, support compliance requirements, and align with existing workflows.
At Wolters Kluwer, that foundation includes:
- More than $230 billion in approved legal spend
- More than 310 million invoice line items
- More than 35,000 law firms represented in the data ecosystem
- More than 175 years of combined expertise across Wolters Kluwer businesses
The takeaway was clear: while AI models will continue to evolve, expertise, data quality, and context remain powerful differentiators.
How does partnership shape innovation at Wolters Kluwer?
Partnership emerged as another key theme throughout the session.
Dean emphasized the importance of listening to customers and strengthening trust through continued investments in customer success, analytics, innovation, and user experience. He reinforced the company's commitment to serving as a strategic partner to legal operations teams.
Brian highlighted a product development approach built around customer collaboration and co-design. By involving users throughout the development process, innovation happens alongside customers rather than being delivered to them after the fact.
Together, these themes underscored a broader belief: the future of legal operations will be shaped through collaboration among practitioners, clients, and technology providers.
A strong start to Amplify 2026
As attendees begin several days of learning, collaboration, and innovation, the opening session established a clear framework for the conversations ahead. Together, Dean and Brian encouraged legal operations leaders to look beyond the excitement surrounding AI and focus on what matters most: outcomes.
The future of legal ops will not be defined by technology alone. It will be shaped by how organizations use intelligence to make better decisions, improve efficiency, and deliver greater value to the business. That vision of intelligence in action will continue to guide the conversations at Amplify 2026 and beyond.