Legal Leaders Exchange - Podcast episode 34

In the latest episode of Legal Leaders Exchange, Jennifer McIver welcomed Dean Sonderegger, the new Senior Vice President and General Manager of ELM Solutions, back to the legal industry. Their conversation explored the significant impact of AI and technology on legal operations. The discussion highlighted how this shift is reshaping daily workflows and enabling legal professionals to focus on higher-value activities.

The discussion also delved into the evolving dynamics between corporate legal departments, outside counsel, and technology providers. Jennifer and Dean shared their thoughts on how the traditional billable hour model is being challenged by AI's efficiency gains and the need for new partnership models that benefit both law firms and their clients.

Key topics covered in this episode include:

• The role of AI in driving efficiency in the current legal market
• How AI is augmenting attorney expertise rather than replacing it
• The challenges and opportunities in the relationship between in-house counsel and law firms
• Using data and technology to shift from cost control to strategic risk management
• The importance of simplicity and clear use cases when adopting new legal technology

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Transcript

Greg Corombos

Hello and welcome to Legal Leaders Exchange. If you loved our last episode where we went behind the scenes at Amplify 2025, you're in for another treat. Today, Jen McIver will be discussing all things legal, tech, and AI with none other than ELM Solutions’ new Senior Vice President and General Manager, Dean Sonderegger. Dean is back in the legal world, and he's got some fascinating insights on how AI is shaking things up, from making legal teams more efficient to rethinking the way we work with outside counsel. Trust me, this is one of those conversations that will have you rethinking what's possible in legal ops. So grab your coffee, settle in and let's get into it. Jen, the floor is yours.

Jennifer McIver

Thank you. Greg. I've been looking forward to today's episode for quite a bit now, because, really, it's a welcome back to the legal industry for Dean Sonderegger, which is not only a treat for ELM Solutions, but I think for our clients and the legal industry as well. So, Dean, welcome back and thank you for joining today.

Dean Sonderegger

Oh, thanks, Jen. I'm delighted to be here.

Jennifer McIver

Okay, so before we dive in and really get into the current state of legal technology, the impact of AI, and whether you think the role of General Counsel needs to shift a bit in practice, I think it would be great to first talk about what it means to you to return to the legal industry, especially after spending time leading technology and tax as well as the banking and finance sectors. So, what's it like returning?

Dean Sonderegger

Yeah, thanks, Jen. You know, it's funny. I've had this conversation with a bunch of people over the last few months. I left in about 2002 and, as you said, I went over and managed a business in tax for a little while, and then briefly in a banking regulatory environment. And at the time, we had all these ideas about how the practice of law, and the business of law, would shift based on technology coming through. And you saw some first green shoots there, with some things from CARA, from Casetext, and other things like that coming in and changing how people did stuff. But it was very early days, and now you've seen this influx of technology driven a large part in our lives, across the board, but by the generative AI, ChatGPT types of things. And you see things starting to happen that were almost – somebody the other day said it was like science fiction, where there were things that we'd always thought would happen in the practice of law that are coming to the forefront right now. And so it's really exciting to come back in to see a profession that's been labeled as stodgy and trailing and all those things, and now you actually see law leading technological change across different industries. Which is, you know, that sentence is something I don't know that I would have uttered 10 years ago. It's such an exciting time, and I'm so delighted to be back in the legal industry.

Jennifer McIver

I think you're right. It still amazes me. We do the Future Ready Lawyer survey every year here at Wolters Kluwer, and the numbers astound me each year when it talks about the percentage of use of AI that attorneys are engaging in, and the willingness, and even a little bit more of a level of comfortability. I go back to practicing law. Dates me a little bit, but I go back ten, 12, maybe 15 years. And I remember when I was asked if I wanted a Dictaphone. And I kind of looked and said, Wait a minute. We're we've been way past this, but yet that was still offered. And so, I love looking at it now, because I think that even from law school, moving forward, things are changing with technology and legal. And so many general counsel, chief legal officers, they're on board, and they're excited. And I think that that's something truly that the legal industry has not seen.

Dean Sonderegger

Yeah, I agree. And I think that one of the things that has been an interesting evolution of thought. When you first saw things like ChatGPT coming out, and there was the famous case in New York where the attorney filed a brief that referenced case law that didn't exist. It was a hallucination, and probably not a good thing for that attorney. But the first thought people had is, Oh, this is something that is replacing lawyers, or basically removing the work from lawyers, and putting it into the hands of technology. I think the evolution that you've seen, which is the right evolution, is that you look at this as an assisting tool that just makes everything you do a little more efficient, and then allows you to concentrate more on how you bring value, your training, and all those things. But that training is still essential, and that expertise is still essential. It augments the impact of the attorney, as opposed to replaces the attorney. And so, once that shift started, and now as it's got momentum going, I think you see people, literally every day, are using some form of AI-assisted tool. I know I do every day in my work, in some fashion I'm using that. I think that that's been part of that change and evolution that you described, Jen.

Jennifer McIver

Yeah, I think that it really sets well. But let's take a step back and talk about the state of the market and reality of the legal market. Because AI is pushing forward, but I feel quite often that the market really isn't changing too much. And when I say that, the relationships of how we're delivering the services of law and that relationship between the in-house counsel and external counsel, or outside counsel. And lately, we've seen reports where 2025 was soaring law firm profits. We're also seeing reports, though, out the industry that ‘26 might be a year where law firm profits are waning. Of course, cost control for general counsel, it's always there. It's always a priority. And I think we hear even more that aggressiveness and scrutinization of spend is going to be there. I'm just kind of curious, as you're coming into this new leadership role with Wolters Kluwer, and I say new at Wolters Kluwer, meaning with ELM Solutions. Because we didn't really talk too much about it – you were on the law firm side before, I think. So, as you look at that and as maybe you're flip flopping, how does that environment shape your priority for ELM Solutions?

Dean Sonderegger

Yeah, it's interesting when you think about the market, you're right. I think I just saw a survey by Wells Fargo that showed law firm revenue grew, on average, by 12.6% in 2025 so, you know, any of us that run businesses, if we could get our revenue to grow by 12.6% on average, in most businesses, that's great. So, it's a hot market right now. I do think that you've got the kind of sense that the general counsel and the corporate legal market is going to become more aggressive. However, I think we do have to see it actually happen. I've heard the same kind of story as I've heard the death of the billable hour for a bunch of years. And it hasn't manifested. I think when you look at it, we have excellent tools. ELM has excellent tools. There are excellent tools in the market that help us manage spend with outside counsel, but the elephant in the room is really, how do we deal with the technological changes as they roll through? If you go back in time, at one point in time, attorneys would pass West research costs on to their clients, and that was an accepted practice. And then we've evolved to a point in time where you can't charge for research. In a lot of cases, you can't charge for first year work. The question is, how does AI manifest in that because you have an intention or the opportunity for law firms to invest in technology that helps them deliver better results faster. And there's a benefit to the corporate legal department for that. But as long as we sit in a game of billable hour and billing guidelines that will eliminate certain types of charges, you get into a mode that it's hard to see the evolution of the business model come through. And that business model kind of has to evolve, in my opinion, to see a difference in the relationship between general counsel and the law firms. So, for instance, if I am investing in substantial amounts of artificial intelligence capability to drive greater efficiency in my attorneys, and you're not going to help me offset the cost of the investment as the corporate legal department, what's going to happen is that my rates are just going to continue to increase. And that's the workaround that you see right now. So, I think that that's going to be the really fascinating thing to look at right now to see how that relationship around the technology investment goes. I've heard some people talk about the idea that, similar to what they did with the West expenses years back, that they're going to pass along the AI expenses as part of the engagements. And I don't think that that's largely manifested, but it'll be interesting to see what happens with that.

Jennifer McIver

I think that's fascinating too. Again, this dates me, but I was part of the era where, when I started at the law firm, you had different ways to bill it. And it could either be by the query, or it could be by the time amount that you spent. So, it'll be interesting to see because quite often…

Dean Sonderegger

We passed copier expenses along, I mean literally.

Jennifer McIver

I was a legal assistant, so me and Equitrac, and making sure that I had those codes in, we were fast friends, but at least I'm past exploding toner cartridges at this point, so I'm happy with that. That's success moving forward. Let's talk a little bit about legal technology. Dean, you've mentioned that that's definitely something different as you've entered back into legal and that, legal’s, I think we could say that it's surpassed maybe some of the other industries. Do you agree with that?

Dean Sonderegger

Yeah, I think, and I used to do a talk about, if you want to know the future of legal, look at the tax market, because the e-file requirement and tax actually pushed accountants further into technology earlier. And then all the government agencies and the exchange of data back and forth, because it's formatted data as you go through. Structured data, rather. So, I would actually argue at this point in time that legal is not only caught up, but that they have surpassed because for the attorneys to be competitive, you are actively using technology tooling in ways that you probably never did 10 years ago. So, it's an interesting thing to see, but I think that legal is now almost paving the way in terms of knowledge work, in terms of use of technology at this point in time.

Jennifer McIver

As technology has grown, especially as AI has really made its mark in the market, do you think that there are any problems that legal technology has not yet solved for either the general counsel, the legal department, or even legal operations professionals? Do you think there's maybe a gap in functionality, or possibly too many options?

Dean Sonderegger

Well, there's certainly too many options. You have this huge private credit bubble right now fueling many, many companies. So, if you want to talk about contract drafting companies, you have a bevy of choices that one can make, and that's not equilibrium. At some point in time, you will see consolidation the market. And there's not going to be the surplus of credit, probably for these PE and venture-backed companies in the in the fashion. And we've seen that dry up in the market before, for the GFC, and then after Y2k, in both those cases. And you saw what starts go away. But I think that taking that to the side, the other thing you always think about with technology is, are you automating today's process, which may not be an optimal process? Are you moving to a new behavior? Outside of legal, I'd use Amazon as an example. When you think of Amazon as, oh, it's a storefront, I can buy things, that really is not fully the value story at this point in time. And what they've done, in such a genius fashion is by having Amazon Prime so that I have free one- or two-day delivery for things. Having this ability to have third party sellers come in. For instance, I never run out of toiletries anymore, because where I would go to the store when I ran out of something, when I see something low, I just order another thing and it magically shows up. So, Amazon doesn't just automate the shopping process that's been transformed. I think in legal we have a lot of focus on accuracy, quality of deliverables, making sure we are thorough and in making that process more efficient. I think that there is real economic value that is missed currently in how we approach things, and it's in two different fronts. One is that we look at things very much in terms of cost of things, and not in terms of economic impact. The the previous job that I had, I ran a banking and regulatory software business for Wolters Kluwer that we chose to divest. So, I just am coming off of a foreign $50 million divestiture with 900 employees across 23 countries that took four months from the time that we signed the agreement to the time that we closed the agreement and the money transferred. If I could have done that in three months or two months, not only is there a positive business impact for closing it faster, there's also the reality of $50 million sitting in the bank for two months, as opposed to an extra two months. Every company that works, if you close business faster with new customers, you make money faster. If you close out disputes or issues, you resolve things in your better economic output. So, I think that concept of, Can I gauge the impact of speed to deal, from lead the contract if you think about in the sales environment, use that in the way that I source, the way that I prosecute matters, where I spend my time – I think that calculus is not there. And then I think, just in general, if we helicopter up, also, if we move the concept of, for instance, spend management, and you say, yes, spend management is important, I want to make sure that I adhere to my budget. But not all matters are equal. I was on the phone with one of my insurance clients the other day, and he said, Hey, I can look at the fact pattern of claims, and I can tell you when they hit a certain duration or spend profile, that they're going to go bad, they're not going to get better as time goes on. So, we would like to manage the risk of the portfolio of matters that we have by looking at the data and being able to combine that with outcomes and trend. And so, I think that's where you start to get into asking, are there things that are not present? I think it's a shift in focus that my job is overall efficiency and effectiveness of the legal department, which means that not only am I managing spin, I'm actively managing risk hand in hand with that, and making allocation decisions and other types of decisions based on that and based on data.

Jennifer McIver

I think that's interesting, and I absolutely agree with you, Dean. I think the difficulty comes with just how legal departments and legal ops teams have been structured with the tools that they're using. You have multiple tools for different tasks or different workflows. Data is not always similar. You mentioned CLM earlier. I had fun with some CLM systems in the past, and you know, you get data coming in and out of those, but they're not talking to your ELM system, and the data that you're pulling in and out’s not the same. So, if you're talking about risk, how do those coordinate together? And I think we can take it a step further, or, I should say, a little bit more granular, on outside counsel and vendor management. You have multiple tools out there that do things like the sourcing or the competitive bidding, or you have multiple tools from intake all the way through invoicing and reporting. And so, I feel like what you're saying is so aspirational, but yet, I don't know that the industry is there to help facilitate that, along with that mind shift change.

Dean Sonderegger

Yeah, I think that's right. I think it's an evolution and a path that goes through. But I think unlike previous worlds – previous worlds sounds like a science fiction reference, it wasn't meant to be that. But unlike in the past, I think that the technology is at a point in time where it is enabling for us to start to see that vision move forward. And I think you see more visionary kind of early adopting legal ops departments, starting to think through those things. And to your point, it's, Where do I get the connectivity between the various pieces that currently operate very independently. So if we're thinking about the folks that are doing the actual prosecution of the matters and the contracts and things like that, and the legal ops department, they interact but the systems are completely different. They're not attached. So, if you want to pull data from one place into another to provide insights, that's hard. I do think you start to see that through some of the AI workspace, tools that we've got emerging in the market where you can talk to this assistant, and it goes across different systems of record, and can not only affect things, but also pull data out to help you make decisions.

Jennifer McIver

And I think the whole idea is just getting back to being more simplistic and streamlining, and to make sure you really see that end-to-end process. It's just a different way that you're going to have to pull in AI. I know, getting ready to prepare for an upcoming presentation and I'm thinking about, Is there a way that you can architect that process to pull in AI at the most important parts of the process, where can AI really help? And it's not always. I think you hear a lot of folks say, I need it to overcome something I haven't been able to overcome, and I don't know that that's always where we start. I feel like we need it to kind of pull off some of the work that we've been doing that maybe we don't need to do. That way we can really start the process of automating and streamlining other pieces. So, I do think there's a lot there.

Dean Sonderegger

Yeah, I think you're right. I think that it's kind of, just to take my Amazon example again, I think it's a question of what is valuable, and how do you measure value? In some cases, you have to reset that, right? So previously, and this, I think, shifted over the pandemic for most of us, is that there was a certain value to going to the store. I'm around people. I can look at a bunch of stuff. I can pick things. I know what I'm looking for, but that browsing, shopping had value for me. What has happened for a lot of us, I think, is that I still get that browsing shopping experience online. But the value of convenience to me, of never running out of stuff, has way surpassed the, Hey, go into the store. And so, I certainly go to the store, for instance, personally, to buy groceries. I've not made that shift yet, because I like to look at the food. But I think for a lot of other stuff, I'm never in the store for those things. I think in the legal market, we have a lot of things that we do, some of which provide measurable value, and some of which are kind of rote things. Obviously the ELM story is on invoice review, and we would like to make that as easy to do, because the less time spent on that, the better for everybody involved. But it does reset for people. How do I add value in this process?

Jennifer McIver

I'm sitting here laughing, Dean, at your grocery store thing. I feel like it's a reoccurring thing now on our podcast. I can't let somebody else pick out my fruits and vegetables. That's a whole thing for me. I was sitting here just laughing. You mentioned invoice review, and let's talk a little bit a bit more about what it looks like for a legal department to take true, strategic control. What does it actually look like from intake to invoice? What disappears with AI, what becomes that simple push button? Is it invoice review? Or do you think that there's other ways that we can focus on helping legal teams gain strategic control?

Dean Sonderegger

Yeah, I think, again, it's one of the things that matters to the business, because we are at service for the business. What matters, and focusing on how we interject at places that that provide value. And much of the remainder becomes automated. You can think about that from a practice of law standpoint. Substantive review of NDAs is probably not something that provides a lot of value. If I'm buying a company and spending $450 million to take the other line, I probably want to put some eyes on that purchase agreement. And so, there's a selection of where things matter. And then I think that comes across the board. For instance, in sourcing. In Wolters Kluwer, we have a sister company, CT Corporation, which is a registered agent which accepts process notices. So as a result of that, we get sued a lot, because every time a company that's one of our customers gets sued, we just get roped into that. We have learned over time that that's a very simple pleading and dismissal, because we have no real business in the operations, and we do all those as AFAs. And we just source them locally as we want to. That's not a huge value add, other than the fact that we have to do it. So that would be a thing that you would seek to say, Hey, can I source the procurement of that? Can I actually go through from top to bottom in as automated a fashion as possible there? Whereas, again, if you go to the insurance claims kind of example, and you say, Well, 95% of these are going to go through pretty quickly, but I've got a few that I really need to lean in on. And so now I'm moving over as an attorney and saying, Okay, those are the ones I'm going to focus on. So I think a lot of the work, ironically enough, is similar. It's just you're picking the things that are most impactful for the business, and you're trying to automate the things that are less impactful. And you're doing that in a world where you've got data and knowledge to be able to help you fuel those decisions. For instance, if you think you find yourself in patent litigation someplace, it'd be really good to know, on average, if this goes to various stages of trial, how much does that cost to prosecute? What is my likelihood of success in a generic kind of environment? And have that help you drive that. And are there differences in cost by firm, by outside counsel that I get? Are there differences in likelihood of outcome by outside counsel on average? That's data that allows me to be more mindful in my sourcing, for instance, and do a better job of that. And that might be one of the actual things, because typically any IP litigation is ridiculously expensive, absolutely.

Jennifer McIver

And I think that you're hitting it with ELM Solutions. And the aspect that if you have a single place where the data is there, where you have the workflows in the same tool, even if you're using a managed service, it's all flowing back in the tool to review the invoices, to get that data back in. And it's giving you the ability to really have a, I'd say, a closed loop from beginning to end and around and back again, with the ability to be able to continue to examine the data that you have and to make better choices and better decisions. And so being able to have that already, and then being able to pick off those high volume, low value or to pick off those really, really intense, administrative, manual type work, and to be able to automate it is pretty exciting. And I think we're working on some agents behind the scenes. We haven't released them yet, right?

Dean Sonderegger

Yeah, absolutely, right. By the way, you mentioned the data. And I don't want to walk past that too quickly. I think that one of the great untapped resources companies have is there is so much information sitting in there, billing information. And if you're able to extract that and understand more about how it is that you interact so you can think about, Hey, can I get firms to adhere to my billing guidelines? And you will get a few percent back from that if you're really rigorous and going through. And we, of course, help customers with that. But I think that on top of that, if you look at that data just from your own company's spin, it allows you to make more informed decisions about where we source. At Wolters Kluwer, our corporate legal department’s like this, we have about seven panel law firms, and a lot of the work that we have goes to that those firms, because we have relationships with them. But you have to look and say, Is that the best sourcing that we can do? And that data will help tell you that. And I think the other thing that we're very excited about is there's so much data that flows through the Wolters Kluwer legal operations solutions on billing information, that we can also take that and look at benchmarks, too. So not only is it, What does my data look like, but what does that look like compared to the industry, and how do I make better decisions based on that?

Jennifer McIver

Absolutely, I was just sitting in on a client review that we had, and one of the items we were talking about was the ability to pull the data and to see how many hours were worked between three different law firms. Then also how much they charged, what was the overall cost, and then also what is the outcome and the ability to rank it and look at it. And it was interesting, because you always, I won't say always, but quite often you migrate to they're going to do this for a lesser charge. But looking at that data, the two firms that were doing it for quite a lesser charge were actually spending way more time doing some of the tasks and the activities. And in the end, the pricing wasn't really that different. So, the question becomes, who do you choose, and what is the value there? Is it the speed to maybe not have the exposure out there as long? Do you want it to go longer and maybe try to save a couple dollars? I find that really interesting, and I think that goes back in with the data conversation. All of this is great, but one thing that I've noticed is, across the years, legal operations teams, especially – I love legal operations, there's definitely no negativity here on that – but they're the ones that are pulling in the technology. And I feel like right now, with AI and attorney adoptions, that top down leadership from the GC, from the CLO, is really, really important if change is going to happen, if we're going to change the mindset. So I'm just curious if you think there are any new rules of the road, I'm going to call them, with partnerships between legal teams and their technology providers that really can help measure progress with the way the business and outside counsel can trust each other, and that the in house teams can be more strategic business partners. So do you think there's anything different with GCS and technology providers that that would be helpful?

Dean Sonderegger

I think that the question that we get into is when you think about that relationship between our trust and outside counsel providers, I think that you want to understand, how is it that we have a win-win come through on this? I think when we have our panel firms, we talk with them on a regular basis. We come in with a spirit of partnership, and that's valued by both parties. I think when it comes to the impact of technology that drives efficiency and messes, if you will, with the billable hour model, I think that's what has to be resolved. If I go back to my tax world, when you saw the investment of all this technology around e-file, then they've automated form fill and things like that, both on the business-consumer and business-to-business side. The initial prediction was that you would see substantial degradation in the price that you pay for tax compliance services. So hey, it's going to become really cheap for me to be able to hire an accountant and do my filing, because there's all this technology there. The do-it-yourself solutions have dropped in price quite a bit, if you're going to use one of the off-the-shelf software vendors to do that. But the price, or the rates, of providers have actually, over time, grown. But the difference that has happened is that you have substantively fewer accountants providing those services in the large firms. Businesses are not doing their own taxes, high wealth individuals, largely, are not doing their own taxes. They're hiring providers, and they're actually paying more, but the businesses are more efficient because of the technology investments. That's because a lot of times that's done on a fixed fee kind of basis, as opposed to your traditional time and materials billing hour. I don't see a world where complex legal matters like the divestiture I just talked about are moving into fixed fee because they're so variable in terms of the time requirements to prosecute that we could go different directions on things like that. But I do think there needs to be work done between the GC and the outside firms to talk about, how do the firms get a lift from using AI so that they're able to provide faster and better service to their corporate clients, and don't get stung by doing that. And I think that that that will evolve. I have a friend, Ken Crutchfield, talked about, like the $20,000 hour, billable hour at one point in time. I may have the wrong number, but I don't know if that's how that evolves. If I were to predict, I think it's going to be some type of chargeback for the use of the technology and services, at least in the near term. But I think that that's so important for the outside firms and General Counsel to sit down and talk specifically and explicitly about that and find a path where it is truly win-win. And so, I don't know if that's a new rule of the road, if you will, but I think it's a new topic that we really have skirted around for quite some time.

Jennifer McIver

And I think for me, the new rule of the road is a still relationship. It is talking about value, but it's bringing technology into that value conversation. And I think that's something that the GC and the CLO really haven't been that involved with. And that's what I mentioned, when legal ops pulls in technology, whether you know your law firm side well, their innovation teams will pull in the technology, but you don't often have that in the actual business conversation. So I'm hoping that we see quite a bit more of that pulled into conversations, whether it's in-house to outside counsel, whether it's in-house working with technology providers like ourselves, to really just have that conversation about, where are we going to insert the value and really help them become those strategic partners. Well, I think our time is actually kind of coming to a closing, and so I'd like to just kind of recap and some takeaways. We know that the market demand is there. We know that it's there for cost control. We also know it's there for legal services. We're definitely seeing our shift. AI is here, and at ELM Solutions, we're ready to partner and to help our clients make that shift. And then, I think that we can both agree that there's an importance of looking at simplicity right now with technology and data, to not boil the ocean and to really find a way to help legal teams control their selection of firms. You talked about panel firms and the selection of which ones are going to provide that value and spend.

Dean Sonderegger

I think that, in particular, streamlined – we didn't talk about this a lot, but it is a great, great concept. There's two things I would say to people: begin by beginning. You don't have to be perfect to put your toe in the water on this. And I think you want to have a very specific use case that you're going after. Use cases are a technology person term, but the idea is, I have a particular outcome I'm trying to achieve. And for the things that I get into and say, Hey, I want to make this particular task better with technology, that's the way you approach it, Because to your point, boiling the ocean is a recipe for frustration, lack of results, and it's just general disaster. So I think that that concept of streamline and simplicity to start is a great place to be.

Jennifer McIver

Boiling the ocean could be a little salty, right? Thank you, Dean, thanks for joining. I'm really looking forward to future conversations and your leadership now here at ELM Solutions. I appreciate you taking the time today and look forward to talking again.

Dean Sonderegger

Thank you so much, Jen, and to the people that are out listening. I really love my interactions with folks in the legal market. So, if you want to please reach out, go through LinkedIn and just connect back with me. You will not find any other Sondereggers out there, I think, that are at Wolters Kluwer in the legal market. So it's easy to do that way. I would love to hear from you, and thank you again, Jen, it's been a delight.

Jennifer McIver

Absolutely. I love the invitation. Have a good one, Dean. Thank you.

Greg Corombos

That's a wrap for today's episode. Huge thanks to Jen McIver and Dean Sonderegger for sharing their experience and giving us so much to think about, from the role of AI as an efficiency booster rather than a replacement, to the importance of simplifying processes and focusing on high-value tasks. There's a lot to unpack here. It's clear that the future of legal ops is all about working smarter, not harder. Thanks for listening, and don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with your colleagues.