The Corporate Legal Operations Consortium’s (CLOC’s) European chapter yesterday (5 February) drew a senior crowd of in-house legal professionals, focusing on topics such as how to build cohesive, data-driven models to elevate legal operations and, of course, facilitate AI.
With the programe developed in partnership with RSGI, the content was practical and centred on audience participation, which was widely welcomed. The RSGI team did a great job of facilitating sessions, and new president Oyango Snell brought his characteristic energetic leadership style to a very wet and grey London day.
I’ll bring you an interview with Snell shortly, but in terms of some broad takeaways from the day, I have a few observations, one of which may be unpopular.
How to communicate the value of legal to the business?
Sessions that I sat in on included a fireside conversation hosted by RSGI founder Reena SenGupta with Sean Houston, head of legal operations at Heineken, and Ekta Malhotra, head of strategy and operations at Accenture Legal.
The trio discussed how you communicate the value of legal to the business; a perennial challenge not helped by the perception that legal is the Department of No.
Story telling is one way. “A story backed up by data is crucial but it can’t all be data or it will be boring and people need to understand it and the message,” said Houston, adding honestly, “It’s not always easy and it’s work in progress for us, but that’s the objective.”
In the audience, Sarah Aziz, head of legal innovation and operations and deputy general counsel at L’Oreal shared that one powerful tool her team has used is a glossy ‘year in review’ pamphlet highlighting legal operations successes and updates. The team used a legal design company to help create it. The first slide is statistics around the likes of awards received and contracts delivered. The second page is photos of who the team are and details of projects they are working on.
Some key takeaways from the session were:
- Get champions to communicate the value they receive from legal operations – it’s more powerful if the message comes from someone else
- Share stories
- Create ‘FOMO’
While legal operations teams are familiar with having to say ‘no’, good communication can also make the difference in how the message is received. Malhotra said that knowing your audience and turning a no into a positive story is important, observing: “You can say ‘no, but we have done this instead.’ With every no story, there is a yes story too. It might be ‘no today, but in the future will be yes if we can do this this and this.’” She added: “If you get too obsessed with metrics and KPIs you can lose perspective.”
Knowing your audience is key, Houston agreed, observing: “It’s pretty obvious that I wouldn’t speak to my five-year-old the way I speak to my general counsel, you have to tailor your message to the audience.”
It is also key to understand the underlying business drivers. In the audience Mo Ajaz, founder of Lex360 and former general counsel of National Grid, said: “You need to know what is value and in the eye of whom. You can spend time building a dashboard but if you don’t understand what value means or who will benefit then the data won’t be right. You need to understand from stakeholders what is value and demonstrate that in the KPI dashboard.”
Measuring the ROI of AI
ROI is a hot topic and one that can be quite polarising. A panel hosted by CLOC board officer and European lead Aine Lyons debated what works when measuring the ROI of AI and whether legal teams should be looking at hard time and costs savings or taking a more holistic approach to measuring value.
By way of background, at Lenovo Solutions and Services Group, general counsel Sarah Rosser said the team use an array of tech tools but are notably trialling Harvey. At Dentsu, general counsel Robert Clark said the team were one of the first to use Copilot but have pivoted away to piloting and now deploying Harvey to all legal and compliance staff. And at Rio Tinto, digital transformation manager Christopher De Waas said the legal team are using (among other tools) ChatGPT enterprise. At Workday, the team quite heavily uses Google Gemini. Interestingly, Lyons noted that Workday has ‘AI Friday’ where they can practice using AI tools, noting, “It’s easier to start that way.”
In terms of uptake, De Waas said that his team has seen 75% adoption. What was interesting was that by a show of hands the majority of the audience said they are using general purpose AI tools and by a further show of hands most people said over 50% of their department are using those tools. Less than a third said they are using legal specific tools.
Clark noted the challenge around measuring adoption, observing that it’s not always easy to work out if people are using the tools for the purpose they are giving for and whether they have the skills to use them. The only way is to look at the output and whether they are saving time, reducing costs or giving better insights.
De Waas said that with ChatGPT Enterprise, the cost ROI is guaranteed so the question is then around whether and how it helps to transform the legal function. Rio Tinto looks at hard numbers such as time and money saving but also softer metrics, such as whether the technology means lawyers can get time back for themselves.
Driving cultural transformation at scale
There was an interesting panel discussion around driving cultural transformation at scale but I am going to pick out one thing that I hadn’t heard before.
Mark Dean, a behavioural scientist from Basil Research Initiative, talked about the science behind change and what is happening in our brains.
“Our brains are wired not to make us happy, but to look for risk,” he said. We are social creatures, however, and the antidote to the adrenaline in the brain when we feel our existence (at work) is under threat is Oxytocin, which comes from trust. When we near completion of a project we get a burst of dopamine, which is critical for wellbeing. In groups where there is high trust and transparency, Oxytocin increases and our brain is more primed for creativity.
“Rather than thinking how to unlock more time, think about how to unlock 20% more cognitive capacity using dopamine as the driving force,” he suggested.
Change isn’t happening fast enough
My own possibly unpopular and admittedly hugely generalistic thought after CLOC is that, given the upheaval we know is barrelling down the track, change isn’t happening nearly fast enough.
Conversations around data and AI are evolving but there’s still a lot of focus on how legal operations gains a seat at the table.
Speaking with Snell, I asked his opinion on this point. “We are collectively making progress but we’re not where we need to be for a host of reasons,” he said. Those reasons (I paraphrase) include the hugely confidential data held by corporates and the risks around privacy and cybersecurity; the fact that an enormous amount of data is held in many different places; the risk of garbage in, garbage out; and the fact that AI alone won’t fix those data issues.
One thing from the day that resonated on this point with Snell, and that was echoed among others I spoke to, was from the keynote session from futurist Christina von Messling, who spoke about how leaders need to adapt and build for a rapidly changing future.
Snell said: “I loved the comment the keynote speaker made that instead of breaking hard like a deer in the headlights when you’re driving on a snowy, icy road and grabbing the wheel hard so you maybe kill yourself, instead, you slow down and understand the shift in the marketplace. You be steady and calm and patient and you keep your eyes down the road to all the things that are coming at you. Don’t engage AI for the sake of it, but leverage AI tools to help you be more efficient and effective and achieve your strategic objectives. Have a plan. What is your AI plan, strategy and purpose. I do believe that it’s necessary regardless of what industry you are in, but if you are looking down the road, not being paralysed, you’re developing the behaviour to begin understanding, assessing and evaluating your business needs and the tools that support that.”
The one thing that underpins this analogy is that you have to be in the driving seat.
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