In the latest episode of Legal IT Insider’s Inside View podcast, we sit down with Aalia Manie, director of Webber Wentzel’s innovation arm, Fusion, to discuss Fusion’s spin-off into an independent subsidiary and its evolution into a full-service product development and advisory business. We also discuss the logistics around developments such as the Anthropic Claude legal plug-in release, and why the advantage of building your own GenAI offering rarely outweigh the practicalities of buying in this fast-paced world.
Fusion’s spin-off is the latest evolution for Webber Wentzel’s alternative legal services offering, which started as an internally incubated centre, before being rebranded and expanded as Webber Wentzel Fusion in January 2024. In 2025 Fusion, launched a Legal Innovation Lab that co-develops client-focused technology solutions, working with partners such as Legora.
Speaking to Legal IT Insider about the creation of the independent subsidiary, Manie said that the new structure will give Fusion complete agility. Fusion’s clients now include legal technology vendors and the subsidiary is working not just in a legal advisory capacity, but testing products and working as an implementation partner. Manie and her team are also acting as a technology consultant to in-house legal departments.
When Claude released its new plugin, Fusion gave advice on what that actually means and how you can benchmark that against legal AI tools. The team is helping clients with procurement and benchmarking; how they test ROI; how they take projects to the board; and what feedback to the board should look like a year in.
Manie shares her takeaways here on the things to consider before deciding your own strategy.
A really insightful conversation for anyone planning their own IT delivery strategy, you can listen to it below:
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