On December 5, Evolve the Law, Above the Law’s Legal Innovation Center (ETL), held its inaugural roundtable, “Emerging Legal Departments: Legal Tech 101,” at Logikcull’s San Francisco headquarters.

Monica Zent, Founder of the innovative alternative legal solutions provider, ZentLaw & Founder and CEO of Foxwordy, the patented AI-powered collaboration platform for the legal industry and Stephanie Corey, Co-Founder of UpLevel Ops, a legal strategy and operations consulting firm and Co-Founder of the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC), led the discussion. While the rain somehow made traffic in the Bay Area even tougher, the event was still incredibly well-attended, attracting General Counsel from emerging legal departments, legal ops professionals, and legal tech solution providers.

Emerging Legal Department Roundtable hosted by Logikcull

Joining Zent and Corey on the panel were these highly experienced professionals:

• Ashlee Best, Legal Operations Manager at Asana
• Jane Froyd, General Counsel at Flynn Restaurant Group
• Laszlo Kupan, General Counsel at J.D. Power
• Paul Porrini, General Counsel at Smartsheet

“I was so honored to co-lead this productive panel discussion with amazing legal industry leaders,” said Zent. “The different perspectives that each panelist brought to the table allowed us to uncover practical, real-world solutions for our audience. The composition of our audience was also great in terms of a mixture of accomplished General Counsel and Legal Operations leaders taking part in the event.”

Some key takeaways from the discussion include:

• Legal ops is now front and center for even the newest of legal departments. Forward thinking GCs are looking to streamline and automate wherever they can for scalability.
• Smaller legal departments focus on enabling revenue first, cutting spend second, so anything legal ops can do to streamline the revenue-generating process is a must.
• Automation of legal intake and enhancements in contracting are particularly hot topics.
• Panelists recommended that corporate legal departments, “Start with what they’ve got,” in terms of technology and leveraging resources from other departments.
• Insurance carriers may provide discounts for companies that implement cyber training and new technologies.

“Legal Departments are no longer waiting until things are messy before they implement proper processes and technologies. They want things clean out of the gate, and these smaller departments need to scale. They don’t have the bodies to throw at the work like larger departments,” said Corey.

Thanks to the success of this event, ETL, Monica and Stephanie will be hosting a similar panel discussion and roundtable in the South Bay in the early spring. Stay tuned for details!

Interested in hearing more about the event? Check out Logikcull’s recap.