Extract from Trudy Knockless’s article, “Legal Ops Has a New AI Mandate: Show the Money.”
For Alyse Wilkinson, senior director and certified risk manager at WSP, ROI has to speak the language of the business. She said her team used AI prompts to help the CFO find legal spend data more quickly.
Legal departments are no longer being asked whether they are using AI—they are being asked what it is saving, what it is improving and whether anyone is actually using it.
That was the overarching message across several sessions at the CLOC Global Institute in Chicago earlier this month, where legal operations leaders said the next phase of AI adoption is less about experimentation and more about proof: measurable savings, cleaner data, stronger adoption and better conversations with finance and outside counsel.
During a Thomson Reuters session on proving ROI from legal AI, speakers said CFOs are not especially interested in broad promises about efficiency. They want numbers.
