Extract from Sean Zacharia’s article, “Stop Asking for ROI, Start Asking for Mission Impact.”
I recently presented at a NAAG eDiscovery webinar on moving AI from pilot to practice inside state Attorney General offices. The session covered the operational groundwork: data and governance foundations, policy development, defensibility, and chain-of-custody requirements.
Nearly every follow-up question I’ve received since has come from attorneys and litigation support staff who have a use case, have run a pilot, and cannot get past the ROI question.
I spent years inside a state AG office before joining Relativity, first as a senior legal analyst and then as the e-discovery program manager at the California DOJ. I’ve been on both sides of the budget request for AI initiatives: building the case, and later, weighing whether to approve one.
The reason I’ve seen most AG-office AI initiatives stall isn’t a weak business case. It’s that we’re asking our people the wrong question.
