Extract from Valerie Chan and Stacie Morris’s article “The Legal Industry’s AI Reckoning: Why Efficiency Alone Isn’t Enough”
Generative AI (Gen AI) has become the hottest topic and trend in legal industry discourse, dominating conference agendas, driving executive roundtables, and saturating vendor websites with promises of transformation. Yet for most general counsel (GCs) and law firm attorneys, the live experience remains far less dramatic: legal teams are still wrestling with disorganized data, outdated workflows, and deeply entrenched cultural norms. The reality is that technology alone does not create transformation; it is merely the catalyst. And at this point in the game, gen AI is still an early adoption promise.
Having spent time as in-house counsel and in law firms, plus two decades guiding technology companies from their earliest pitch decks through successful acquisitions and IPOs, I have learned that software on its own cannot re-architect a business model. The market leaders in the legal industry are taking a holistic approach, prioritizing strategic clarity and change management to support the emerging technologies. They understand that the winners in legal tech not only have to build extraordinary tools but must also show their clients how to adopt and translate the technology potential into measurable business outcomes.
