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The evolution of corporate legal operations has reached an inflection point. Today's legal ops professionals are transforming from cost managers to strategic innovators, leveraging AI and data to reshape how legal work gets done. CLOC Global Institute 2025 captured this sea change through sessions that highlighted new operational models, technology integration strategies, and evolving skill sets required for success in the modern legal department.

The vLex team was thrilled to attend this year's conference with its inspiring theme of "Open New Doors." Throughout the event, we witnessed legal ops professionals eagerly exploring how AI and other technologies can unlock new possibilities for their departments and organizations.

Below, we explore four critical themes that dominated discussions at CLOC 2025: (1) the power of collaborative innovation between legal departments and their partners, (2) real-world GenAI applications delivering tangible results, (3) art of data storytelling to drive strategic decision-making, and (4) the enduring importance of human creativity and communication in an increasingly automated world.

Collaboration is King: Insights from Kirkland & Ellis

Rachel Dooley, Chief Innovation Officer of Kirkland & Ellis, delivered one of the most impactful presentations of the conference during the "This Time Really is Different, Finally" panel, making it clear that in a rapidly evolving legal landscape, collaboration has become the cornerstone of successful innovation.

"Collaboration is king," Rachel emphasized during her session exploring AI-driven evolution in the legal industry alongside experts from Ford Motor Company, Microsoft, and LexFusion. She advocated for co-designed innovation that aims to "show value in terms clients care about and can contribute," focusing on "speed to impact, clarity in focus and application, predictability in scope and spend, and measurable business utility."

This collaborative approach acknowledges what legal operations professionals have known for years—that success depends on shared vision, joint knowledge investment, and clearly defined outcomes. As Rachel noted, "The best stories start with co-designed roadmaps and clear pilots—think AI Test Kitchens..."

What makes this perspective particularly valuable is Rachel’s acknowledgment of the challenges. "Even the best run and highest performing organizations face cultural resistance and structural drag," she observed, reminding attendees that "innovation, like respect, is earned and not mandated." This resonated deeply with legal operations professionals wrestling with change management in their own organizations.

Perhaps most thought-provoking was Rachel’s introduction of "Lumiere's Law": "Using a transformative technology or development without transforming the application typically results in a failure to reach true potential." This principle serves as a reminder that merely adopting AI tools without rethinking how legal work gets done will limit their impact—a crucial insight for legal ops professionals leading technology initiatives.

Real-World GenAI Applications: Evan Shenkman's Practical Approach

While theoretical discussions about AI's potential value abound, Evan Shenkman, Chief Knowledge and Innovation Officer at Fisher Phillips, cut through the speculation by focusing on concrete, practical applications delivering results today.

During his session on "Harnessing GenAI: Transforming Law Firm Collaboration for Corporate Legal Success," Evan highlighted how his team is using GenAI in ways that directly impact client service. Alongside speakers from Litera, Synopsys, and Vercel, he explored how corporate legal departments can effectively manage law firms in the age of AI. "Across the legal industry, many are still struggling to find practical applications for GenAI—which is a shame, because the opportunities are already here," Evan noted in his own LinkedIn post after the panel.

Among the real-world use cases Evan shared were using GenAI to:

• Review approximately 5,000 agreements to identify signatories, signature types, and other key details—work that would have taken a week manually but was completed in a fraction of the time with AI
• Generate detailed case assessments within moments of new matters being filed
• Predict case outcomes based on past experience
• Surface real-time insights during depositions

When discussing ROI for GenAI from the law firm perspective, Evan posed a simple but profound question: "Is it making us better lawyers?" From his perspective, this is one of the most important questions to answer, because if GenAI is making lawyers better at their jobs, it means better legal services delivery and outcomes for clients.

This focus on practical applications and tangible improvements to service delivery offers a valuable model for legal operations professionals. Rather than getting caught up in the hype cycle, Evan’s approach demonstrates how AI can be applied strategically to address specific pain points and deliver measurable wins and value to clients.

Data Storytelling: How Numbers Are Reshaping Legal Service Delivery

The conference highlighted how data is becoming central not just to legal operations decisions but to the compelling narratives legal departments need to tell to drive change.

In a particularly eye-opening session, Brad Blickstein, CEO of Blickstein Group, shared findings from the 17th Annual Law Department Operations Survey during the "NetDocuments Solution Lab on Leveraging Generative AI for Efficient Legal Operations and Data Management." His research revealed a statistic that should serve as a wake-up call for law firms: "More than 85% of legal operations professionals either 'strongly agree' or 'mostly agree' that GenAI will enable them to bring more work in-house."

This statistic illustrates how AI is accelerating the long-standing trend toward insourcing legal work. During the solution lab, Brad also provided valuable insights into insourcing expectations, responsibility structures for managing GenAI tools, and the priorities driving AI strategy across legal departments. What made his presentation particularly valuable was not just the raw data, but how it was framed to tell a compelling story about the changing dynamics between corporate legal departments and their outside counsel.

The power of narrative-driven data was a recurring theme across multiple sessions. During the panel "Presenting Data that Compels: How to Present Legal Data to Leadership," Brittany Leonard, General Counsel & Assistant Secretary of the Board of Civix, articulated this perfectly: "People are convinced by storytelling. You are going to get buy in from leadership if you can tell the story you need with data... Storytelling moves emotions, emotions move people, and people move things forward." This insight spoke directly to legal ops professionals seeking not just to collect metrics, but to transform them into strategic narratives that drive business decisions.

The conference made clear that in the age of GenAI, success for legal operations professionals will depend not only on having the right data but on crafting compelling narratives that illustrate the value and impact of their work to stakeholders throughout the organization.

The Human Element: Communication and Creativity

Despite the focus on technology, a consistent theme throughout the conference was the continuing importance of human skills—particularly communication and creativity—in legal operations.

In the closing keynote, Irene Liu, Founder of Hypergrowth GC, offered a twist on the classic sales acronym ABC ("Always Be Closing"): "Always Be Communicating." Drawing from her experience as a General Counsel, Irene emphasized that "GCs need legal ops to communicate the value of the legal department to the rest of the business."

Irene shared a framework for showcasing value:

• Activate
• Benchmark
• Communicate

She closed by highlighting that "Legal is not just a cost center, but a partner to drive the business forward"—a message that resonated with legal operations professionals seeking to demonstrate their strategic value.

This focus on communication was complemented by Jenn McCarron, President of CLOC, who spoke about creativity as a critical differentiator in the age of AI during the opening session.

"There is no such thing as bad creativity,” said Jenn. “There is only creativity and nothingness... Creativity is our secret weapon. Creativity is the antidote. It's how we imagine new possibilities when things feel stuck. It's how we make ourselves indispensable in the age of AI."

Coming Together as a Community

Beyond the panels and presentations, perhaps the most valuable aspect of CLOC Global Institute 2025 was the opportunity to come together as a community. For the vLex team, it was a chance to connect face-to-face with legal operations professionals, strengthening relationships and gaining deeper insight into the challenges they face.

These personal connections remind us what legal technology is ultimately about: empowering people to do meaningful work more effectively. Whether discussing specific use cases, exploring emerging trends, or simply sharing experiences over a meal, these moments of human connection ground our work in the real needs and experiences of legal ops professionals.

As legal operations continues to evolve at the intersection of law, technology, and business, events like CLOC Global Institute provide vital opportunities to learn, share, and grow together. We're excited to continue these conversations and to keep evolving our solutions to meet the changing needs of legal operations professionals worldwide.

Want to see how AI engineered specifically for legal operations can help your team work more effectively and demonstrate greater value to the business? Book a demo to discover how Vincent AI can transform your legal department.

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Authored By

Jeff Cox