Steve Harmon, the vice president of legal and deputy general counsel at Cisco Systems Inc. in San Jose, California, remembers his reluctance when his boss approached him 12 years ago about becoming a legal operations specialist. Harmon knew of no other lawyer in the country in a comparable role.

“My general counsel, Mark Chandler, was outspoken and progressive about it,” Harmon recalls. “It took some persuading on his part to convince me it was a viable career path.” Today Harmon is a co-founder and leader of the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium, and he notes that Chandler “has been proven right.”

CLOC's explosive growth over the past few years, from a small group—Harmon likened it to a “book club” five or so years ago—to a powerhouse of over 1,300 members in 2018, is a testament to just how right Chandler was. CLOC's expansion has been driven not only by rapid advancements in legal technology but also by corporations' desire to see legal departments run more like businesses.

The legal ops and tech frenzy also can be seen in the plethora of related conferences. No fewer than eight legal tech gatherings were scheduled for the fall of 2018. Most focus on the latest trends in e-discovery, e-billing and matter management.

But some will also explore visions for the future. Just imagine…

• A GC paces in her office, stymied by an urgent legal problem that requires input from other lawyers or legal ops specialists in disparate parts of the world. She speaks into her computer's microphone, “Get me Susan in London, and Lu in Singapore and Jose in Rio de Janeiro immediately.” Within minutes her smart computer has tracked the three down and put together an instant video conference.

• An in-house lawyer hears of his company's plans to attempt a major acquisition. He turns to his 5G-fast smartphone, goes to an open source platform with a legal services “store,” and downloads an app with a package of tools designed to guide every aspect of the deal.

• Told of a lawsuit in a distant jurisdiction, brought by a law firm he barely knows and before a judge he's never heard of, the CLO asks his staff for data immediately. Within 15 minutes he has an analysis of similar suits and their outcomes nationally, as well as in this specific jurisdiction, and before this exact judge, along with the success rate of this particular law firm.

The stuff of science fiction? Legal tech experts, including several at Silicon Valley tech companies, think not. These futuristic scenarios are likely to become realities by 2025, they told Corporate Counsel.

And there's more—experts predict legal departments in the near future will use contracts honed by artificial intelligence and housed on the blockchain. They anticipate tech packages that can analyze risks in a particular transaction, recommend new compliance efforts to meet global regulatory changes, or even suggest the best legal strategy for a case.

In fact, the International Anti-Corruption Academy scheduled a two-day seminar in September to explore how the blockchain, cryptocurrencies, artificial intelligence, and Big Data will reshape business models and regulatory compliance frameworks. One goal is to establish a “regtech” solution to regulatory change, one with continuous monitoring and adaptation.

Legal experts cite the potential for using high-speed, quantum computers—raising tech possibilities that could challenge even Jules Verne's imagination.

“There's going to be dramatic change in the law and in-house legal departments,” says William Mooz, co-founder and interim executive director of the Institute for the Future of Law Practice. The institute is a collaboration between law schools, law firms, corporate legal departments, NewLaw service providers, and legal technology companies.

“It's not like a light switch will suddenly click on,” says Mooz, a former deputy general counsel at Sun Microsystems. “There will be a shifting over time. Maybe you won't see it in two years, but it will be less than 10.”

What About the Lawyers?

Everyone has seen or read about driverless cars, cashierless checkout lanes and workerless assembly lines. So will there be lawyerless offices in the legal department in 2025? Will there even be a legal department?

Most experts agree companies will still need lawyers, their knowledge and their legal and business judgment. Companies will also need lawyers with skills to handle the new tech. Mooz and others say emerging technology is redefining the market for lawyers, especially at the beginner and midcareer level.

William Deckelman, executive vice president and general counsel of DXC Technology Inc., says yes, artificial intelligence, machine learning and data analytics will fundamentally change the practice of law, but human legal reasoning won't be usurped by machines for “a very long time,” if ever.

Deckelman, who notes his own legal department is in the “early stages” of digital transformation, says the future law department is as much about people changing as it is about new technology. “It will have a radically different look and feel from today's legal organizations, and will require professionals with 'double-deep' expertise and skills,” he explains.

The distinguishing characteristic of the new model “will be a lean, highly specialized, internal team—legal, contracts, and data and project/process management experts—managing an external network of legal service providers,” Deckelman predicts.

He envisions external providers as a networked community of independent contractors, serving up on-demand legal/tech support 24/7, on a project-by-project basis.

Deckelman says technology can help create a new, “agile” way of working for the law department that will mean less effort to achieve the same or better results in less time. Agile working, he explains, “optimizes for effectiveness and business value, based on a company's learnings from its data and people analytics studies.”

Ruairidh “Rory” Ross, deputy general counsel and head of legal ops at HP Inc., sees the goal as minimizing low-value work while maximizing quality, high-value work.

“As a manager, it's not without its challenges,” Ross says. “It's not just the hardware and the software, there's a lot of hard work” to choosing the right data to put into the system.

One key, he says, is to put the right people in the room. He says HP has found that putting a millennial or generation Xer alongside a veteran lawyer brings “a new and unexpected wave in approaching the work.” The millennial knows and welcomes the use of technology, Ross explains, while the veteran brings massive expertise and understanding of the business.

When Experts Converge

Ready or not, the changes are coming at an exponential rate. Swirling around and through the transformation of legal departments is a convergence happening in the broader industry. Three legal players—in-house counsel, law firms, and alternative legal service providers like Axiom, Elevate Services Inc. and UnitedLex—are mixing and matching people and services. Each group is jostling to become the dominant force in the industry.

Brian Kuhn, the global leader and co-founder of IBM Watson Legal, predicts an increasing number of law departments, law firms and tech companies will form ecosystem partnerships. “The most valuable knowledge that lawyers possess—their know-how and experience—is as difficult to capture for vendors as it is for law firms to develop technology,” he says. In-house counsel also bring an unparalleled understanding of their business that neither law firms nor vendors have.

Developments in the past year show the ecosystem trend is well underway:

• UnitedLex entered joint ventures with legal departments at DXC and the General Electric Co., as well as with the law firm LeClairRyan. In doing so, UnitedLex beefed up its staff by absorbing some of their lawyers.

• Lucy Bassli left her job in January as assistant general counsel at Microsoft Corp. to found InnoLegal Services, a law firm and consultancy on developing the law practice of the future in both law firms and in-house legal departments. She told ALM she wants to “really blur the lines between the practice of law and consulting on the related processes, resources and systems.”

• In July, Seal Software, which offers a platform for contract and other legal analyses, acquired Apogee Legal, an advanced analytics firm with more AI expertise. On Seal's platform they will market analytic “packs” of tools to solve corporate challenges with contracts, procurement, M&A, privacy laws and more.

• In a move that surprised the legal industry in June, David Cambria, long-time head of legal ops at Aon Corp. and then Archer Daniels Midland, joined Baker & McKenzie as the law firm's first global director of legal operations. In his first firm job, Cambria told The American Lawyer he will help the firm align its resources—people, processes and technology—to best serve the needs of the client.

In his Legal Evolution blog, legal ops guru William Henderson wrote about what Cambria's move symbolized for the legal industry's future. Henderson, a law professor at Indiana University, said he sees “three contenders to create the new paradigm for organizational clients.” The three are in-house legal departments, through legal ops and in-sourcing to its own talent; top law firms, by playing “their superior hand”; and NewLaw, with its technology, processes and data analysis. “Right now I see no clear winner,” Henderson concluded.

How to Get There

Ready or not, the future is rushing in. To survive and thrive in it, experts say in-house legal departments need to be integrating with the strengths of law firms and tech companies while developing their own people, culture, knowledge and skills as quickly as possible.

HP's Ross says the transformation is a journey, and legal departments need to build a roadmap—where are they now, where do they want to go, and what steps will they take to get there? He admits that HP's legal team does not have a full-scale tech roadmap yet. “I'd say we're probably better than par on the course,” he says. “But if you look at what could be done as technology improves, as we find the right culture to deliver these services, that's what is really exciting.”

Experts say there are several places to turn for guidance. Assistance in prepping the future law department can come from individual tech and ops gurus. For instance, there's Indiana law professor Henderson, who co-founded Lawyer Metrics, an applied research company aimed at helping attorneys use data.

CLOC is another oft-recommended place to turn, as is Mooz's Institute for the Future of Law Practice.

The institute provides educational “boot camps” for both law students and midcareer attorneys to immerse them in NewLaw. It also offers paid internships, mostly in corporate legal departments. The organization serves as a pipeline into a legal industry hungry for tech-skilled lawyers.

Then there's academia. At Northwestern University's Pritzker School of Law, professor James Lupo heads the Center for Practice Engagement and Innovation, a tech and business of law incubator. Among other actions, it has partnered with AI provider ROSS Intelligence to train students on how to use platforms relying on artificial intelligence.

One of Lupo's tasks is to take part in a series of conversations with some 200 lawyers, in-house counsel, legal recruiters and students to assess the future of the legal profession and what that means to legal education. He calls it strong “anecdatal” evidence.

Lupo says, “There's a growing sense that there's a greater need for legal services to be delivered in businesses in a way that is very sensitive to business needs.”

Because of that need, Lupo says, “Everything we are seeing is that the legal sector spend that traditionally went to Big Law firms has remained flat. But legal departments' internal spend has increased. Greater control and greater return on investment is driving [the trend].

“My guess is that trend is going to continue, coupled with the legal department's willingness to engage alternative and tech enabled service providers.”

IFLP's Mooz says the single biggest driver of change now is data. He notes, “In-house law departments have tremendous data assets flowing through their operations that they do not use to the fullest extent.”

He says the future legal department will need to completely integrate new technology throughout the business system and into every department—from manufacture, to sales, to delivery and everything in between. He adds that they should also collect data every step of the way “mining it like you would not believe.”

Mooz's advice: “I would be looking at how does the law department shift from one that is historically about risk management to one that places a higher emphasis on how to help the business, by obtaining relevant and actionable insights from the data coming through.”

Cisco's Harmon tends to agree. He sees in-house legal departments growing, at the expense of external legal providers, but with a change in the type of work being done. “There will be a much larger premium put on scalability and repeatability and customer friendliness,” Harmon says. “And the old days where lawyers could get away with simply being very adept at identifying issues and risks will be insufficient.”

Harmon says for years in-house lawyers have left legal tech responsibility up to support staff. “I don't think that's an option going forward,” he adds. “We as practitioners have to stay current on practice evolution trends and technology as much as we do on cases that govern the advice we give.”