The Slow Pace of Change in Big Law
The roundtable opened with a stark admission. All attendees agreed that Big Law remains up to 20 years behind modern industries, presenting significant structural challenges for transformation.
What's Slowing Firms Down?
- Deep reliance on institutional knowledge
- A 12-month onboarding curve for new hires
- Extremely low attrition rates (<2%)
The Pros and Cons
This low turnover was described as both a strength and a barrier; culturally beneficial yet limiting the injection of new ideas, as noted by participants from Skadden.
The necessity of welcoming new skills and enabling healthy talent renewal was stressed. As HHR (Hughes Hubbard & Reed) highlighted, change becomes impossible without fresh perspectives. To resolve the latency, the buck stops with technology leadership.
All attendees reinforced the point that evolution is a technology leadership mandate; as Norton Rose Fulbright’s CIO, Alexis Collins, pointed out, transformation must begin with leadership standards and talent expectations. Additionally, attendees from Simpson Thacher described the positive impact of assembling a new leadership team in only four months to accelerate change.
Leadership Accountability & Talent Development
Clearer performance accountability was positioned as a cornerstone for modernizing technology organizations.
A “baseball card” model, focused on metrics and value delivered, was shared as an effective tool for creating visibility and consistency across roles, as evidenced by attendees from DLA Piper. This prompted a wider discussion about scaling accountability across firms. Participants agreed that firm-wide OKRs are essential to elevating performance expectations, supported by HHR leaders’ argument that Executive Committee sponsorship is essential to truly empower teams.
The principle that “no one is indispensable” was raised to reinforce the idea that decisions must be made in the best interest of the firm, even when they involve difficult calls. Development of high-potential leaders was also a key theme, with the group noting that CIOs must often prepare rising talent to grow, even if opportunities ultimately take them outside the firm.
C-Suite Collaboration as a Prerequisite for CIO Success
Strong alignment with senior business stakeholders was cited as a defining factor in technology transformation. The most effective measures of CIO impact are close ties with finance and other C-suite partners, as demonstrated at Spencer Fane, where proactive engagement with the CFO was able to partner with the CIO to accelerate data-related decision-making.
Leaders need to be strategic about their communications around transformation. The panel described planting “small seeds” of transformation with influential stakeholders as the most effective practical strategy to build readiness and shorten approval cycles. The group aligned with the provocative assertion that CIOs increasingly act as de facto operators of the firm, even if this role is not yet fully recognized internally.
Technology Awareness, Rationalization & UX Improvement
Across the board, there was a call to raise organizational technology fluency in order to streamline tools and reduce duplication of systems and work. DLA Piper shared a case study around the impact of this, where internal efforts to improve technology awareness led to:
- System and vendor rationalization
- Reduced duplication
- Better user experience
- Increased buy-in for future investment
The takeaway: technology awareness drives adoption, and adoption drives transformation.
AI Adoption, Data Quality & Firmwide Engagement
Naturally, AI emerged as one of the most energized topics of the session, prompting in-depth conversation around four key topics:
- Use-Case Identification & Collaborative Governance
- Technology Teams Coding Time
- Experimentation & Cultural Buy-In
- Data as the Foundation
Use-Case Identification & Collaborative Governance
A structured, practice-aligned approach to AI was described as best practice, with Foley Hoag illustrating success through:
- Use-case discovery
- Practice-group experimentation
- Cross-firm participation
- An AI Excellence Committee to maintain engagement and momentum
Participants widely supported this inclusive, cross-functional model.
Technology Teams Coding Time
Technology teams increasingly coding time was noted as a growing trend, as seen at Norton Rose Fulbright and mirrored at DLA Piper, indicating a shift toward greater hands-on capability in modern legal tech organizations.
Experimentation & Cultural Buy-In
Firmwide engagement techniques (such as a Microsoft Promptathon) were shared as effective ways of building awareness, confidence, and enthusiasm around AI adoption.
Data as the Foundation
The group repeatedly returned to data quality as the central determinant of AI success. As articulated by DLA Piper: Bad data = bad AI.
