Feeling “RECHARGED” After The CLOC Global Institute 2024

Last week, Mark Redmayne and I had the privilege of attending the CLOC Global Institute Conference in Las Vegas. This year’s theme, “RECHARGE,” focused on transformation as the legal ops world undergoes many changes, especially around the introduction of Generative AI. Organizations and law firms are beginning to reimagine legal operations workflows with the incorporation of this new technology.

There were a number of discussions on where to start, how to deal with change management, and whether you need to revamp your technology stack at all. Many were sharing ideas and use cases to teach attendees about GenAI and how they could potentially use it. Since it’s still so new, these topics and conversations will continue to evolve, and we can’t wait for next year’s CLOC to continue these discussions.

Below, we have recapped some of the sessions we attended and the key takeaways. Our goal is to share a summary of the valuable insights gathered from the event, shedding light on the exciting developments and discussions shaping the future of the legal industry.

• Managing Outside Counsel & Litigation Spend – Corporate in-house litigation teams are internalizing workflows to reduce costs downstream. They’re doing this by leveraging automation technology and implementing playbooks (i.e. eDiscovery) and policies (i.e. legal hold and retention). In addition, 24% of corporate clients are reducing the number of law firms with whom they work and 50% are shifting towards lower-cost outside counsel.
• Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) – AI is being used to boost DEIB across the legal ecosystem. To name a few, this technology can be used to mitigate bias in hiring and promoting underrepresented groups, remove identifying information of candidates before human review, and have translation services to improve cross-cultural collaboration.
• AI Advantage: Efficiency & Risk Reduction – AI is being used for document generation, self-updating, data validation, and cleansing. The goal is to enhance efficiency, mitigate risks, and reduce human error.
• Deploying Generative AI – Being strategic about where you will begin is key. You can get started by educating yourself and learning the types of data that AI tools will leverage. You can also focus on change management by creating training programs, generating buy-in, and continuously evaluating the efficacy of available tools and software.
• Legal Gen AI: 1 Year Later – Live Audience Poll
  • 72% polled said GenAI will not affect hiring plans in the short term
  • 65% said about 0-25% more work will be in-sourced as a result of GenAI
  • 44% said GenAI will lower the hourly rate for routine work while increasing the hourly rate for more specialized work
  • 30% said they are using Microsoft CoPilot as an introduction to GenAI

Overall, it was exciting and inspiring to hear from the wide variety of experts and to share thoughts and views with our legal community. For those of you we connected with, it was great to see you! For those that couldn’t make it, we recommend joining us for the next one. We’ll see you then!