As CLOC 2025 approaches, in-house legal leaders are bracing for a flood of insights, product demos, and strategic conversations centered on generative AI. With so much noise in the ecosystem—and real pressure to show progress—it can be difficult to know where to begin or how to evaluate what’s worth your time. The good news: you don’t need to figure it all out at once. Below are three practical considerations to help you cut through the buzz, avoid common missteps, and identify meaningful, manageable ways to move forward with GenAI.
Step One
Consider a whiteboarding session.
It seems like every part of the in-house role has a corresponding GenAI mountain to climb. Since joining Integreon, I’ve had in-house friends with clear directives to leverage GenAI who have inquired about the easiest way to get moving. Sorting out what is causing the legal team’s headaches and stealing valuable bandwidth can be tricky.
Bringing in a third-party team who is well versed in GenAI use cases to conduct a whiteboarding exercise can help you to get out of the blocks. This exercise will identify places where GenAI can be applied to improve processes, efficiency and save time/money.
Consider these common spots where GenAI has a proven track record:
- Commercial contracting process efficiency: playbook creation, automated template generation, redlining against standards, smart repositories, risk analysis, data migration, etc.
- Template harmonization and consistency of approval workflows.
- Third-party due diligence, conflicts, and other corporate compliance tasks.
- AI-assisted workflow for government/regulatory reporting or initial drafts of discovery responses.
This exercise can help you gain incredible insights relatively quickly by drawing from process expertise with real-world client experience, without undertaking a costly consulting project.
Step Two
Do look at the shiny new technology and understand the landscape, but don’t be blinded –consider whether your legal team needs to buy it to reap the benefits.
Don’t build tech—and in many cases, your legal team need not even license it directly. Why? Tech RFP processes are cumbersome and often lead to delays in using newer technologies. Ask yourself: Do I want to run the RFP, get stakeholder approval, and then deal with change management, training, and adoption? Do I really want to implement a solution, or do I just want the corresponding benefits?
Technology and GenAI solutions are strong and improving all the time, but they’re not actually magic. They’re more like a garden. Whatever the GenAI-enabled LegalTech solution, company data only becomes insightful once someone has provided the water and sunlight (namely, good data sets) on a continual basis. Nothing is static, and ALSPs are well-positioned to help you tend the garden and reap the benefits without undertaking a full implementation.
Step Three
Make sure each of your service partners are in the right lane for success.
At the end of the day, the goal is to lift the administrative burden so all parties within and supporting the legal department can be effective. Outside counsel has—and will always have—a critical place to provide needed expertise. Consultants, too, have an important place. Staffing providers can be an excellent resource for temporary help. And ALSPs have an increasingly unique and special lane by combining domain knowledge with process and technology experts to transform routine workloads.
The trick is ensuring that each type of partner is performing the correct work, for sensible rates. As we see law firms create captive ALSPs and staffing companies create captive law firms, the landscape is getting fuzzy. In my experience, law departments will be best served by delineating these swim lanes deliberately and carefully.
It’s an exciting time, to be certain. I’ll be at CLOC with my Integreon colleagues. Let’s meet and talk about the smartest way for you to begin.
Heading to CLOC 2025?
Integreon is helping legal teams reimagine operations with innovative, scalable solutions. If you’re attending, we’d love to connect and explore how we can support your goals.
Learn more or schedule a time to meet with us here.