Episode 211: Future 50 Series - GenAI and Legal Ops - What’s next?

In many respects, generative AI has impacted few roles as directly as legal operations. These professionals sit at the epicentre of tech experimentation, deployment, adoption, evaluation and change. As the tech has evolved, so too has their role to right now, being part tech interpreter, teacher, multidisciplinary relationship builder, enterprise-wide and legal function collaborator, and connector. That’s been layered into what they have always done, practical problem solving to ensure the legal department responds to organisational needs with timely, measured, candid and practical solutions for the day-to-day business at hand.

With GenAI, some of the problems are new and/or have become more complex. Solutions have had to evolve as the tech has evolved at an unprecedented pace, scale, and level of pervasive impact not seen before. And, old issues have also remained and have changed too like corporate responsibilities for data governance, privacy, ethics, cybersecurity, all culminating in an expanding portfolio of compliance and risk management.

We discussed all of this and much more with CLOC Australia’s co-leads: Katrina Gowans, Legal Operations Professional; Anna Golovsky, Executive Manager Legal and Company Secretariat Operations, IAG; and Matt Duncan, Legal Operations, Australian Retirement Trust. In addition to their thoughts on the topics above, their passion for their work and for the community that CLOC has created globally and locally was clear. In their view the big impact of GenAI on the legal ops role is one of expansion – more opportunities to support, assist, and connect legal to what is happening in our ecosystem but also to the critical and changing role of legal departments within their own companies. There is a discernible opportunity, identified in this discussion, for digitally literate professionals with human skills in influencing, persuasion, adaptability, flexibility, relationship building and more than anything else, curiosity, to join and enhance a career in legal ops.

We concluded our chat with a preview of what those curious professionals can expect from two CLOC Australia amazing events in Sydney in August 2025:

• CLOC Academy (19 August) for new and immediate next level legal ops professionals – you’ll find registration details here; and 

• CLOC Australia Summit 2025 (20 August) for everyone interested and working in legal ops – you’ll find registration details here.

If you want a glimpse into how GenAI is impacting legal ops today and in the future, you’ll want to spend a little time listening to this podcast or watching the video – you’ll find the video here.

 

About the Future 50 Series

In the Future 50 Series we’re chatting with legalpreneurs who, through their ideas and actions, are challenging and transforming legal BAU all around the world.

If you would like to recommend people for this Series, please contact us at: CLI@collaw.edu.au.