Nicole Zafian Talks About What to Expect at the 2026 CLOC Global Institute

In this interview, Nicole Zafian of the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC) talks about the upcoming CLOC Global Institute, which will run in Chicago May 11-14. This year’s edition will feature 85 sessions and 200 speakers covering a wide range of topics relevant to legal ops leaders. Early-bird registration is open here.

Our first question is for legal operations professionals who may be newer to the community. How would you describe the CLOC Global Institute and how is it different from other industry events?

Nicole Zafian: The Global Institute is the largest and I would say the most influential gathering of legal operations professionals. We have a very diverse attendee base from all over the world. All of them bring unique perspectives and contributions to the sessions. It’s also a great place to bring the community together. At work, people can sometimes feel like they’re on an island. This is a great place for them to come together with their peers and learn and understand each other’s challenges.

This year’s theme is “Stronger by Design”. What does that mean in practical terms for legal ops leaders who are navigating an increasingly complex environment with scrutiny and expectations?

Nicole Zafian: The focus is to move the profession from being reactive to intentional. To set a foundation to help them be more efficient and strategically aligned with legal departments as well as the broader enterprise. So, it’s not just something where you’re checking tasks off, but it’s meaningful tools, examples from your peers to help you build with confidence within your legal department.

What can you share about the programming this year and how does that reflect what legal ops professionals are actually dealing with right now?

Nicole Zafian: Over the past five years, we’ve shifted to this being for the community by the community. That means we work with thought leaders and our education advisory council to evaluate feedback, have an understanding of what people are experiencing in their day-to-day and then curate sessions that meet those practical and timely needs.

We’re also looking at what’s coming down in the future, what are general counsel worried about and looking to solve? We do an open call for proposals that invites everyone across the ecosystem community to submit proposals so that we have a good pool of experts and topics to go through and evaluate to put together a robust program.

Can you highlight any of the any of the themes, some of the things that are really standing out in the programming this year?

Nicole Zafian: Obviously AI. But, one of the things that we were thoughtful about this year was that we can’t just talk about AI in theory. We need to have practical skill-building around AI. Anything from prompt engineering to a strategic understanding of how to approach AI, particularly within your legal department. AI governance is a huge conversation right now in the community. People are looking at how do we even get started? We’re bringing in peers and general counsel that are already executing on a strategic plan.

Beyond AI, our community is always looking for that career development side of things, understanding how the profession is growing and changing, what skills legal departments are looking for. That’s another theme that we like to offer content in. Skills like executive communication. We want to give them use cases to help develop those skills, instead of just theoretically talking about what they should be thinking about.

In terms of formats, it seems like it was important for this edition of the event to really rethink formats and what works well for people in terms of the either the hands-on workshops or you know a fishbowl kind of discussion or a forum. How significant was that format issue in planning things out?

Nicole Zafian: We love that this community experiments with different learning styles. We’ve found some fun ways to infuse different formats. We have our quick-hitting eight-minute or less legal hacks that are focused on something like, “Here are three GenAI prompts that I learned to be effective for me when working with a chatbot?” That kind of quick-hitting content.

And then we also have those more extended workshops with in-depth exercises where we’re working on anything from their resume to actual prompt engineering skill sets.

With our peer-driven formats, it’s fun to see the community come together. We have topical-based community conversations where it’s less formal and they can come together share with each other around a specific topic.

And then we have our fishbowl discussions which we introduced last year. We weren’t sure how they would land, but people loved them and were engaged so we’re bringing more back. That usually focuses on a topic that has varying perspectives, varying opinions. We bring in a couple of people who have experience and differing visions around how certain things should be approached. They’ll start a conversation, but then there’s always an open chair at the front of the room where an audience member can join the conversation and share their input or even challenge or question the conversation.

So to wrap up this conversation, when attendees leave Chicago after CGI this year, what do you most want them to walk away with? What do you think is the biggest takeaway for this year’s event for legal ops leaders?

Nicole Zafian:  I would say that they feel a part of a bigger community that they can rely on and tap into. Also that they have practical tools that they can go back to their leaders, their general counsel and say here’s some benchmarks on what I was seeing and hearing at the conference, and here’s some things we can do now to be more efficient, more aligned with the organization’s strategic goals. So a combination of knowing that they have that community out there that they can tap into, but also having some focused conversations with their leaders on how they can take action.