How to Overcome Resistance to AI in Legal Ops

Legal ops professionals eager to implement AI (artificial intelligence) into their legal departments often face varying degrees of hesitancy and resistance within their organizations. Learning how to overcome resistance to AI factored into the discussion at the most recent CLOC Global Institute (CGI) held in Las Vegas.

At the May event, legal ops leaders suggested different strategies to help alleviate strain and get their legal departments on board with using new tools. Their tips ranged from hosting TED-style talks with co-workers to fostering champion groups and encouraging people to try using ChatGPT in their personal lives before asking them to incorporate the technology into their work.

Here’s a recap of their tips:

Developing super simple use cases for demo purposes

Ashley John, Head of Legal Operations at Anglo American, underscored the significance of crafting simple use cases as curiosity experiments, devoid of consequences, to instill a habit of exploring AI’s potential.

“It was chuck something in here, it’ll take 10 paragraphs into two sentences. What you do with it after that doesn’t matter,” John explained. “We just want to get you into this habit of thinking about what these things can do for us, without thinking about the big picture, downside risks, data privacy, the natural risk tendencies that come through.”

Hosting innovation forums

Sheila Dusseau, Head of Global CLO Operations and Innovation at Ferring Pharmaceuticals, said her company launched TED-style innovation forums for people to share and celebrate their technological discoveries and spur conversation and engagement.

“One of the examples was super simple. Somebody used GPT to write all their performance reviews for their team—something we hate to take the time to do, so tough,” Dusseau said. “This person just [did it in] five minutes.”

Encouraging people to use AI in their personal lives first

Jessica Jones Escalera, Head of Legal Operations-Americas at HSBC, talked about the benefits of encouraging people to use the new technology in their personal lives before attempting to deploy it in a professional context.

“One of the things that I’ve found effective is giving people, especially if you’ve got a more restrictive environment where they’re not letting you use it in the work environment, giving people ideas about how they can use it in their personal lives. I use it to make recipes when I’m bored…I just tell it what’s in my fridge with the little speaker thing and then it’ll tell me what to make,” Jones said.

“So, giving people ideas on how they can use it maybe outside of work is a really good way to get people trying it out.”

 Getting everyone involved

Mike Haven, Head of Global Legal Operations at Intel, stressed the importance of taking an inclusive approach.

“We’re starting with emotional intelligence and going out into the department and asking people: ‘What problems do you think you can solve in your teams, in your workflows that can leverage Generative AI?’ And we’re getting their ideas and we’re including them and they’re going to be involved in their experiments,” Haven said.

“And so, it’s really about bringing everybody we can on the bus for this massive transition that we’re in the middle of right now, and making sure that we understand where they’re coming from and the problems that they want to solve.”

Finding your champion groups

Jenn McCarron, President of CLOC (Corporate Legal Operations Consortium), talked about the importance of finding champion groups and leveraging that success in the quest to win over the holdouts.

“You find your champion groups. It’s usually your Silicon Valley-based or your tech products, legal groups who are like: ‘Just bring it’ and almost move down the list from them. They’re in quick, “McCarron explained.

“You have to surround the difficult group. And then by sheer competitive nature, in FOMO, say ‘Well, everyone else was using it.’ And that sometimes starts to pull in the stragglers at the end of not wanting to be left out or put on the list of, well they don’t want to innovate. Nobody wants to be on that list at work. But you have to start with the easy ones and use that for momentum.”

Read more about McCarron’s vision for CLOC and the future of legal ops in our exclusive two-part interview. Read part one here and part two here.