Legalweek 2025 Session Recap

While ‘Digital Transformation’ can mean many things to an organisation, it’s clear that legal departments can play a large role in driving this change. This was the topic of focus at the Legalweek 2025 panel session, “Digital Transformation: Legal Teams As Catalysts for Business Value,” moderated by Zach Hutto, Senior Director, Legal Operations Consulting at Epiq, and featuring the following panelists:

• Jessica McDonald, XPO’s Manager of Legal Operations
• Gregory Harvey, Senior Counsel, Data Privacy and Cybersecurity at National Grid

What Does Digital Transformation Mean to You? 

Gregory Harvey remarked that it's all about connectivity. To Harvey, a digital transformation initiative’s purpose is to share knowledge and optimise it for the legal department and organisation at large — and ultimately, to bring people together.

For Jessica McDonald, it’s about implementing technology — encompassing systems of record — that optimises legal service delivery for internal clients. 

Building on these definitions, the panel agreed that a natural ‘first focus’ opportunity for digital transformation initiatives is spend with Outside Counsel and evaluating payment structures, as it can often produce the most visible outcomes and improvements. A second opportunity to drive process improvements are workflow automations that better connect legal and business, mitigate risk, and handle large work volumes.

Addressing Misconceptions and Building Relationships

Digital transformation in legal departments is not without its challenges. Misconceptions and apprehensions about technology replacing jobs or the complexity of new tools can hinder progress. The panel discussed the importance of having early conversations with stakeholders to understand their pain points and address these fears. Legal teams should focus on building relationships within the organisation, understanding the language of different business units, and adjusting communication styles accordingly. When selling the value of digital transformation initiatives, it’s critical to not only be clear on what’s in it for corporate legal departments and organisations, but also the individual stakeholders who are being asked to buy into this change. 

From Cost Centre to Serving Value

Effective digital transformations have the potential of evolving organisations’ perceptions of legal departments being merely a cost centre, to a function that contributes significant value. However, as the panel discussed, it hinges on several key strategies. Legal teams need to understand their business’ operations and demonstrate this knowledge effectively. By immersing themselves in the daily activities and strategic goals of the organisation, legal teams can create workflows that impact everyone positively. McDonald articulated that having a thorough understanding of the business and demonstrating that knowledge helps to integrate legal into the organisation.

Harvey further emphasised that to change the perception of ‘getting approval from legal’ to being seen as ‘collaborators,’ legal should be seen as a key contributor to building products. This change in perception can be achieved by actively participating in product development and offering legal insights that drive innovation and mitigate risks.

Legal professionals can enhance their value by effectively marketing their services and highlighting the advantages they bring to various business challenges. Harvey pointed out that lawyers can be good at marketing their services but could be better at marketing themselves in terms of the value they can bring to a challenge. By aligning their objectives with the company's public projections and investor expectations, as McDonald suggests, legal teams can reinforce their role as integral contributors to the organisation's success.

Measuring Impact and Adoption

Legal departments can quantify the impact of digital transformation initiatives using metrics that go beyond traditional volume metrics. McDonald emphasises the use of dashboards ingesting data from various sources, which tell the story of what we’re seeing in these data trends. Harvey highlighted how his organisation measures usage level and adoption metrics, comparing groups who are and are not using technology, and then looking at the corresponding volume metrics in that context. Zack Hutto pointed out the importance of new tools and metrics impacting traditional volume projections, such as how many early course corrections were made that ultimately impacted the volume projection.

Legal teams have the potential to be powerful in driving business value through digital transformation initiatives. By minimising risk, embracing opportunities, and demonstrating their value, legal departments can contribute significantly to the organisation's success. 

Learn more about Epiq Legal Transformation Services.