Recorded live at the CLOC Global Institute (CGI) 2026, this episode of CLOC Talk features Mark Ross of Deloitte in conversation with Ari Kaplan, Founder of Ari Kaplan Advisors, for a timely discussion on the forces reshaping legal operations. Together, they unpack the latest trends in legal operations spending for 2026, explore how in-house legal teams and law firms are adapting to the rapid rise of generative AI and evolving pricing pressures, and share practical insights for navigating today's changing legal landscape. Ari also reveals the skills that will define the next generation of legal operations leaders—from relentless curiosity and strong business acumen to the ability to clearly demonstrate measurable ROI—making this a must-listen episode for anyone looking to stay ahead of what's next.

friend, Ari Kaplan, the Principal of Ari Kaplan Advisors, a Jedi Master of research impacting the legal profession. Great to see you, Ari. It's a privilege. Thanks so much for having me. Of course. And you and I were just chatting before the podcast about how long we've known each other, and it must be touching on 20 years now.

This is actually my 20th year of being on my own. You know, I practiced for nearly nine years, and now I've been on my own producing research and just sharing trends in the space for two decades. I know. And again, incredibly valuable, and I know I've relied on your research many times over the years. Of course, we'll get onto your area of expertise in a moment, but I wanted to touch on, first of all, you're also famous for your 5K runs.

It was Chicago, late in the fall. It was dark early in the morning, and I just asked some peers who I was on a prep call with for a speaking session, "Does anybody wanna go running with me on the second day of the conference?" And they all started laughing. And I said, "Well, would you consider adding it as an option and maybe someone will join me?"

And I came down that day, and there were something like 30 people waiting on the steps- Wow ... of the hotel, and I knew it was a thing. And it was amazing, and actually I had a friend, uh, my friend Alex, who had passed away- Okay ... a few months before from lung cancer- That's awful ... was a runner. And I started making a donation in honor of all the runners and walkers- Fantastic

and in memory of my friend Alex to the Lung Cancer Foundation of America, and I've been doing that now... It's been eight years, and it's a privilege. And I always remind people- We're just so lucky to just be up in the morning, and it's almost always beautiful. These last two days, beautiful weather. Colder than I thought- Okay

but beautiful, and to run along the lake in Chicago with friends, chatting, it's just, there's nothing better. And are you out again tomorrow morning, or is it just two days? Tomorrow I'm actually hosting one of my Legal Tech Mafia breakfasts in Chicago, so I won't be running. Okay. Well, I am gonna hopefully not regret this.

I'm gonna give you my word, Ari, and it's on camera. It w- The next event that we're at together, I will join you on- You've heard him. You've heard him, people ... I will j- I will join you on the run. Although I do get a lot of, "Hey, I'm sorry I missed your run today." And I say, "Oh, actually it's tomorrow." And then people say, "Oh, I'm sorry I missed your run tomorrow."

How did it all go down? This was such a lucky opportunity. I was able to facilitate a conversation with Alex Gao- Okay ... who's senior director of legal operations at Hilton- Yep ... and also a Clock board member, and Julio Sanchez, who's the new head of pricing at Venable. Yep. So we had the corporate legal perspective, the law firm perspective, and it was very cordial.

What I'm really seeing is that the clients and their counsel are very much trying to find some kind of equilibrium. There is a shift happening, and we are in a disruptive state, but the law firms are servicing the clients in the best way that they can- Yep ... as they always have. And the clients, while they recognize there's an evolution happening, need their law firms for risk management, for talent, for expertise, and they recognize that there needs to be a way through what's happening now.

And so we talked about things like how is pricing affecting who serves on which teams? Okay. Are you using alternative fees? What is the extent to which you're trusting alternative legal services providers for certain kinds of projects? Yep. What does the work that a law firm is doing indicate about the relationship?

Yep. And Alex was sharing some thoughts on where pricing and the financing of outside counsel is elevating what in-house legal operations teams are doing, their profile, and- Julio was also talking about how law firms are trying to be more creative to serve their clients. So it was a really engaging panel, and I felt very fortunate and thankful to Clock that they gave me the chance to talk about it.

Sounds fantastic. And a lot of the issues that you bring up there are disruptive forces that have been around for a number of years now. The 800-pound gorilla now is, of course, Gen AI and agentic solutions. How aggressive Do you think clients, in-house legal, legal operations professionals are being in mandating that they start to see benefits from their outside counsel's leverage of those tools, and that those benefits ultimately need to result in lower costs?

Is your research backing that up? How aggressive are in-house being today? We've been seeing this exploratory phase over the last couple of years, uncertainty, outside counsel guidelines, and retainer letters kind of being out of sync where the law firm is saying, "Hey, we're using these tools." Outside counsel guidelines saying, "We don't want you to use these tools," or, "You can use these tools on these types of matters."

So some people have described it as there's sort of this schizophrenic policymaking. Okay. And it comes up, and it doesn't come up. You can use it here but not here. It's very difficult to ensure compliance with where you're allowed to use these tools. But we're settling now where outside counsel are increasingly sophisticated.

Yeah. And we saw this, you and I know, all the way dating back to the early days of e-discovery- Yeah ... where law firms had an advantage, and then clients really developed an advantage, and then they were both speaking the same language, and they can have a conversation, and that really normalized. I mean, we're probably at a good state of equilibrium there, where clients know what they can handle, and they know what they need to rely on someone outside, maybe their law firm- Yeah

maybe an expert provider, maybe technology, and that's what's happening with AI. What you are really seeing now is an agreement on the stratification of work. You know that there's certain work that organizations realize we can do this pretty well ourselves- Yeah ... with generative AI or another tool. The law firm really should be doing this kind of work because of their expertise, because of their judgment, because of the trust we've placed in them, and where can we attack this together?

So again, real opportunity for collaboration, especially in areas where there's true understanding of who does what best. I love the glass is half full, and I would concur completely that we've been at that equilibrium position, as you say, in the world of e-discovery, litigation, forensics for a number of years now.

I think it's a journey with generative AI, and I think the expectations on outside counsel to deliver hard dollar savings by their leverage of the tools. I'm definitely seeing a trend of in-house pulling work in, unquestionably an expectation that alternative legal services providers bring these technologies into their legal managed services that they're bringing to in-house counsel.

But I'm also seeing that, yes, we believe that this bucket of work should still be delivered by outside counsel. But it's not a carte blanche for them to do that in the old traditional way. Clients are still expecting that they bring efficiencies to the delivery of that bucket of work that stays within the remit of outside counsel.

Is your research backing that up? Yes, I think that we are entering an era of law firms figuring out how to better delight their clients, and so finding ways to use these tools to add value that otherwise wasn't available or they didn't have time for, and be more thoughtful about the business and how some of their work could influence the trajectory of the success of their clients.

And the clients will really appreciate that. I mean, they ultimately are willing to pay for legal services. Yeah. They are- Yeah ... certainly mindful of how expensive legal services have become, but they're not discounting the fact that those legal services are essential- Yeah ... for them to run their business.

Law firms at the same time recognize that they do quite well, that they're lucky to get this work, and that they themselves are facing competition from their peers. So the competitive advantage is gonna be found in using the technology to be value-added providers, to be true partners. Every time, as you know, I do a annual report called the- Yep

eDiscovery Unfiltered report. This is the 12th year that I'm publishing it. Oh, wow. I know. And I always ask, "What are the qualities that matter most? When you're choosing a provider, working with a provider, what really matters most?" And it's always fundamental traits. It's not being super innovative and transforming everything, it's being a partner.

Yep. Being transparent. If there's an error or a mistake, which there almost always has to be if you're moving quickly, own it, and work with me on how we better serve. And that will just be amplified with technology, 'cause we're only working faster. Yeah. So we're facing this period of breaking some things along the way, but that allowing us to be smarter and work faster and be better.

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I'm gonna pick up off two words that you used and give you one final question, Ari, on a topic that's really close to my heart. You talked about fundamental traits. We think about the fundamental traits that this audience, legal operations professionals today need I hesitate to call us veterans in this space.

It's less incumbent on you and I to retrain thinking about 20, 30 years into the future, 'cause candidly, that's gonna be for the next generation. But as you talk to people on the floor, if you talk to legal operations professionals, you've researched the market, what are some of the skill sets, the traits that the professionals today and tomorrow are gonna need to have long, thriving, successful careers in this industry that we both love?

to come in and help them run the law department more like a business. And so at the time, business acumen was essential. It was so important to understand metrics and analytics, and to really be able to create processes around what was happening in the law department. Then it became much more technological.

Yeah. Technology became a huge part of this, contract management, and we saw these different trends evolve over the years. You and I have been coming to CLOC for a long time, when it was at the Bellagio, then the Aria, now here in Chicago. And what you're seeing now from a trait, and you mentioned we don't necessarily need to teach ourselves as much, but this curiosity of learning- Yes

is paramount. And I myself have been trying to use as many tools as I can to experiment. Do I like when the tool drafts? I don't know that I like that, because then I ended up paying what a lot of general counsel call the validation tax. I rapidly create something, and then I spend endless amounts of time making sure that what's been created is correct.

Instead, I have been trying to use it to organize, or as a sparring partner, as a peer who's capable of challenging me or highlighting some things that I think might be valuable to include. And when operations professionals do that, they themselves start to showcase their talent and ability. The one challenge that I feel like a lot of members of this community have shared with me in my research is showing ROI of what legal operations leaders do has been challenging.

Yeah. 'Cause much of it is in cost avoidance. It's not necessarily showing some ROI, and that conversation is something that I've been really focused on. What's the ROI of what you're doing? What's the ROI of the investments that you're making in technology, especially in AI? How are you? Is it just time savings?

Is it now time to revenue? Where are the opportunities? And you're starting to see companies really think about this on the law firm side and on the corporate side. And so as operations professionals grow into their careers, as they shine even more brightly as we've seen here at CLOC, that combination, not just of business acumen and of curiosity and of partnership, but also being thoughtful about where they're starting to leverage even more sophisticated tools to do more of the fundamentals of being partners and really responding and really supporting the business, that's where they'll shine.