{"id":3244,"date":"2024-11-07T22:44:41","date_gmt":"2024-11-07T22:44:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/as-tech-focused-roles-in-c-suite-expand-newcomers-embrace-big-law-opportunities\/"},"modified":"2024-11-07T22:44:41","modified_gmt":"2024-11-07T22:44:41","slug":"as-tech-focused-roles-in-c-suite-expand-newcomers-embrace-big-law-opportunities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/as-tech-focused-roles-in-c-suite-expand-newcomers-embrace-big-law-opportunities\/","title":{"rendered":"As Tech-Focused Roles in C-Suite Expand, Newcomers Embrace Big Law Opportunities"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Big Law C-suite leaders who focus on innovation and technology often find themselves navigating new waters, as most are non-attorneys arriving from technology or business backgrounds with little or no law firm experience.\u00a0But they’re finding that the nitty gritty of the work is generally not so different from the corporate world.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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As large law firms continue to broaden their C-suites to include the likes of chief technology and chief innovation officers, reflecting ever-advancing technologies and modernized processes, the reality of not being able to make partner because they’re not licensed attorneys sets in, but appears to quickly fade. These individuals realize they have a job to do and find they are still very much considered an integral part of the team.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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And while some challenges remain for those who bring their technological expertise to the law firm culture, many of these leaders tend to feel right at home in their Big Law positions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“When you go from an organization where you literally can just put your head out the door and shout down the hall to find out who does what or who knows what, and now you’ve got offices on three continents, in every time zone, colleagues that you’ve never met before, partners that you may have never met before, it takes business infrastructure to help make those connections,” said Kate Cain, chief knowledge and innovation officer for Sheppard Mullin, who started in the newly created role at the firm in September<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Depending upon the title\u2014chief knowledge officer, chief information officer, chief innovation officer\u2014some of these leaders operate more internally while others’ jobs are more public or client facing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Cain focuses\u00a0on developing and executing firmwide data, knowledge management and innovation strategies, including the integration of artificial intelligence. While her background is primarily in technology, her skillset was very much transferable to the\u00a0law firm world, where she has been working for the past 26 years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“I’ve had the opportunity to work with just about every business function there is in a large, Am Law 100, Am Law 50 law firm,” Cain said. “We would joke that they didn’t know quite where to put my box on the org chart.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Cain said some people are often surprised to learn that large law firms employ\u00a0such individuals in their leadership suite, but the reality is that these positions are much desired in\u00a0the modern era.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“We’re really an organization,” Cain said. “We’ve got X number of employees, we serve Y number of clients. That’s a big company.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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These positions are sometimes filled by practicing\u00a0lawyers, but that’s more unusual, said Carlos Pauling, executive director of partner recruiting with Major, Lindsey & Africa.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“The vast majority of the people seen in those roles are not licensed attorneys,” Pauling said. “People we’re seeing in those innovation roles have a wide breadth of different experiences.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Brett Don\u00a0felt surprisingly comfortable when moving into the legal world from a prior position of running a technology strategy and information security consulting business given the transferability of skills.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“I’ve been working with and for lawyers for the better part of my career, probably close to 30 years,” said\u00a0Don, who started as chief information officer at Stradley Ronon Stevens & Young in 2017.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Don said many professionals who end up moving into the legal world were likely looking elsewhere, but happened to come across a position at a law firm that aligned with their skillset. Law firms could be “trying to lure them away from the KPMGs and Deloittes, or corporations like Amazon or other billion-dollar companies.” he said. “If you want that talent you’ve got to compete.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The addition of these C-suite positions, experts say, reflects the fact that law firms today operate more like large businesses\u00a0requiring a wide array of professional services, and many of those services are handled by business professionals with no background\u00a0in law.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“Most successful large law firms employ such professionals because law firms have morphed over the years into being run like traditional corporate entities that need these pieces in place to ensure the successful running of the firms,” said Darin Morgan, managing partner with Major, Lindsey & Africa.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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While Morgan doesn’t recruit C-suite roles, he\u00a0expressed the awareness that most individuals hired for these positions are non-attorneys. Because a goal of making partner is unattainable, salary is\u00a0often the driving force behind these hirings, placing Big Law firms\u00a0in competition with the talent with\u00a0the corporate world, where similar skills are\u00a0highly desired.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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And the increased popularity of generative artificial intelligence is putting an even greater premium on hires who can address the “panoply of issues, both internally and externally” that stem from the use of this new technology, said Pauling, also of Major, Lindsey & Africa.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“This has been the evolution for at least the last four to five years with respect to innovation and client services,” he said. “I only suspect that it will continue to grow and get bigger and bigger and be an even larger part of how law firms operate their businesses and how they serve their clients.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Jared Kaplan, who arrived as chief innovation and information officer at Am Law 200 firm Lowenstein Sandler in July, said the firm\u00a0<\/strong>was excited\u00a0for him to join since its strategic plan is “heavily baselined around innovation and utilizing AI to get us there in a lot of cases.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“We’re not just looking to research AI and other areas, we’re looking to actually embrace it and lead out front with it,” said Kaplan, who previously worked as chief technology officer for global CEO advisory firm Teneo. “It’s the differentiator for us at Lowenstein.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But Lowenstein isn’t alone. The legal management company Clio said when it researched AI in law firms in 2023, about 19% of firms surveyed were introducing the newer technology into their practices, but when it revisited the issue in 2024, that figure rose to 79%.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“AI adoption is no longer limited to legal trailblazers\u2014it’s the new normal in law firms,” a Clio report states.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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AI Driving C-Suite Changes<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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If familiarity with AI in law firms is moving from novel to necessary, then lawyers are going to need help.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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That’s a key part of Kaplan’s role at Lowenstein Sandler, where stepped into a position that has been vacant for some time.\u00a0Instead of a law degree,\u00a0he has\u00a0an extensive background in technology and is\u00a0responsible for the strategic and operational leadership of the firm’s technology capabilities, organization and innovation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“AI has become the big word of the day, but it’s also here and it’s practical,” Kaplan said. “You can touch it, you can use it. I think people are getting very excited about what that means, especially in the legal space.”<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The job is <\/span>his first\u00a0in the legal profession, making him stand apart from Cain and Don.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“For me, it was a goal of being part of a national law firm,” Kaplan said. “The culture alone to me is bar none. This is a different type of place and their vision is different, which really made it attractive to me.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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As more and more structured and unstructured data requires managing in the legal world, firms will also benefit from C-suite hires who can address the challenges related to data protection and cybersecurity, Kaplan said, and folks with this type of experience rarely come from a legal background.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Don, of\u00a0Stradley Ronon,\u00a0also doesn’t have a J.D., but instead offers\u00a0prior\u00a0C-suite leadership experience within Am Law 200 firms. He agreed that there was an obvious trend within law firms\u00a0to expand C-suites to include technological and innovative focused leadership positions, pointing to a conversation with a colleague who indicated that in the last decade, the number of tech focused C-suite roles in the Am Law 200 has jumped from roughly a dozen firms to over 135.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“If you believe even a portion of that statistic, I think it shows that there’s definitely a trend there,” he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Blake Rooney, chief information officer for Husch Blackwell, highlighted the evolving nature of these positions as fresh technologies arrived in Big Law.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“I’ve been here for 18 years, and I’ve been a chief information officer for almost seven, and early on it was all about just kind of foundational information technology, document management systems, different systems to help manage information inside the firm,”\u00a0said Rooney,\u00a0who is also\u00a0not an attorney.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But this began to\u00a0shift four years ago, when the firm\u00a0hired its first two data scientists, signaling changes to come.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“And then it started to evolve as artificial intelligence became a bigger part of what we do,” Rooney said. “I wasn’t doing client-facing presentations five years ago. That’s something that’s come up in the last couple of years.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Let Attorneys Be Attorneys\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Cain said while attorneys are great at practicing law, most don’t have technology, marketing or security backgrounds, so the goal for her and others taking on new C-suite roles is to take on all those tasks that aren’t taught in law school.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“Let us handle that on behalf of the lawyers, so the lawyers can really focus on being exceptional lawyers and providing that exceptional client experience, and we can make sure that they’ve got the infrastructure that they need in order to deliver on that,” she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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At Sheppard Mullin, while the chief knowledge and innovation officer role is a new one, Cain said some of\u00a0her duties existed, in some form or another, under previous roles.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Oftentimes, AI and other previous buzzworthy advancements will prompt law firms to approach the problem from a purely technological standpoint, she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“I think there’s a recognition now that to achieve a meaningful return on those investments, it’s not enough just to deliver the software,” she said. “We’ve got to deliver the software and make sure that it’s adapted and make sure that we’re actually getting to the point where we’re transforming the way people work.”<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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