ILTACON 2026 was the biggest in the event's history — 5,600 attendees, three times the booth tonnage, billboards on every wall, and a Sheryl Crow concert. But behind the spectacle, the legal industry is wrestling with harder questions: who is actually buying AI, how do you price work that takes 10 minutes instead of an hour, and is any of this generating real value yet?

In the Season 2 premiere of Legal Soundings, host Justin Farmer (Practice Group Leader, Enterprise Solutions, Harbor) debriefs with Cate Giordano (Staff Writer, Legal Tech Hub) and Joe Patrice (Senior Editor, Above the Law) on what they heard on the floor and where the second half of the year is headed.

The conversation covers the shift away from the "one AI platform to rule them all" race, why buying power is swinging back toward individual lawyers, the law-school playbook vendors like Harvey are borrowing from Lexis and Westlaw, the Harvard finding that 0% of firms have a mature framework for measuring AI's business impact, the pricing debate (faster doesn't mean cheaper), token costs and the $10,000 billable hour, what corporate legal departments are really buying and why, the $2B+ in legal tech funding tracked this year, and a rapid-fire look at bubbles, model agnosticism, and e-discovery.

In this episode:

• Joe's "wheat vs. chaff" takeaway: there's no winning the platform race — only building good products underneath

• Who was in the room: directors and managers over a third, CIOs 3%, attorneys just 1%

• The Lexis/Westlaw "points and pizza parties" model and who's running it now

• Why 0% of surveyed firms can measure AI's business impact (Harvard Legal Lab)

• Pricing: hourly vs. value-based vs. subscription vs. AFAs — and why everyone's take is self-serving

• Why "pass the AI costs to us" from in-house counsel is "adorable"

• What corporate legal is actually buying: contract tools, not bet-the-company litigation

• ILTACON as a marketing and capital-markets event

• Predictions: frontier model bubble, model agnosticism, funding cooling, e-discovery heating up

About Legal Soundings Legal Soundings is Harbor's podcast exploring how technology, leadership, and innovation are reshaping the business of law. Each episode features a rotating Harbor host and expert voices from across the legal ecosystem.

Learn more about Harbor: https://harborglobal.com

Sales culture in law firms isn't about turning lawyers into sellers. It's about the structures, incentives, and shared accountability that make growth a team habit — and Benesch has built one of the best.

In this episode, Zena Applebaum is joined by Kori Fahrner (Business Development Manager, Benesch) and Beth Cuzzone (VP, Global Growth Marketing, Intapp, and co-founder of LSSO — the Legal Sales and Service Organization) to unpack how Benesch became the first firm to win two LSSO awards back-to-back. The conversation moves from the Team Everest rainmaker program and its 327% revenue growth, to whether that success is replicable, to why technology should be a system of action rather than a system of record — and the human relationships that AI frees up, not replaces.

What you'll hear:

• Why sales culture is about systems and incentives, not training lawyers to sell

• Inside Team Everest: How a 19-partner program scaled past 35 and helped drive 327% revenue growth

• Whether Benesch's results are replicable, or down to culture

• Why recognition programs only work when tied to a broader culture

• CRM as a "system of action," not a database — and AI as a coworker

• The one non-tech tool every BD team needs: real transparency and collaboration

• Lightning round: the biggest myths, what firms still get wrong, and the voice of the client

Guests:

• Kori Fahrner, Business Development Manager, Benesch Friedlander Coplan & Aronoff LLP

• Beth Cuzzone, VP, Global Growth Marketing, Intapp; Co-Founder, LSSO

Host: Zena Applebaum, Head of Marketing, Harbor

About Legal Soundings: Legal Soundings is Harbor's podcast exploring how technology, leadership, and innovation are reshaping the business of law. Each episode features a rotating Harbor host and expert voices from across the legal ecosystem.

Learn more about Harbor: https://harborglobal.com

Subscribe and turn on notifications so you don't miss the next episode.

You can buy tools. You can’t buy maturity. That’s the throughline as two legal ops leaders at opposite ends of the scale spectrum compare notes on building a function that actually changes how a legal department works.

In this episode, Kevin Clem is joined by Adam Becker (Director of Legal Operations, Cockroach Labs) and Donovan Bell (Head of Global Legal Operations, Intel) — both CLOC board members — to unpack what legal ops maturity really means. From standing up a function in weeks at a 500-person startup to keeping legal ops strategic (and not bureaucratic) across thousands of people and dozens of countries, the conversation gets honest about AI hype, retirement plans for old tools, and why legal ops is a contact sport.

What you’ll hear:

• Why maturity is a behavior change, not a checklist or a maturity-model score
• The unglamorous first move that makes the fastest impact (hint: it’s about knowledge, not software)
• “Barometer, not a barrier” — keeping legal ops strategic at global scale
• Why every new tool should ship with a retirement plan for an old one
• How to tell whether an AI initiative is real maturity or just more tech sprawl
• Why “low-hanging fruit” is a myth — and what to chase instead
• The one thing legal departments still get wrong about legal ops

Guests:

Adam Becker, Director of Legal Operations, Cockroach Labs

Donovan Bell, Head of Global Legal Operations, Intel Corporation

Host:

Kevin Clem, EVP, Client Engagement – Corporations, Harbor

About Legal Soundings:

Legal Soundings is Harbor’s podcast exploring how technology, leadership, and innovation are reshaping the business of law. Each episode features a rotating Harbor host and expert voices from across the legal ecosystem.

Learn more about Harbor: https://harborglobal.com

Subscribe and turn on notifications so you don’t miss the next episode.

CRM has been a fixture in law firms for decades — yet attorney adoption has dropped from 29% to 18% over the past year. Is CRM broken, or are we measuring success the wrong way?

In this episode, Zena Applebaum is joined by Laura Saklad (VP, Legal Industry, Intapp) and Sarah Happy (Director, Marketing Technology, Harbor) to unpack where CRM stands today and where agentic AI is taking it next. The conversation moves from why "attorney logins" is the wrong KPI, to what an agentic CRM workflow actually looks like, to the realities of headless CRM in a legal context — and the data, governance, and trust problems that technology alone won't solve.

What you'll hear:

• Why CRM's biggest problem isn't software — it's data

• What a real agentic CRM workflow looks like (and why lateral integration is a killer use case)

• Whether attorneys will ever trust auto-populated data (spoiler: they already do, in places)

• Headless CRM in legal — hype, reality, and why "headless horseman" isn't a great brand

• Why governance is a people problem, not a technology problem

• The one piece of advice every firm should hear before investing in CRM in 2026

Guests:

• Laura Saklad, Vice President, Legal Industry, Intapp

• Sarah Happy, Director, Marketing Technology, Harbor

Host: Zena Applebaum, Head of Marketing, Harbor

About Legal Soundings: Legal Soundings is Harbor’s podcast exploring how technology, leadership, and innovation are reshaping the business of law. Each episode features a rotating Harbor host and expert voices from across the legal ecosystem. 

Learn more about Harbor: https://harborglobal.com

Legal operations finally won the seat at the table — but the table itself has changed. In this special CGI edition of Legal Soundings, host Lauren Chung is joined by CLOC President & CEO Oyango A. Snell and Organon's Stacy Lettie to unpack the 2026 CLOC/Harbor State of the Industry Report.

The conversation moves past the old fight for legitimacy into the harder question: now that legal ops is part of the strategic core, how does it drive enterprise value? They dig into the productivity gap law departments are facing (rising demand, flat budgets, flat headcount), how AI has shifted from theoretical fear to practical force, the metrics GCs should be tracking but mostly aren't, and a candid look at what high-performing law departments will look like three years from now — including which work lawyers will simply stop touching.

In this episode:

• Why "the fight for the seat at the table" is over

• The productivity gap: rising demand against flat resources

• AI a year later — what's working vs. what's still aspirational

• Benchmarking as a discipline, not an exercise

• The metric every GC should track (but most don't)

• What legal ops leaders should stop doing immediately

Learn more at harborglobal.com.

Every technology leader in legal has lived through the painful rollout — the tool nobody asked for, the training nobody attended, the adoption curve that flatlined. So what's different about AI? For the first time, lawyers are coming to IT to ask how to integrate it into their practice. The built-in perception of value is already there.

In this episode, Jeffrey Roach (Harbor Global) sits down with Evette Pastoriza (CIO, Mayer Brown) and Magdalena Suder (Director of Clients, Markets & Growth Operations, Ashurst) to unpack what that shift really means — and why having eager lawyers doesn't automatically solve the adoption problem. They discuss why "build it, and they will come" still fails, how to sell outcomes instead of systems, the psychological weight of asking lawyers to break workflows they've tested and trusted for years, and how to use AI's gravitational pull to lift adoption of less glamorous (but equally critical) tools.

Magdalena closes with a practical three-part framework for any legal tech rollout: Diagnose the real barriers, stakeholder by stakeholder; Design communications tailored to those barriers; and Sustain through champions, measurement, and iteration.

Key takeaways:

• AI is the first legal technology with built-in perceived value — lawyers see it as non-optional, which is unprecedented
• Perception matters more than reality: adoption is behavioral, not technical
• Change management should start before the business case, not after go-live
• Lawyers resist change not out of stubbornness but because they've carefully built trusted processes — breaking that trust is the real ask
• Use AI's momentum to elevate the adoption of other critical but less visible tools (CRM, matter intake, BI)
• Magdalena's Diagnose → Design → Sustain framework applies to any rollout, not just AI

Learn more about Harbor: harborglobal.com

The AI tools are more powerful than ever — so why are law firms still struggling to see returns? In this episode, Brooke Daniels is joined by Marcus East (Autodesk; author of Working with Dinosaurs) and Allan Lamkin (Harbor Global CTO, former CIO at Paul Hastings) to dig into the real blockers: culture, process, talent, and the unique challenge of selling change to a profession built on skepticism.

They explore why most firms feel behind but aren't, how to find and empower change champions inside practice groups, the messy reality of legal data scattered across iManage, Elite, and O365, and what leaders can do right now to start closing the gap between AI promise and AI payoff. Marcus shares case studies from Lloyd's of London and National Geographic, and Allan breaks down what a practice-group-by-practice-group rollout actually looks like.

If you lead technology, innovation, or operations at a law firm or corporate legal department, this one's for you.

Key takeaways:

• Only ~5% of AI investments are delivering expected ROI (per MIT research) — culture and process are the gap

• Lawyers are natural skeptics; adoption requires data-driven proof, practice-group-specific workflows, and internal champions

• Democratizing data access is critical but requires leadership courage — especially around fears of disrupting the associate pyramid

• The firms that win in 3 years won't just improve productivity — they'll fundamentally re-engineer how they operate

• Picking the right technology partner matters more than building everything in-house

Subscribe for future episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about Harbor: harborglobal.com

Legal Innovation Is No Longer Optional — It's Expected

Host Zena Applebaum talks with Wendy Curtis (Chief Innovation Officer, Orrick) and John Koss (Head of Innovation, AI, E-Data Consulting, Mintz) about leading innovation inside law firms — from day one to long-term impact.

Wendy brings 15+ years of building Orrick's innovation function; John is fresh off his first year after transitioning from litigation. They cover the real challenges: change management failures, measuring ROI beyond hours saved, combating tool fatigue, and why law departments are emerging as surprising early AI adopters.

Key takeaways:

• 92% of law firm COOs say innovation/KM is a 2026 priority
• Innovation teams need independence — own budgets, own structure
• Change management ownership must be assigned before buying any tool
• Measure success by the problem you set out to solve, not hours saved
• "Process pros, not tech pros" will unlock AI value
• Law departments are becoming early adopters of AI as a business function
• One word for 2026: "Hope" (Wendy) and "Confidence" (John)

Legal Soundings is the podcast from Harbor. 

Learn more: harborglobal.com

Is the AI transformation in legal real or still just hype? Three years into the generative AI revolution, Legal Soundings host Zena Applebaum sits down with two of the most respected voices in legal journalism, Bob Ambrogi (LawSites) and Stephanie Wilkins (LegalTech Hub), for a candid conversation about what’s actually changing in law firms, legal departments, and the broader legal ecosystem.

From back-office automation to the future of the billable hour, Bob and Stephanie share what they’re seeing on the ground. They discuss how in-house counsel are driving tech adoption, why consolidation is accelerating and why Model Context Protocol (MCP) may be the most underestimated trend in legal tech today.

Whether you’re a GC evaluating new tools, a law firm leader navigating change, or a legal tech founder trying to break through the noise, this episode cuts through the hype to tell you what’s actually happening, and what’s coming next.

Guests

Bob Ambrogi — Editor, LawSites | Legal tech journalist covering the industry for 30+ years

Stephanie Wilkins — Director of Content, Legal Tech Hub

Hosted by Zena Applebaum — Head of Marketing, Harbor

To learn more about Harbor’s work across law firms and corporate legal departments, visit https://harborglobal.com

In this episode, host Colleen Cable sits down with Greg Lambert, Chief Innovation Officer at Jackson Walker, and April Brousseau, Director at Harbor's Library and Research Group, to explore how information professionals are uniquely positioned to lead the AI revolution in legal — if they're willing to seize the moment.

Greg and April draw on decades of experience navigating every major technology shift in the legal industry, from print to internet to knowledge management to generative AI. They make a compelling case that the skills librarians and information specialists have always held — organizing information, verifying outputs, understanding workflows — are exactly what law firms need most right now.

Key topics covered:

• How both guests evolved from traditional library roles into innovation and strategic leadership
• Why this AI inflection point is different, and why information professionals risk "giving it away" again if they're not careful
• The shift from being a business service to being a strategic partner, and what that language change requires
• What law firms are overestimating about AI
• Why "garbage in, garbage out" means AI governance and content creation are undervalued, and who's best suited to lead that work
• The future of training
• Practical advice for information professionals at any career stage who want to position themselves as strategic leaders

Guests:

• Greg Lambert - Chief Innovation Officer, Jackson Walker
• April Bursson - Director, Library and Research Group, Harbor

To learn more about Harbor’s work across law firms and corporate legal departments, visit:https://harborglobal.com

Subscribe to Legal Soundings wherever you get your podcasts.