May 29, 2026 • 10 mins
I spoke with Dean Sonderegger, the new Senior Vice President and General Manager of Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions. We discussed the state of AI adoption in corporate legal departments, the biggest barrier preventing legal departments from actually operationalizing AI, and what vendors can do to help move the industry forward.
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(00:01):
Welcome to Reinventing Professionals,a podcast hosted by industry analyst
Ari Kaplan, which shares ideas,guidance, and perspectives from market
leaders shaping the next generationof legal and professional services.
This is Ari Kaplan, and I'm speakingtoday with Dean Sonderegger, the s-
(00:24):
new senior vice president and generalmanager of Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions.
Hi, Dean.
How are you?
Hey, Ari.
I'm doing great.
Thank you for having me.
It's my privilege.
I'm looking forward to this conversation.
So tell us about your background and yournew role at Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions.
I started my career writing codemany years ago and then went through
(00:48):
an inflection point, moved intoproduct management, product strategy.
I was at BNA at the time,that got bought by Bloomberg.
And 11 years ago, Iwent to Wolters Kluwer.
I spent the first seven years of mycareer at Wolters Kluwer focused on
law firms and really practice of law.
I transitioned into tax and bankingbusinesses the last few years.
As of January 1st, I'm back in thelaw legal market leading ELM Solutions
(01:11):
now focused more on corporatelegal and the business of law.
Our spend under management solutionshave about $20 billion of legal
spend from 8,000 law firms that rollthrough our solutions every year.
After several years of leading taxand finance, banking what is it like
returning to the legal industry?
It's fascinating 'cause I think whatyou see right now is this incredible
(01:37):
pace of change accelerating.
When I left the industry, were things thatwe talked about that seems science and now
those things are actually coming to pass.
It's a really fun and exciting timeto be back in the legal market.
What do you think haschanged most since you left?
It's the overlay of artificialintelligence which makes a bunch of things
(01:58):
that felt theoretical or experimental veryreal and actually in production, both on
the corporate and legal law firm side.
And I think you see this changingin practice of law, changes that
are coming for the business modeland obviously the technology stack.
And it's not just that it'schanging, it's that everything
is changing at the same time.
How would you characterize AI adoptionin corporate legal departments today?
(02:22):
There is a great desire to leveragethis technology, but I think
your adoption's extremely uneven.
So I had a customer the other day thatwas talking about how he expects every
lawyer in his corporate legal departmentto be vibe coding with Anthropic.
Then on the other hand, we've gotpeople who are saying, "Oh my gosh,
absolutely don't touch that until weget, the typical corporate seven layers
(02:44):
of approval." So it's really uneven.
There's a large number of peoplethat want to get the benefits of the
solution, but the actual in practiceimplementation is very uneven.
What's the biggest barrierpreventing legal departments
from operationalizing AI?
There's so much uncertaintyin the market already.
You have a very crowded vendor landscape.
(03:06):
It's hard to know where to invest.
On top of that, you've got very realgovernance and data security concerns.
If I am using a particular form as mybasis for things, how do I know that's
the right form that feeds the AI solution?
How do I make sure that we don'thave some very sensitive data
leaking into places we don't want it?
That uncertainty hits ina couple different areas.
(03:29):
The other thing that's happening isthat when we think about software, we
talk about the concept of a use case.
What's the desired outcome gonna be?
In a lot of cases you have toolkits, butyou don't have clear use cases, so the
customer is having trouble understandingwhere the AI really delivers value.
(03:49):
What responsibility do technologyproviders have in removing these barriers?
Adoption doesn't come from thecapability itself, it comes
from clear and measurable value.
So as technology providers,we have a dual responsibility.
We have the responsibility to helpfirms, corporate legal departments walk
(04:10):
through and understand the implicationsof governance, guide them through
the privacy issues so that they feelvery comfortable with those things.
But the other thing that you'vegot there is making sure that
you're helping the legal corporatelegal departments understand,
where the value is being provided.
We have an agent in our product thathelps people review legal invoices.
(04:31):
So if you take a complex legalinvoice, that takes about 20
minutes for somebody to sit down.
If you use the agent to do a firstpass through that reduces that down
from 20 minutes to about two minutes.
That is a very measurable ROI.
It's very clear whatyou are doing with that.
For us it is helping our legalcounterparts go through and
understand what are the pain pointsthat you are going to solve from
(04:54):
this, and how do you measure that?
And that then turns around, if I'mrunning legal operations, I can say,
"Look, this is the ROI I'm getting,and this is what I can do with
that extra time," in some fashion.
Do you have a sense of what theyactually use that extra time for?
In some cases legal opsdepartments are requiring fewer
people to actually do the work.
So you get efficiencies out of that.
(05:15):
Every corporate legal department Italk to wants to reduce their overall
spend on legal matters, and part ofthat is the internal operations of
the corporate legal department, partof that is the outside spend itself.
There is a sense ofefficiency that's gained.
In some cases we see some ofthe challenges with the business
model with law firms where you'renot seeing real cost reductions
(05:39):
come out of the adoption of AI.
The other thing that you see corporatelegal doing is saying if we've got
more time and more resources to doother things, let us pull some of
the work in that we might otherwisefarm out to our outside law firms.
What do you think vendors need to doto help move our industry forward?
(06:01):
Historically vendors have sold features.
Those of us who build stuff, loveto talk about the shiny new widget
that we've got in our software.
There's a shift that's underway,moving towards driving outcome
as opposed to just features.
That requires us as vendors tomake sure that we understand what
the customer value drivers are andthat we've got alignment across the
(06:25):
product, the services the support.
The whole experience for users has tobe really driven by that outcome focus.
And when we're able to dothat, that drives the adoption.
We feel like it's very importantsince we're working in the legal
market, that we have attorneys thatare part of the core team, and those
attorneys help in providing service.
(06:46):
Those attorneys help indesigning the software itself.
And, the training of the AI tools forthings like invoice review require
that knowledge of the attorneys, andthat then helps us drive towards the
value and the outcome that customersare looking for, as opposed to
pointing to the brand-new feature.
How does that then turnaround and drive your outcome?
(07:07):
What are some best practices forhelping professionals in legal
distinguish between the array oftools that are now available to them?
You wanna Make sure that you'vegot a measurable value or outcome
that you're going through.
For instance, I wanna take lesstime reviewing NDAs or something
like that something that's perhapsnot as accretive in my business.
(07:28):
Once I've got that, I think that the otherkey on that is to make sure that you avoid
falling into the trap of automating a badprocess, so technology is littered with
the path of, "I'm gonna take step onethrough five that I'm doing right now.
I'm gonna put some technology over thatto do that faster or better." What's
really important when we're thinkingabout choosing the right tool and the
(07:51):
tools that we're going to invest inis to say, "What is it we're trying to
achieve?" And is the existing workflowis not the workflow that we want at all.
We wanna take the tool andleverage that tool to be able to
take that to a different place.
There's a lot of examples youcan get into with AI on this.
For instance, in an M&A environment ordoing diligence or looking for contracts
(08:12):
that need to be novated, do we takethat manual review out, not just speed
that up, but actually do something wherewe're searching specifically for the
contracts and then go into depth on thecontracts that are of concern to us.
It is the mixture of making surewe have a clear outcome in mind
and making sure that we don't tryand just re-automate something
that's broken in the first place.
(08:33):
How do you see the legalprofession evolving?
From a business of law standpoint, ifyou look at the fundamental concept and
you compare it to corporate industry, youwould say in most businesses right now
that provide a product or service, theidea is to use some of this AI technology.
I'm actually gonna provide youa better product, but it's gonna
cost me less to make that productor to provide that service.
(08:56):
So it becomes a win-win where theconsumer gets something that's
probably a better product or serviceat a lower price, and at the same
time, the provider makes more money.
That would be like a win-win-win, ifthere's three parties involved in there.
But the law is in the process ofautomating the activities of junior
lawyers and law firms are in thebusiness of charging a bunch of
(09:18):
money for those same lawyers' hours.
And so there's a struggleright now with this in terms
of how is this gonna play out.
And I don't think it's clear at thispoint in time, but I think that there's
certainly got to be a change to the model.
We've talked about the deathof the billable hour every 10
years for the last half century.
This does lend itself to a differentway of trying to measure value
(09:41):
that's provided from outsidecounsel to to corporate legal.
I've heard things from a increase onAFAs to maybe moving to a situation
where the AI tools that the firms useactually are being billed out separately.
But I do think you're gonna see achange to the business of law that's
gonna flow through how law firmswork, how corporate legal works.
(10:04):
This is Ari Kaplan speaking withDean Sonderegger, the new senior
vice president and general managerof Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions.
Dean, thanks so very much, and wishing youthe very best of luck in your new role.
Thank you so much, Ari
Thank you for listening to theReinventing Professionals podcast.
(10:26):
Visit reinventingprofessionals.com orarikaplanadvisors.com to learn more.
Welcome to Reinventing Professionals,a podcast hosted by industry analyst
Ari Kaplan, which shares ideas,guidance, and perspectives from market
leaders shaping the next generationof legal and professional services.
This is Ari Kaplan, and I'm speakingtoday with Dean Sonderegger, the s-
(00:24):
new senior vice president and generalmanager of Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions.
Hi, Dean.
How are you?
Hey, Ari.
I'm doing great.
Thank you for having me.
It's my privilege.
I'm looking forward to this conversation.
So tell us about your background and yournew role at Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions.
I started my career writing codemany years ago and then went through
(00:48):
an inflection point, moved intoproduct management, product strategy.
I was at BNA at the time,that got bought by Bloomberg.
And 11 years ago, Iwent to Wolters Kluwer.
I spent the first seven years of mycareer at Wolters Kluwer focused on
law firms and really practice of law.
I transitioned into tax and bankingbusinesses the last few years.
As of January 1st, I'm back in thelaw legal market leading ELM Solutions
(01:11):
now focused more on corporatelegal and the business of law.
Our spend under management solutionshave about $20 billion of legal
spend from 8,000 law firms that rollthrough our solutions every year.
After several years of leading taxand finance, banking what is it like
returning to the legal industry?
It's fascinating 'cause I think whatyou see right now is this incredible
(01:37):
pace of change accelerating.
When I left the industry, were things thatwe talked about that seems science and now
those things are actually coming to pass.
It's a really fun and exciting timeto be back in the legal market.
What do you think haschanged most since you left?
It's the overlay of artificialintelligence which makes a bunch of things
(01:58):
that felt theoretical or experimental veryreal and actually in production, both on
the corporate and legal law firm side.
And I think you see this changingin practice of law, changes that
are coming for the business modeland obviously the technology stack.
And it's not just that it'schanging, it's that everything
is changing at the same time.
How would you characterize AI adoptionin corporate legal departments today?
(02:22):
There is a great desire to leveragethis technology, but I think
your adoption's extremely uneven.
So I had a customer the other day thatwas talking about how he expects every
lawyer in his corporate legal departmentto be vibe coding with Anthropic.
Then on the other hand, we've gotpeople who are saying, "Oh my gosh,
absolutely don't touch that until weget, the typical corporate seven layers
(02:44):
of approval." So it's really uneven.
There's a large number of peoplethat want to get the benefits of the
solution, but the actual in practiceimplementation is very uneven.
What's the biggest barrierpreventing legal departments
from operationalizing AI?
There's so much uncertaintyin the market already.
You have a very crowded vendor landscape.
(03:06):
It's hard to know where to invest.
On top of that, you've got very realgovernance and data security concerns.
If I am using a particular form as mybasis for things, how do I know that's
the right form that feeds the AI solution?
How do I make sure that we don'thave some very sensitive data
leaking into places we don't want it?
That uncertainty hits ina couple different areas.
(03:29):
The other thing that's happening isthat when we think about software, we
talk about the concept of a use case.
What's the desired outcome gonna be?
In a lot of cases you have toolkits, butyou don't have clear use cases, so the
customer is having trouble understandingwhere the AI really delivers value.
(03:49):
What responsibility do technologyproviders have in removing these barriers?
Adoption doesn't come from thecapability itself, it comes
from clear and measurable value.
So as technology providers,we have a dual responsibility.
We have the responsibility to helpfirms, corporate legal departments walk
(04:10):
through and understand the implicationsof governance, guide them through
the privacy issues so that they feelvery comfortable with those things.
But the other thing that you'vegot there is making sure that
you're helping the legal corporatelegal departments understand,
where the value is being provided.
We have an agent in our product thathelps people review legal invoices.
(04:31):
So if you take a complex legalinvoice, that takes about 20
minutes for somebody to sit down.
If you use the agent to do a firstpass through that reduces that down
from 20 minutes to about two minutes.
That is a very measurable ROI.
It's very clear whatyou are doing with that.
For us it is helping our legalcounterparts go through and
understand what are the pain pointsthat you are going to solve from
(04:54):
this, and how do you measure that?
And that then turns around, if I'mrunning legal operations, I can say,
"Look, this is the ROI I'm getting,and this is what I can do with
that extra time," in some fashion.
Do you have a sense of what theyactually use that extra time for?
In some cases legal opsdepartments are requiring fewer
people to actually do the work.
So you get efficiencies out of that.
(05:15):
Every corporate legal department Italk to wants to reduce their overall
spend on legal matters, and part ofthat is the internal operations of
the corporate legal department, partof that is the outside spend itself.
There is a sense ofefficiency that's gained.
In some cases we see some ofthe challenges with the business
model with law firms where you'renot seeing real cost reductions
(05:39):
come out of the adoption of AI.
The other thing that you see corporatelegal doing is saying if we've got
more time and more resources to doother things, let us pull some of
the work in that we might otherwisefarm out to our outside law firms.
What do you think vendors need to doto help move our industry forward?
(06:01):
Historically vendors have sold features.
Those of us who build stuff, loveto talk about the shiny new widget
that we've got in our software.
There's a shift that's underway,moving towards driving outcome
as opposed to just features.
That requires us as vendors tomake sure that we understand what
the customer value drivers are andthat we've got alignment across the
(06:25):
product, the services the support.
The whole experience for users has tobe really driven by that outcome focus.
And when we're able to dothat, that drives the adoption.
We feel like it's very importantsince we're working in the legal
market, that we have attorneys thatare part of the core team, and those
attorneys help in providing service.
(06:46):
Those attorneys help indesigning the software itself.
And, the training of the AI tools forthings like invoice review require
that knowledge of the attorneys, andthat then helps us drive towards the
value and the outcome that customersare looking for, as opposed to
pointing to the brand-new feature.
How does that then turnaround and drive your outcome?
(07:07):
What are some best practices forhelping professionals in legal
distinguish between the array oftools that are now available to them?
You wanna Make sure that you'vegot a measurable value or outcome
that you're going through.
For instance, I wanna take lesstime reviewing NDAs or something
like that something that's perhapsnot as accretive in my business.
(07:28):
Once I've got that, I think that the otherkey on that is to make sure that you avoid
falling into the trap of automating a badprocess, so technology is littered with
the path of, "I'm gonna take step onethrough five that I'm doing right now.
I'm gonna put some technology over thatto do that faster or better." What's
really important when we're thinkingabout choosing the right tool and the
(07:51):
tools that we're going to invest inis to say, "What is it we're trying to
achieve?" And is the existing workflowis not the workflow that we want at all.
We wanna take the tool andleverage that tool to be able to
take that to a different place.
There's a lot of examples youcan get into with AI on this.
For instance, in an M&A environment ordoing diligence or looking for contracts
(08:12):
that need to be novated, do we takethat manual review out, not just speed
that up, but actually do something wherewe're searching specifically for the
contracts and then go into depth on thecontracts that are of concern to us.
It is the mixture of making surewe have a clear outcome in mind
and making sure that we don't tryand just re-automate something
that's broken in the first place.
(08:33):
How do you see the legalprofession evolving?
From a business of law standpoint, ifyou look at the fundamental concept and
you compare it to corporate industry, youwould say in most businesses right now
that provide a product or service, theidea is to use some of this AI technology.
I'm actually gonna provide youa better product, but it's gonna
cost me less to make that productor to provide that service.
(08:56):
So it becomes a win-win where theconsumer gets something that's
probably a better product or serviceat a lower price, and at the same
time, the provider makes more money.
That would be like a win-win-win, ifthere's three parties involved in there.
But the law is in the process ofautomating the activities of junior
lawyers and law firms are in thebusiness of charging a bunch of
(09:18):
money for those same lawyers' hours.
And so there's a struggleright now with this in terms
of how is this gonna play out.
And I don't think it's clear at thispoint in time, but I think that there's
certainly got to be a change to the model.
We've talked about the deathof the billable hour every 10
years for the last half century.
This does lend itself to a differentway of trying to measure value
(09:41):
that's provided from outsidecounsel to to corporate legal.
I've heard things from a increase onAFAs to maybe moving to a situation
where the AI tools that the firms useactually are being billed out separately.
But I do think you're gonna see achange to the business of law that's
gonna flow through how law firmswork, how corporate legal works.
(10:04):
This is Ari Kaplan speaking withDean Sonderegger, the new senior
vice president and general managerof Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions.
Dean, thanks so very much, and wishing youthe very best of luck in your new role.
Thank you so much, Ari
Thank you for listening to theReinventing Professionals podcast.
(10:26):
Visit reinventingprofessionals.com orarikaplanadvisors.com to learn more.
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