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June 4, 2026 14 mins

I spoke with Collen Steffen, the Founder and President of Project Fortress, a legal operations platform for midsize and large law firms and corporate legal departments. We discussed the value of a platform-first approach, why integration with a law firm's various tools is important, the infrastructure necessary to optimize a law firm's entire suite of tools, and where law firms are succeeding with AI and where they are still facing challenges.

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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 Colin Stephan, the founder and

(00:23):
president of Project Fortress, a legaloperations platform for midsize and large
law firms and corporate legal departments.
Hi, Colin.
How are you?
Hey, Ari.
Great.
Thanks for having me.
I look forward to this conversation.
Tell us about your background andthe genesis of Project Fortress.
I was a practicing privateequity M&A attorney at

(00:46):
Polsinelli for a number of years.
I survived the 2021 M&A deal boom, whichwas actually the true genesis of Fortress.
We survived probably five or six closingsDecember 2021, and we all looked up and
said, "Man, there's got to be a betterway to manage these transactions, work
with all these specialists, and doall of this in such a short timeline."

(01:10):
That was the birth of Project Fortress.
We decided that there needed to bea core platform to manage all of the
work, integrate document management,integrate email, integrate workspaces
for where drafting, collaboration,strategy all happens in one place.
What we saw as being the big issuein those early days was the practice

(01:31):
of law was very much from email.
It was, "We're gonna sendabout 100 emails today.
I hope everyone catches up.
We're gonna follow up and send emailswith all our subject matter experts and
then hopefully, over the course of 45days, we can close the deal." It's just
pure chaos and, that's why we went out,partnered with Salesforce to create a
single system of truth, a platform onwhich all of the firm's tech stack is

(01:54):
integrated in one place so you can managematters in a consolidated ecosystem.
Why is a platform firstapproach important?
We spent a lot of time trying tofigure out, how do you solve the
chaos of managing complex matters?
Whether it's a $500 millionprivate equity backed acquisition

(02:15):
or a, bet the company litigation.
What we found is that, depending onthe firm, you're juggling iManage,
NetDocs, SharePoint, you're managingDocuSign, you've got 20 attorneys
staffed on the deal, you've got fiveclient leads on the client side who are
engaging from a business perspective.
There's just so much projectadministration work, task assignments,

(02:38):
staffing, managing deadlines, reviewingdocuments, generat- generating work
product, scheduling calls, and therejust wasn't a single place where all of
that could happen, where everyone hadvisibility and could see it in real time.
The idea was to build a platform, puteverything in one place, have everyone
working from a common environment.

(02:59):
Our theory is everything that you'reworking on should be within one
click's distance, and the only wayyou can do that is if you create a
platform that pulls everything in.
That's why a platform-based approachis now, table stakes to solve the
real chaos behind complex legal work.
Why is integration with the lawfirm's various tools important?

(03:23):
In the age of AI where it seems likedecades of innovation happen in just
the course of weeks, what we find withchange management is it's really hard
to ask people who've been practicinglaw the same way for 20 years that
now they're going to access thatwork in a totally different way.
People are used to email, they'reused to communicating with

(03:46):
each other a particular way.
Even at some firms today, they'restill learning the discipline of
saving documents to their documentmanagement system consistently and
making sure that there's, versionhistory and document integrity.
So it is extremely important that any newtech platform or any new tech offering

(04:06):
integrates with the core legal stack.
It's got to integratewith Microsoft Office.
It's got to integratewith Google Workspaces.
You've got to be able to pull in email.
If folks are using Teams to talkinternally, it has to pull in Teams.
This idea that the new AI-powered techcompanies are going to just suddenly
replace all of that and be the newTeams, be the new Word, be the new

(04:29):
Outlook, that's not going to happen, orit's not going to happen in any short
period of time, which is why we spentour early years forming partnerships
with iManage, with NetDocs, withMicrosoft, so that we could pull all
of those tools into the platform.
So day one for a new attorney who'sbeing asked to change how they practice
really doesn't feel that different.

(04:50):
They still see everythingthat they used to deal with.
It's just now all withinone click's distance.
What type of infrastructure isnecessary to optimize the entire
suite of tools that a law firm offers?
That's why we ultimately partnered withSalesforce to build Project Fortress.

(05:11):
Fortress is the Salesforceplatform on which we've built legal
workflows for every practice group.
We've created all the integrations,workspaces for the substantive work.
The infrastructure is extremelyimportant for a number of reasons.
Some of them are very obvious, whichis that the biggest firms in the world,

(05:31):
SOC 2, NIST 800, ISO 27000, that's tablestakes, and that's very client-driven.
You have to have an infrastructurethat can not only pull everything
into one place, but can do so onenterprise-grade security requirements.
The thing that really differentiatedSalesforce was there's really no
InfoSec requirement that can't besatisfied by the Salesforce platform.

(05:55):
For example, Department ofDefense, NASA, they're on and they
use Salesforce infrastructure.
It can satisfy even the highestFedRAMP security requirements, let
alone, a law firm's SOC 2 requirement,which pales in comparison to FedRAMP.
So infrastructure is essential.
It has to be the type of infrastructurethat tools can easily plug into.
In the age of AI today, everyone'snew favorite buzzword is MCP.

(06:20):
It's the ability to take theseAI tools and plug them into
the rest of your tech stack.
It's table stakes now.
That's the same with aplatform infrastructure.
Infrastructure has to be extremelyconducive and seamless to all MCP servers.
It has to be a true command centerin the sense that if you go to law
firm A and they're iManage, lawfirm B, NetDocs, law firm C, Google

(06:44):
Workspaces, it shouldn't matter.
And that's the beauty in an infrastructurethat's built around integration.
While there's no one size fits all, andnor should there be, there is a blueprint
within that infrastructure to consolidateany firm's tech stack, regardless of the
choices made by that individual firm.

(07:05):
Where do you see law firmssucceeding with AI, and where
are they still facing challenges?
This gets to the core of ourphilosophy around Fortress.
We spent years building the coreinfrastructure on top of Salesforce,
and that was workflows for draftingpurchase agreements and, writing briefs

(07:25):
on complex legal issues and havingall of that live in one place, and now
whether it's a point solution that isjust AI or any existing legacy platform,
everyone was racing to incorporate AI.
What we found is that by having theinfrastructure and platform built
and customized around the firm'slegal workflows, it made the AI so

(07:47):
much smarter because the AI was nowplugged into the system of record
that could see firm precedent.
It could see, for this Microsoft MSA,why did we agree to XYZ three years ago,
and what was the conversation that wehad that led to that position that we
took on that MSA versus this other one?
Or, why on the $500 million acquisitionwith this RWI carrier did we agree

(08:10):
to these carve-outs and not in thisother deal that feels the same?
In order to answer a question likethat, a bare AI point solution is never
going to be sufficient on its own.
That AI has to be plugged intothe system that contains all
of that substantive legal work.
Firms that are investing now in buildingthat infrastructure, which, of course

(08:33):
we would say is Fortress, are seeinggreater benefits from AI because that
AI is now grounded in context that thepoint solution AIs just can't have.
A firm can get Enterprise GPT, EnterpriseClaude, give it some skills, hook up
some MCPs, but at the end of the day,the work is happening in email, it's

(08:55):
happening in the document managementsystem, it's happening on phone
calls and all the spaces in between.
And if you don't have a platformthat's tracking that, if you don't
have the system of record that'sconsolidating all of that, then your
AI is going to be blind to a hugeportion of the work that you're doing.
What we are reaching now with AIis what we call the platform era.

(09:20):
Initially it was, "Wow, AI is extremelypowerful. Look at all the things that it
can do." But I think a lot of people havebeen, in some ways, disillusioned by AI
in the early years because that AI justhasn't been properly plugged into a system
of record, giving it the context that itneeds to be as powerful as it can become,

(09:42):
How can law firms use their legaltech as a competitive advantage?
It's not so much about a race tothe bottom of who can use AI and who
can use technology to provide legalwork product faster and cheaper.
I think that this is a race towho can unlock institutional
data better than anyone else.

(10:03):
Law firms, as compared to some of theother, large institutions, have more and
have richer data than just about anyone.
A law firm that's been around, even50 years, which is young by the AMLaw
100 standards, over 50 years of 1,000attorneys doing, who knows how many

(10:25):
matters per month, the amount ofintelligence across, every single
industry segment is just, staggering.
And so it's not so much about whocan deliver good work product faster
and cheaper, it's who can take theseyears and years of incredible legal
insight and capabilities and useAI to unlock it and provide it to

(10:47):
clients better than anyone else.
That's what Salesforce is doing.
They're unlocking data on a grandscale for the Fortune 500, and
we're doing the same thing, runningthe same playbook, for law firms.
At the end of the day, yourplatform has to speak your language.
It has to be built around the waythat you practice law, and only then

(11:07):
will it unlock the data that is there.
It's just waiting to be unlocked.
How do you see the relationshipbetween law firms and their clients
evolving in legal operations?
The beauty of building and investingin a platform is that platform doesn't
have to be just for the law firm.
And so within the last couple of years,we've rolled out our client portal

(11:30):
access within Project Fortress, whichis essentially a way for law firms to
share matter workspaces with clientsso that if it's the head of corporate
development at client A and they'reextremely active in their acquisition
strategy and, they're getting pingeddaily by the legal team on, "Hey, what's
the networking capital peg gonna be?"
Or, "Hey, we got these revisions back onthe earn-out. Seller says this, and this

(11:54):
about the business. We're gonna need torethink the earn-out." Those conversations
should also happen in the platform.
Those shouldn't just be one-offemails, 'cause if they are, you're just
contributing to your client's chaos.
Bringing the client into the platformwhere the sausage-making occurs allow them
to partner with you, collaborate in thesematter workspaces where they can share in

(12:16):
the unlocked knowledge from your law firm.
One of the best ways to really wow clientsthese days from our experience is Let
them peek behind the curtain a littlebit on all of this incredible information
that the law firm has at its fingertips.
Empower the client to benefit from that.
And that's what you getwhen you invite clients into

(12:38):
platforms like Project Fortress.
You give them a place where theycan track status in a way that they
historically have never been able to.
That's transparency over their outsidecounsel in ways that really has
never been accessible in the past.
It also allows both the clientteam and the legal team to be less
reactive to the circumstances.

(12:59):
One of the complaints that we hearall the time, and I experienced this
frequently when I was practicing,is it always seemed like everyone
was just a step or a beat behind howthe matter was actually progressing.
Everyone was reacting, andthat was because it was
hard to see what's going on.
You've got the junior associatemanaging the closing checklist,
or you've got the junior associatewrangling everyone for preparing,

(13:21):
briefing on a particular legal issue.
And if you're the partner and you'remanaging 30 cases or, 10 deals
at once you're just flying by theseat of your pants all the time.
And so bringing everyone into thatsystem, into the platform, really gives
a level of transparency and insightfor both the client team and the legal
team that's never existed before,and that creates client stickiness.

(13:44):
That creates better work product,'cause everyone's on the same page.
It means that there's betteroutcomes after the legal matter
finishes, whether it's a deal orwhether it's high stakes litigation.
Deal closes, and the clientstill has a ton of work to do.
They've got to integrate a newacquisition or they've got to,
implement a new investment strategy.
Just because the legal work'sdone doesn't mean the job's done.

(14:06):
And for clients, they like to seea transcript a source of truth
that they can go back to, tosee, "Why did we agree to this?
What was the thinking?
What, why did we do, thisapproach on the deal three years
ago but not three weeks ago?
What's the difference?" It justunlocks so much, not just for the
law firm, but for clients as well.

(14:27):
This is Ari Kaplan speaking withColin Stephan, the founder and
president of Project Fortress,a legal operations platform for
midsize and large law firms as wellas for corporate legal departments.
Colin, thanks so very much.
Thanks, Ari.
Appreciate you having me.
Thank you for listening to theReinventing Professionals podcast.

(14:48):
Visit reinventingprofessionals.com orarikaplanadvisors.com to learn more.
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