Three levels. Eight dividends. And the honest question: are any of us actually measuring this?
Every CLO I talk to says some version of the same thing: "We've deployed AI. But I can't quantify the impact."
That's a problem — not because the impact isn't real, but because without measurement, AI investment looks like a line item instead of a multiplier.
The data backs this up. Only 29% of executives say they can measure AI ROI confidently, even though 79% report productivity gains. In legal specifically, 81% of CLOs say AI accelerates their work — but they don't have the metrics to prove it. And only 12% of legal departments are measuring technology ROI at all.
Meanwhile, analysts project enterprises will defer 25% of planned AI spend into 2027 because they can't prove ROI. Legal departments that can't quantify value in the next 12 months will see their budgets challenged.
The AI Dividend is real. But you have to be able to prove it.
The AI Dividend: AI multiplies legal capacity rather than eliminating it. Like the brooms in Fantasia, each capability you unlock compounds your capacity. But the brooms don't stop. Capacity doesn't sit still — it fills. The question isn't whether the dividend is real. It's whether you're measuring it, managing it, and directing it toward growth.
The AI Dividend follows a natural progression. First you save time. Then you gain new capabilities. Then those capabilities drive growth.
Most legal departments are living in Level 1 and beginning to sense Level 2. Almost nobody has reached Level 3 intentionally. And hardly anyone is measuring any of it.
This is where everyone starts. You use AI to do your existing work a little faster and a little better. Five minutes here, twenty minutes there. At the end of the week, that's four or five hours of recaptured time. Multiply that across a team, across 30, 60, 90 days, and the compound effect is significant.
This is the Fantasia effect beginning. The brooms are moving.
Automating repetitive tasks — drafting, research, review, summarization — to recapture hours every week.
Moving beyond doing the same work faster to producing more of it. Higher volume, same headcount.
Level 1 buys you time. Level 2 is what you do with it.
The time savings create capacity. That capacity lets you stretch — ideating, building, reaching into work you never had time for. You're not just doing the same things faster. You're doing different things entirely.
The brooms aren't just moving faster. They're multiplying.
Tasks your team literally couldn't perform before — proactive analytics, self-service portals, real-time monitoring.
AI-generated insights that make you faster, sharper, and more informed. Better data, less guesswork.
Rebuilding workflows to be AI-native rather than bolting AI onto legacy processes. Compounding advantage.
This is where the AI Dividend hits the P&L.
The capacity from Level 1 and the capabilities from Level 2 compound into growth. For corporate legal, that means absorbing more work in-house, displacing outside counsel spend, and becoming a strategic asset the business leans on. For law firms, it means more work, new billing models, and new ways of delivering value.
The brooms know where to go. They're running the operation.
Legal moves from service desk to strategic partner. High-level planning, competitive positioning, enterprise impact.
Increased output drives increased reach. Increased reach drives new clients, new revenue, new margin.
Autonomous agents handling multi-step workflows — the next frontier of compounding capacity.
Here's the thing. I'm not measuring any of this either.
On the side of my desk right now, I'm not tracking how many hours I save when I use Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or Copilot. But I'm absolutely saving 5 minutes here, 20 minutes there, 15 minutes somewhere else. End of the week? Probably 4–5 hours.
That time gave me new capacity. The capacity gave me new capabilities — ideating, building, reaching into work I never had time for. And that increased output is driving new clients, new revenue, and real growth.
I'm living all three levels of the AI Dividend every day. I'm just not measuring it.
And I'd bet most of you aren't either. That's the conversation we need to have.
That's the next piece. Once you know which level you're operating at, the question becomes: what KPIs actually matter? Which ones will your CFO care about? Which ones prove the dividend is real?
We've built a companion KPI framework — 11 metrics mapped across all three levels — designed to give CLOs, legal ops leaders, and law firm partners the specific numbers they need to tell this story to the C-suite.
Coming next: The AI Dividend KPI Framework — 11 metrics across three levels, a three-act narrative structure for presenting to the CFO, and a 90-day measurement roadmap. We're pressure-testing it with the SOLID community first.
Even before you have the metrics dialed in, you need a story. Data without a narrative is just a spreadsheet. Here's how to structure the conversation with your CFO:
Open with Level 1 — adoption rates, usage trends, time savings. This answers the board's first question: "Are people actually using what we bought?"
Show Level 2 — new capabilities unlocked, quality improvements, workflows redesigned. This answers the CFO's question: "Is it working?"
Close with Level 3 — outside counsel displacement, revenue growth, strategic positioning. This answers the CEO's question: "What can we do now that we couldn't before?"
We're pressure-testing this framework at SOLID Café and at SOLID Summit events in Chicago, New York, and Atlanta. The question isn't whether the AI Dividend is real. It's how we measure it — together.
Come Smart. Leave Smarter and Connected.
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Getting Legal to Love New Tech: Secrets to Successful Adoption
Anna Richards will share an updated “playbook” on successfully introducing new technology in the corporate legal world. In this session, Anna will guide attendees through the challenges and proven strategies for motivating technology adoption and fostering a culture of engagement.
Key Points Covered:
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The Evolution of "Legal Ops" and New Specialized Roles
AI doesn’t eliminate work—it changes it. Legal operations professionals, data analysts, and AI specialists are now critical to running a modern legal team .
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The Global Advantage: Thriving in Expanding Roles Through Prioritization and High-Impact Relationships
The Global Advantage: Thriving in Expanding Roles Through Prioritization and High-Impact Relationships. In today’s ever-evolving professional landscape, roles grow in scope, responsibilities multiply, and the need for collaboration across diverse environments intensifies. This session explores innovative strategies for managing an expanding role by "slicing the pizza" of priorities, focusing on what truly matters, and building high-impact relationships globally. Learn how to navigate regulatory, cultural, and technological complexities, deepen key partnerships, and find common ground across continents. Attendees will leave with actionable tools for prioritization, collaboration, and balance, empowering them to thrive in multi-layered, dynamic roles without losing focus—or sanity.
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From Tactical to Transformative: The Expanding Mission of Legal Ops
Legal operations is at a turning point, with a rapidly evolving role that demands that Legal Operations professionals also be a strategic business partner. In this session, Stacy Lettie explores what that really means and how legal ops can move beyond tactical support to bring meaningful, measurable value to their organizations - and most importantly how we define just what that value is. Attendees will learn about the expanding remit of legal ops, how technology is changing how we look at our roles and how we execute on our roles, and partnering with business leaders to shape the future of legal. This talk is for professionals ready to elevate their roles and become agents of change.
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Beyond Legal Advice: Building a Future-Ready Legal Department
In this session, Tim shares his vision for the future of in-house legal teams, inspired by his experience leading Toshiba’s legal transformation. With a focus on aligning operations, risk, and strategy to maximize value creation by and for the company, he’ll outline practical steps for moving beyond reactive legal services to becoming a proactive business partner. Tim’s leadership philosophy offers a blueprint for creating a legal function that drives business objectives while navigating the ever-accelerating pace of change. Discover how to future-proof your legal team and maximize its organizational impact.
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The AI Agent Takeover: How Lawyers Are About to Be Replaced—Without Losing Their Jobs
The legal industry is on the verge of a massive disruption, but the conversation has been missing a key insight. For years, AI in law has been pitched as a tool for automating routine tasks, but that narrative misses the real transformation: AI Agents. Drawing on lessons learned from working with dozens of Fortune 500 legal departments, this talk reveals how AI Agents are already reshaping legal workflows—by handling complex work that once required human lawyers. Contrary to the prevailing hype, these agents aren’t eliminating jobs; they’re transforming roles and workflows in ways that were once unthinkable. This is the true future of AI in law: replacing tasks, not jobs, and enabling legal teams to focus on higher-value, more strategic work. Prepare to rethink what it means to be a lawyer in the age of AI.
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How to upskill in the era of AI
In this session, we will explore how, in this new era, you can secure your future and how AI can help supercharge your Security, Legal, and Compliance teams. By now there’s no doubt that generative AI is here.
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Generative AI: A Personal Exploration from eDiscovery to Reimagined Opportunities in Law and Business
This talk explores the personal journey of discovering the transformative potential of Generative AI (GenAI) in law and business. Beginning with the foundational use of GenAI in eDiscovery for document review, analysis, and classification, the discussion expands to its applications in many other business areas. Emphasizing the critical skills and knowledge needed in selection and application of models, tools, and prompting techniques, this talk focuses on the critical skills for optimizing GenAI capabilities across applications. By weaving in real-world examples, this talk highlights the potential of GenAI application for data across legal and compliance areas, while also reflecting on the adaptability and curiosity that drive innovation and redefine career paths.
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The Evolution of Legal Ops: Driving Change with New Specialized Roles
The legal operations world is at a turning point. With 20 years of investments in people, process, and technology, corporate law departments have built a foundation that’s driving a new wave of transformation. Generative AI is not just changing how legal teams operate—it’s creating entirely new specialized roles to meet the demands of today’s business challenges. Drawing on parallels between the eDiscovery revolution and today’s generative AI-driven shift, this session explores how technology shapes roles, the skills leaders are hiring for, and the opportunities for professionals to stay ahead in this dynamic field.
Key topics include:
This isn’t just a session about what’s changing—it’s about what’s next and how to prepare for it.
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Big Fish, Small Pond to Small Fish, Big Ocean: From Legal Ops to Strategic Operations and Enablement
How starting my career at Uicorn Start Ups, prepared me for the jump from Legal Ops to Strategic Ops and Enablement. In this session, Angela Mendenhall will discuss her journey from small pond to big ocean, and how Zoom is challenging the Legal Ops status quo with a cross functional Strategic Ops and Enablement team. Angela will discuss how this models allows Legal Ops to get out of the weeds, distinguish themselves from other Legal admins, and have a voice, not just a seat at the executive table.
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How to Get the Most Out of SOLID
SOLID isn’t just another conference—it’s a fast-moving think tank designed for action. Whether you're a first-timer or a veteran, this session will give you the blueprint to maximize your time, make meaningful connections, and leave with real takeaways. Learn how to engage, contribute, and walk away smarter, more connected, and ready to turn insights into impact.
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Now to Next, Together: Defining, Creating, and Adding Value in the Legal Landscape"
The Power of Technology, Data, and Collaboration
This session serves as the cornerstone of the summit, offering a forward-thinking perspective on how legal teams can define, create, and add value in a rapidly evolving landscape. By embracing technology, data, and deeper collaboration, we can unlock efficiencies and drive meaningful results. This talk will challenge attendees to rethink traditional value frameworks and inspire a collaborative approach to align stakeholders’ goals, leveraging the theme, “Now to Next, Together.”
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Legal Data Intelligence in the Age of Generative AI
Consensus is building across legal departments that generative AI represents an inflection point in our industry, providing the ability to effectively manage laborious data tasks and quickly find relevant information that can be transformed into insights, intelligence, and advice. Legal Data Intelligence (LDI) practitioners are uniquely positioned to help legal teams adapt to these changing times with their deep experience in managing large data volumes, deploying AI in secure environments, building defensible workflows, and overcoming intractable data challenges across a wide array of use cases.
In this talk, LDI founding member Bobby Malhotra shares his views on the importance of applying a legal data intelligence framework to solve complex legal data challenges in the age of generative AI. He also highlights five important traits that set LDI practitioners apart, enabling them to more efficiently solve data challenges, break down silos, and deliver business value.
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Squad Goals: Crafting Teams for Success
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The Encryption Illusion—Why Our Data Isn’t Safe (And What to Do About It), Unleak the Leak
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