SOLID Chicago 2025

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:

• Practical tactics for encouraging buy-in from both leadership and team members
• How to communicate the “why” behind new technology to inspire commitment
• Real-world examples of wins that build momentum
• Lessons learned from overcoming resistance and addressing common adoption roadblocks

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 .

• Impact: Legal departments are creating new roles that blend technology, process improvement, and legal expertise.
• Challenge: These roles often don’t fit traditional legal career paths, causing uncertainty and opportunity for both professionals and organizations.
• Reality Check: Organizations must build clear career trajectories for these new roles to attract and retain top talent.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

• The cause-and-effect relationship between technology adoption and new legal ops roles.
• Skills, competencies, and experience leaders are prioritizing in their next hires.
• How generative AI is reshaping the way legal departments and businesses operate.
• Practical takeaways for staying marketable, relevant, and ready for what’s next.

This isn’t just a session about what’s changing—it’s about what’s next and how to prepare for it.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

Squad Goals: Crafting Teams for Success

The Encryption Illusion—Why Our Data Isn’t Safe (And What to Do About It), Unleak the Leak