Last week, Priori’s VP of Client Strategy, Matt Wheatley, and VP of Software, Becky Regan, joined legal operations leaders from across the country at the Consero Corporate Legal Operations Forum in Virginia.
The event brought together forward-thinking legal teams to share best practices, tackle shared challenges, and explore what the future of legal ops looks like in an AI-enabled world.
Matt led a KnowledgeBridge session titled “From Guesswork to Guidance: How AI Will Shape the Future of Legal RFPs”, where legal leaders discussed how artificial intelligence could transform how legal departments manage outside counsel, and what’s standing in the way. See our top takeaways below:
What Legal Teams Are Talking About
While AI dominates the headlines, fewer than 25% of the roundtable attendees had meaningfully adopted AI tools in their outside counsel management workflows.
The consensus? There’s potential, but many teams are still laying the foundation.
Here are some of the real-time insights that emerged during the discussion. Legal teams are:
- Running RFPs regularly, but still relying heavily on manual processes and siloed data.
- Experimenting with AI tools in pockets (e.g., redlining or billing guidelines), but not yet using AI to guide firm selection.
- Interested in right-sourcing and benchmarking, but unsure how to operationalize those ideas with current systems and data quality.
The overall sentiment in the room was clear: while AI holds promise for legal operations, most teams acknowledged they’re not quite ready to fully leverage it.
3 Key Takeaways for In-House Teams
Whether or not your team is actively evaluating AI solutions, there are immediate steps you can take to future-proof your outside counsel strategy:
- Invest in Data Hygiene
Most teams have rich eBilling data, but it’s often buried in invoices or compliance audits. Clean, structured data is essential for extracting value from both existing tools and future AI capabilities.
Legal departments are sitting on untapped insights. While 76% of teams now run RFPs for spend management (Buying Legal Council), few connect that spend data back to performance decisions — leading to missed opportunities for AI to drive smarter outcomes including:
- Defining consistent billing guidelines
- Auditing invoice behavior against those guidelines
- Creating clear taxonomies for firm, matter type, and practice area data
- Benchmark Strategically
Benchmarking isn’t just about rates, it’s about outcomes. Consero participants shared how they’re using internal performance data and negotiated volume discounts to shape more strategic panels. Others cautioned against relying on outdated benchmarks that don’t reflect how AI is reshaping expectations around efficiency and value.
While RFPs were ranked the #2 most effective cost control tool (TR 2024 LDO Index), just 24% of legal departments have invested in a dedicated legal RFP tool (2025 CLOC Industry Report). Without the right infrastructure, benchmarking too often remains aspirational.
And it’s not just internal value at stake. According to Faegre Drinker, the time-value of a single convergence RFP response can range from $25,000 to $50,000 — meaning inefficient or misaligned RFPs not only slow decision-making but also can strain firm relationships.
Related: How Legal RFPs Really Work: 7 Takeaways from Legal Leaders
- Audit Your AI Readiness
AI won’t replace human judgment — but it can surface insights, automate workflows, and bring consistency to complex evaluations. Legal teams should:
- Map which parts of their RFP or panel workflows are most manual or repetitive
- Identify gaps in their existing data infrastructure
- Set policies around responsible AI use (including whether firms must disclose AI usage)
Priori’s POV: Readiness First, AI Next
At Priori, we believe that AI is a catalyst, not a cure-all. The most effective legal departments are using this moment to build repeatable, data-informed processes — so they’re ready to unlock the full value of AI as the tools mature.
As the session description put it: “AI isn’t a turnkey solution for outside counsel selection or spend optimization, but its potential to reshape the process is rapidly coming into view.” Legal departments that invest now in streamlining workflows and improving data quality will be far better positioned to capture that value.
That includes:
- Replacing legacy RFP templates with smarter, matter-specific prompts
- Using performance data to drive firm selection — not just compliance reviews
- Introducing structure and consistency into panel evaluations
We’re seeing more and more legal teams move from gut instinct to intentional decision-making, and we’re building the tools to support them at every step of that journey.
Curious how your peers are getting AI-ready? Chat with our team to see what leading legal departments are doing today to lay the groundwork for smarter, more strategic decision-making.
