Operations are the new proving ground: What law firm C-suites said about AI and the business of law

At Sandpiper Partners’ Fall COO/CFO/C-Level Roundtable in New York, the usual talking points about AI and legal innovation took an unexpected turn. While most legal industry conversations still center on how AI will transform legal research and client work, the C-suite executives at the event had a different preoccupation: The untapped potential sitting in their firms’ support operations, particularly in administrative support.

AI’s untapped opportunity in administrative support operations

Firm leaders acknowledged that they are channeling most of their AI energy into practice-facing tools, such as research, due diligence and knowledge management, because that is where general counsel are asking the loudest questions. But many in the room kept returning to a less glamorous frontier: Administrative operations, where billing friction, time-entry leakage, and fragmented support services quietly erode margin without adding client-visible value.

Mike Raposa, Chief Revenue Officer at Williams Lea, captured the tension. The challenge, he said, is getting firm leadership to “shift just a tiny bit of the focus back” to the business side of law, where “there’s real value on the administrative side here, real efficiency dollars.” A law firm panelist reinforced the point, saying there is “great potential for tremendous success right away, financial success right away” on the operations side.

Several panelists shared concrete examples. One law firm panelist outlined their AI-powered time-entry system that auto-generates timesheets based on work activity, letting professionals simply edit rather than manually log hours. Another speaker described how AI has enabled a smaller non-professional team to support a firm that has grown two-and-a-half times in size, keeping pricing competitive while maintaining service quality.

AI-backed admin support delivers measurable ROI quickly, with lower implementation risk than tools supporting legal work, and sits squarely within the C-suite’s span of control. Yet most firms still treat AI for support functions as a second-tier priority, even though that is where the immediate dollars are.

Business professionals as strategic client partners

Client expectations have fundamentally changed, and clients now expect transparent conversations about where AI is used, how it affects billable hours on specific tasks, and how firms are rethinking internal processes. Client focus is shifting from less about matter-by-matter pricing negotiation to more strategic dialogue around efficiency, value, and partnership.

One law firm panelist agreed, saying “The competitive advantage comes from the work that our firms are doing every single day… and we have to look for ways in which we could interact more with our clients.”

Business professionals can no longer stay behind the curtain while partners improvise answers on AI governance, pricing impacts, and process redesign. Several firms have responded by building cross-functional client value teams that bring together finance, pricing, knowledge, and operations to directly support key relationships, taking work off partners’ plates and solving problems that used to fall through the cracks.

The talent profile in support operations is changing as a result. Firms need people who can talk credibly with both partners and clients about data, process, and technology, and not just “keep the trains running.” COOs and CFOs are no longer managing cost centers; they are curating portfolios of client-facing capabilities that directly shape retention and growth.

The adoption challenge: Behavior over tools

If there was one area where panelists and attendees alike shared a sense of frustration, it was adoption. The problem is no longer a lack of tools; there are too many tools, unevenly used. One law firm panelist shared their challenge: “I want to pivot from looking at technology, assessing technology, to implementing the technology that we have… the priority really needs to shift to: How are you using what we already have?”

Another panelist noted that some firms face dual extremes in “super skeptics” who dismiss AI as a fad and the “power users” whose expectations outpace current capabilities. In between lies a moving target: Vendor capabilities change every quarter, making it hard to declare any solution the stable winner. That volatility can paralyze decision-making unless firms are clear about the problems they are solving and willing to commit to fewer tools, implemented more deeply.

The governance question adds another layer of complexity. A law firm panelist shared their experience, where they tested public tools like ChatGPT against work they already knew well, and found the outputs were wrong more than half the time, proving that verification protocols and guidelines essential to responsible deployment.

For C-suite leaders, AI strategy cannot be divorced from risk management, data quality, and training. Adoption is not just about getting more people to press the button; it is about designing processes where AI outputs are checked, explained, and continuously improved.

Taken together, all the discussions reveal a quiet but profound shift: Law firm business models are being rewritten from the inside out. AI is moving into the backbone of operations, and business professionals are stepping into genuinely strategic client-facing roles.

The mandate for COOs and CFOs is to treat these areas as core design questions for the firm’s operating model, and ensure that decisions that align technology, talent, and process can be explained, defended, and revisited as conditions change. The firms that do this work thoughtfully will be the ones that turn today’s turbulence into a more resilient, scalable way of running the business side of the law firm.

Download Williams Lea’s Ninth Annual Trends and Opportunities in Business Services Report to discover how leading law firms are fusing human expertise with cutting-edge technology to enhance client services and future-proof their practices.