Adoption is where the agenda begins

The choice of opening session makes the program’s priorities clear.

In The Last Mile of Client Intelligence Is Adoption, Jake Weiner, Head of Strategic Business Development at Harvey, joins Tony Capecci, Director of Practice Innovation at Haynes Boone, to examine what happens after a firm has selected its technology and identified its use cases.

The discussion will focus on moving AI workflows from pilot environments into lawyers’ daily work, using usage data to identify friction and emerging champions, and deciding when a workflow should remain simple and when deeper investment is justified. It will also consider what changes as agents become capable of completing multi-step work without waiting for a sequence of individual prompts.

The central premise is practical: intelligence creates value only when it becomes part of how people work.

The agenda then turns to the information supporting those workflows. Data-Driven Growth: Maximizing the Value of Your Firm’s Client Information, featuring Morgan Llewellyn of HIKE2 and Rachel Shields Williams of Bass, Berry & Sims, follows client data across its lifecycle, from prospecting and proposal generation to Chambers submissions, pricing analysis and long-term relationship management.

Their session will address CRM accuracy, ownership of data updates and the continuing challenge of transforming historical information into something searchable, reliable and commercially useful.

Measuring whether intelligence changes performance

With firms investing heavily in AI, analytics and business-development technology, measurement has become one of the most important—and most difficult—parts of the client intelligence mandate.

Is AI Actually Making Law Firms More Productive? What the Data Says will bring evidence into that discussion. Rob Griffiths, Director of Analytics Consulting at Pirical, will draw on a highly comparable, multi-firm dataset to examine whether AI adoption is producing a measurable increase in throughput.

The distinction matters. A firm may become more efficient without producing more work, and it may handle more complex matters without showing an obvious increase in volume. For BD and client intelligence teams, understanding those differences is essential when interpreting performance, identifying opportunities and explaining value to clients and firm leadership.

The session moves the conversation beyond adoption counts and anecdotal success stories. It asks what the available data can genuinely prove.

Building the connected intelligence firm

The morning culminates with The Connected Intelligence Firm: Building the Foundation for the AI Era.

James Wang, Co-Founder of Postilize, and Rachel Cohee, Director of Intelligence Solutions at Holland & Knight, will explore how firms can connect CRM, experience management, competitive intelligence, financial systems, relationship data and AI into a more coherent intelligence environment.

For many lawyers, the difficulty is not that the firm lacks information. It is that the information is distributed across systems, controlled by different functions and disconnected from the workflow in which a decision is being made.

The session will therefore examine the governance, organizational design and delivery mechanisms required to place trusted intelligence directly into lawyers’ working environments. Attendees will receive a Connected Intelligence Blueprint designed to help firms assess their current position and identify practical next steps around adoption, cross-selling, client service and proactive business development.

From relationship scoring to organizational change

The afternoon applies those foundations to specific growth and implementation challenges.

In Relationship Intelligence Meets Artificial Intelligence: A New Framework for Client & Business Development, David Jacobs, Senior Client Advisor at LexisNexis, will lead an interactive “AI Challenge.” Participants will assess real-world client and lawyer activity, assign relationship and opportunity scores, and determine the next action a firm should take.

The exercise will demonstrate how scoring models can help firms prioritize outreach, identify high-value opportunities, strengthen key-account strategies and make business-development activity more deliberate.

That analytical possibility is followed by the organizational reality of implementation.

From Decision to Deployment: A CRM Migration Case Study for Law Firms, led by Stacey Potito and Jonathan Porter of Charles River Associates, will provide a behind-the-scenes examination of a CRM transformation. The discussion will cover stakeholder engagement, budgeting, timelines, pilot groups, communications, unexpected obstacles and the decisions that shape organization-wide adoption.

Placing these sessions together reflects an important truth about client intelligence: the sophistication of the model matters, but so does the firm’s capacity to introduce it, govern it and persuade people to use it consistently.

The client relationship remains the final test

The closing sessions reconnect the technology and data conversation with the experience of the client.

The Client Experience Equation: Defining What Builds, and Breaks Strong Law Firm Relationships will feature David Chun, CEO of Equilar, and Louise Tsang, Associate Director of Competitive Intelligence at Cooley. Their discussion will examine how clients evaluate outside counsel through responsiveness, transparency, accessibility, communication and ease of working, not solely through the technical outcome of a matter.

The session will also consider how AI-driven tools influence those perceptions. Technology may improve speed and access to information, but its value ultimately depends on whether it strengthens trust or introduces new friction into the relationship.

The program then extends the client journey back to the point of discovery.

In Beyond SEO: Preparing Your Law Firm for the Age of AI Search and Generative Engine Optimization, Alex Kelly and Nick LoRe of Brown Rudnick will examine how generative search is changing the way prospective clients find and assess legal expertise.

Their session will cover AI-ready content, question-based page structures, concise answers, structured data, schema markup and the signals that help AI answer engines recognize a firm as an authoritative source. The implications reach beyond marketing visibility. As clients increasingly use generative systems to frame questions, compare providers and identify expertise, the structure and clarity of a firm’s knowledge may influence whether it enters the conversation at all.

From information to action

Taken together, the agenda follows the full client intelligence chain: trusted data, connected systems, lawyer adoption, measurable performance, relationship prioritization, organizational implementation, client experience and market visibility.

Its underlying argument is that client intelligence has become a cross-functional operating capability. It cannot remain confined to CRM administration, periodic reporting or a single business-services team. Its value depends on how effectively firms connect technology, governance, commercial judgment and human behavior around the client.

Inside Client Intelligence takes place in Chicago on November 4, 2026. Registrations confirmed by July 31 receive a $400 saving with the code CICHICAGO.