Aalia Manie leads Webber Wentzel Fusion, the firm’s legal operations, applied AI and innovation subsidiary, where she oversees multidisciplinary teams delivering AI governance, legal technology, managed legal services, legal operations and alternative delivery solutions. With experience as an IP and technology partner, GC, COO and entrepreneur, she brings a unique combination of legal, operational and commercial expertise to the challenge of redesigning how legal functions work. She regularly advises clients on AI strategy, governance, technology evaluation and operating model decisions, helping organisations move beyond technology adoption and build sustainable legal capabilities for the future. In 2024, she was recognised by the International Legal Technology Association as one of the world’s most Influential Women in Legal Technology.
Session Overview
Legal 2030: The Decisions That Design a Legal Function
Legal functions are being redesigned whether GCs or law firm partners mean to redesign them or not.
Every decision about headcount, external providers, legal ops, technology, AI, agents, data and knowledge changes how the function works. Most of those decisions are made one at a time. Taken together, they determine the architecture of the function: where capability sits, what becomes reusable institutional knowledge, how accountability works, and whether today’s investments still make sense when the next tool arrives.
This session looks at how to make those choices deliberately.
Which decisions in front of legal teams today are genuinely durable, and which are likely to be overtaken by the next technology cycle? How do you benchmark legal AI and agents when the product you select may be replaced within eighteen months? What should you be investing in instead: workflows, data, knowledge, integration, skills, operating models, or some combination of them? Who should own the knowledge and data that sits underneath these systems? How should accountability work when people and agents operate together? And how do legal teams keep building judgement when some of the work that used to develop it starts to disappear?
This is not another talk about the impact of AI. The aim is to enable attendees with frameworks to make better and more durable design decisions that will remain impactful regardless of how the world moves.
Three tangible takeaways:
A way to separate durable design decisions from short-lived technology choices — and apply that distinction to the investment, operating model, data, knowledge and capability decisions legal teams are making now.
A practical, operational way to benchmark legal AI and agents on workflow fit, quality, risk, cost, integration and measurable value, rather than feature lists or vendor claims
A clearer view of the capabilities legal teams need to build now, including operational, data, design, AI and judgement skills, and how to connect those investments to business outcomes
Alternatively, please email sales@eventfulpeople.com for quote, invoice or any queries and we’ll be glad to assist.
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Aalia Manie leads Webber Wentzel Fusion, the firm’s legal operations, applied AI and innovation subsidiary, where she oversees multidisciplinary teams delivering AI governance, legal technology, managed legal services, legal operations and alternative delivery solutions. With experience as an IP and technology partner, GC, COO and entrepreneur, she brings a unique combination of legal, operational and commercial expertise to the challenge of redesigning how legal functions work. She regularly advises clients on AI strategy, governance, technology evaluation and operating model decisions, helping organisations move beyond technology adoption and build sustainable legal capabilities for the future. In 2024, she was recognised by the International Legal Technology Association as one of the world’s most Influential Women in Legal Technology.
