Barnet Bain is an Academy Award–winning filmmaker, author of How to Be a Friend, and a thought leader at the intersection of creativity, connection, and human potential.
Best known for producing What Dreams May Come, Bain has spent his career exploring how stories shape not only what we see on screen, but how we relate to one another in everyday life. In conversation, he brought that perspective to leadership, arguing that the quality of our professional impact is inseparable from the quality of our relationships.
Bain’s discussion with Managing Director Jane Howze offers a compelling reminder that success is not only measured by outcomes but also by the strength of the relationships that make those outcomes possible.
The National Alopecia Areata Foundation (NAAF) serves the community of people affected by an autoimmune skin disease called alopecia areata that results in hair loss and emotional, psychological distress.
Alopecia areata causes hair loss on the scalp, face, and sometimes on other areas of the body, affecting as many as 6.8 million people in the U.S., with a lifetime risk of 2.1%. The types of hair loss can be patchy (alopecia areata), complete loss of hair on the scalp (alopecia totalis), or, in extreme cases, the entire body (alopecia universalis). NAAF is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded in 1981.
NAAF’s work with and for the community of people affected by alopecia areata – including the family, friends, medical professionals, research scientists, biopharmaceutical developers, and government representatives who care about them – is informed by a Vision that articulates organizational aspirations and five Core Values that guide their work to carry out NAAF’s Mission.
Vision: An empowered community with a choice to embrace or live free from alopecia.
Mission: NAAF drives research to find a cure or acceptable treatment for alopecia areata, supports those impacted, and educates the public about the disease. Values – Helping the alopecia community lead their lives with GRACE.
Growth: Create and nurture positive change for the future of our community
Resilience: Enhance the ability to mentally and emotionally cope with adversity
Advocacy: Wield influence to create awareness and affect real change
Compassion: Listen to understand and demonstrate care through meaningful support
Empowerment: Build strength and confidence through connections, tools and resources
Governance: NAAF is governed by a volunteer Board of Directors, with advice from Research Advisory Councils and leading Key Opinion Leaders.
NAAF consistently meets or exceeds the rigorous standards of excellence for good governance and transparency set forth by the National Health Council, the Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance, and Candid. Programs –NAAF staff members serve constituents in three primary program areas: patient and community support, awareness & advocacy, and research to find treatments or cures.
Staff Team Culture Statement
The NAAF staff is a community-centered team that values integrity and respect in all our interactions. We actively collaborate to leverage our diverse strengths and perspectives. We have high aspirations for ourselves, our team and our community. We are bold and resourceful, approaching challenges with courage. We care deeply about our work and the people we serve. Our remote workplace thrives through accountability and responsiveness. We are committed to learning, to being proactive, and to remaining nimble so we can adapt quickly to changing circumstances and new opportunities. Our commitment to this team culture empowers our success and brings joy and meaning to the work we accomplish on behalf of our community.
The Position: President & Chief Executive Officer (Remote)
The President & CEO has full responsibility and accountability for NAAF’s success. This executive will provide leadership, working in partnership with the Board of Directors, to formulate and pursue the Vision and Mission of NAAF, as expressed through annual and strategic plans. They will provide overall direction of internal and external policy and program development and oversee all NAAF operations.
The President & CEO will serve as the chief spokesperson for NAAF and primary liaison with outside stakeholders. This executive will also be responsible for developing key revenue streams to support approved programs, in partnership with NAAF’s growing development team. The President & CEO holds office at the pleasure of the Board of Directors. This executive will have the power to designate, appoint, or remove agents or employees of NAAF.
Specifically, they will:
• Lead NAAF with a clear vision, mission, values, strategies, and goals. Serve as the “face” of the organization and the main advocate for patients with alopecia areata, community members, and key industry stakeholders.
• Lead development of NAAF’s 3-Year Strategic Plan in collaboration with the Board of Directors, Executive Team, and with significant input from the medical, scientific, and NAAF community at large. Ensure execution of each plan to achieve agreed-upon outcomes and metrics.
• Develop growth strategies for NAAF at the national level; in partnership with the Board, determine NAAF’s role internationally, as the largest alopecia areata patient advocacy organization in the world.
• Take primary responsibility for setting strategy around fundraising and new revenue streams, in conjunction with the Chief Growth Officer (CGO). Directly responsible for fostering relationships with large donors, industry partners, and major corporations.
• Provide visionary leadership and collaboration for NAAF’s growing development programs, including growing the Walk for Alopecia into a multi-million-dollar annual event and increasing the number of donors making higher dollar gifts to NAAF.
• Provide visionary leadership and collaboration with NAAF’s Chief Mission Officer (CMO) to set strategy around research and development, in conjunction with the NAAF’s medical and scientific Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs), industry partners, and pharmaceutical companies to ensure that safer, more affordable, accessible and acceptable treatments continue to be available in the near future.
• Participate as an alopecia areata KOL at various meetings, forums, panels, and webinars, largely in partnership with pharmaceutical companies and medical groups.
• Travel and represent NAAF at various medical-related meetings, e.g., NHC, AAD, EADV, as appropriate and in conjunction with appropriate staff.
• Lead an Executive Team made up of a Chief Operating Officer (COO), CGO, and CMO, overseeing the strategy and execution of each functional area of the organization. Oversee and approve all hires; mentor, motivate, coach, develop, and inspire all staff. Provide positive leadership, direction, and guidance. Create and nurture an environment of diversity, inclusion, and belonging where all staff feel like they are appreciated, valued, and inspired to be the best versions of themselves, perform at a high level, and realize their full potential. Embrace and embody the values reflected in the Staff Team Culture Statement (below).
• Provide strategic direction on awareness, advocacy programs, and invest in growing NAAF’s new advocacy structure and achieving key advocacy metrics.
• Responsible for the overall operation of NAAF, including implementing policies and practices to strengthen the internal organization of NAAF. Ensure compliance with all NAAF’s established policies and procedures.
• Accountable for financial results, compliance, and overall financial management with oversight from NAAF’s Finance Committee, Chair, Finance Committee, and Board of Directors. Develop and monitor the annual budget and routinely report to the Board and Finance Committee regarding the state of NAAF’s finances, operations, and programs.
• In conjunction with the COO, prepare all materials for the Board of Directors. In conjunction with the CMO and CGO, prepare for and participate in Research Advisory Council meetings, Industry Partner Program (IPP), and research-related meetings, assisting the Mission team as needed and required.
• Partner with Board Chair and Executive Committee on Board Development to increase and empower the Board’s role in governance, networking, and revenue generation.
• Provide strategic direction, planning, and oversight of the annual NAAF Conference, including input on key presenters and sponsors and other related matters with the CMO and COO.
• Execute such other general responsibilities as may be delegated by the Board, Finance, Governance, and Audit Committees.
• Regular travel is to be expected: attendance at events, meeting with donors, presentation & speaking engagements, etc.
The new Chief Executive Officer will ideally have 15+ years of experience in health-related association management or related activities. They will be an inspirational and strategic leader with expertise in negotiating, consensus-building, and problem-solving.
This executive will have excellent analytical, communications, and interpersonal skills and established writing and public speaking ability. The new CEO will be highly motivated and creative, with a solid work ethic, sound judgment, and ability to handle pressure well. Persistence, persuasiveness, and perseverance are essential. A good sense of humor is a plus.
They will have an open, collaborative, and “roll-up-the-sleeves” management style that focuses on developing, engaging, and empowering colleagues and the broader NAAF community. This executive will also possess well-developed leadership, communications, teambuilding, and influencing skills; unquestioned integrity; and the experience, confidence, and stature to effectively lead an organization.
Other qualifications include:
• CEO or “ready now CEO” of similar sized or larger non-profit organization. Track record of effectively leading through growth and change.
• Successful track record in creating and implementing successful fundraising strategies, including ownership of individual solicitations, grants, sponsorships, and contracts, and ideally, strong familiarity with growing successful peer-to-peer programs.
• Strong track record leading, motivating, and engaging a team where all staff feel appreciated, valued, engaged, and are operating at their very best.
• Experience working on public policy initiatives with national health-related organizations.
• Experience effectively interfacing with, and deriving strategic and program objectives from researchers, physicians, and professionals with technical expertise.
• Track record of successfully interfacing with a diverse volunteer Board of Directors.
• Strong experience and knowledge of the US healthcare industry, including profit and not-for[1]profit organizations.
• Willingness and ability to travel (primarily nationally) as necessary to develop relationships with corporate, pharma, and health industry leaders, the NAAF staff, and the larger alopecia areata community.
• Comfortable with Microsoft office suite and familiarity with utilizing CRM programs such as Salesforce.
• An undergraduate degree is required; an advanced degree such as an MBA, MS or related graduate degree is preferred.
Alan Abrahamson is one of the most respected and influential voices in Olympic and international sports journalism.
Over a career spanning decades, Alan has covered every Olympic Games since 1992, reporting from the center of the world’s biggest sporting moments while offering rare insight into the leadership, pressure, and decision-making that shape outcomes on the global stage.
Known for his depth, independence, and storytelling, his work goes far beyond medals and results to explore the human dynamics behind elite performance.
As the Olympic spotlight intensifies, we’re thrilled to welcome Alan to share his perspective on what the Games reveal about leadership, resilience, and the people who carry the weight of the world’s expectations.
We’re pleased to announce three completed executive searches for Quanex Building Products Corporation (NYSE:NX).
Managing Director John Mann worked closely with Quanex leadership to identify top-tier talent for the following strategic roles: Chief Accounting Officer, Vice President of Audit, and Vice President of Tax.
Gabriela Garcia was appointed Chief Accounting Officer, Janis Thiedemann was named Vice President of Internal Audit, and Jennifer Roycroft was announced as Vice President of Global Tax.
Quanex is a global, publicly traded manufacturing company serving commercial and residential OEMs in the fenestration (windows and doors), hardware, cabinetry, solar, refrigeration, security, and outdoor products market
These searches were conducted to build a cohesive finance leadership team. We evaluated each executive on technical depth, leadership acumen, their ability to assimilate into Quanex’s existing leadership team, and their ability to work with one another across finance, tax, and audit.
The result is a leadership team with complementary skills and aligned perspectives, built to deliver lasting value for Quanex.
“Organizations work best when leaders work well together. We focus on fit and how leaders make decisions, so each hire strengthens the team and the business,” said John Mann, Managing Director, The Alexander Group.
The legal industry is experiencing one of the most significant eras of change in its history. In this episode of Impact and Insight, Managing Director, The Alexander Group and Principal of SFK Advisors LLC, Sally King—a respected advisor and former COO to several top global law firms—shares how leadership, culture, and technology are reshaping the way elite firms operate. From the rise of business-focused C-suite roles to the disruptive force of AI, Sally brings a practical perspective on what firms must do today to thrive tomorrow.
Listen to the Impact & Insight Podcast on Spotify.
Jeroen Plink is the COO and Co-Founder of Legaltech Hub, and has been a transformative legal technology executive since the early 2000s.
A former Clifford Chance lawyer, he has more than 25 years of experience building companies, guiding startups and private equity investment, and as a senior business advisor in the legal technology sector. He is an accomplished innovator and thought leader, and recently shared his perspective on the impact and potential of AI in the legal industry.
Tell us a bit about your career path and how you made the jump from being a practicing lawyer to the legal technology sector.
I started my career as a corporate lawyer at Clifford Chance in Amsterdam, working on cross-border transactions and seeing first-hand how much time highly qualified lawyers spend on work that is important but, frankly, quite repetitive.
“There has to be a better way to do this” was often my thought during late-night due diligence work, and a conversation about this over dinner with a colleague led me to the entrepreneurial side. He and I co-founded Legistics, a company that built software for due diligence. Two years later, Legistics was acquired by Practical Law Company. After a few years in London working on legal tech applications, I came up with the idea of launching Practical Law in the US. I moved my young family to New York to lead the US. launch.
Ultimately, Practical Law was sold to Thomson Reuters. My Practical Law journey was a formative experience in scaling a legal tech business and securing adoption at the largest firms and corporations in the world.
Since then, I’ve worked with multiple legal tech ventures, served as CEO of Clifford Chance Applied Solutions, and sat on the boards of companies like Casetext, Kira, and others. Those roles gave me a front-row seat to how technology, when done well, actually changes the business and practice of law.
Legaltech Hub is a natural culmination of that journey. We built it because buyers, vendors, and investors all lacked a single, objective view of the legal tech market. As COO and co-founder, I get to combine my legal background, my operator experience, and my work as an investor into one mission: making the legal tech ecosystem more transparent, data-driven, and effective.
How would you define the state of AI in the legal sector today? In what areas are firms leveraging that technology at present, and where is the potential to increase/expand its impact and utilization?
We’re at a genuine tipping point. AI has been in legal for years – think technology-assisted review in e-discovery or early contract analytics – but the public release of large language models (LLMs) in late 2022 completely changed the industry’s trajectory.
Firms are indeed using AI in practice today. Right now, the most common and mature use cases we see across firms and corporate legal departments are:
Document & Clause Work – Drafting, redlining, clause extraction, and playbooked negotiation support, often grounded in a firm’s own precedent bank.
Legal Research & Knowledge Retrieval – AI-assisted research layered over traditional databases, plus internal knowledge search over opinions, memos, and templates.
Summarization at Scale – Summarizing long documents, hearings, interview notes, discovery productions, and even entire matters for internal or client reporting.
E-Discovery and Investigations – More intelligent classification, clustering, and prioritization of large document sets.
Operational Tasks – Time entry narratives, matter opening, conflicts descriptions, engagement letters, and other routine but high-volume workflows.
There are, however, areas where the potential is still under-realized. The next phase of impact goes beyond “co-pilot” features to deeper structural change:
AI-First Workflows – Designing end-to-end processes (e.g., an M&A review, a regulatory change program) around AI from the start, rather than sprinkling AI on top of legacy workflows.
Matter Economics & Pricing – Using AI over matter data to inform staffing models, budgets, and alternative fee arrangements in a far more granular way.
Knowledge-Driven Products – Turning firm expertise into semi-productized offerings – compliance tools, diagnostics, playbooks – sold as subscriptions or fixed-fee services.
Client Collaboration – Shared AI-enabled workspaces with clients, where both sides see the same data, risks, and status in real time.
So, I’d describe the current state as: broad experimentation and deep adoption in certain areas, with a clear path to more transformative, workflow- and business-model-level change over the next few years.
What are some of the challenges you’ve seen in the uptake and adoption of AI solutions in law firm environments, and how do firms overcome those behavioral, functional, or other institutional barriers?
The challenges I see are less about the technology and more about behavior, incentives, and governance. Key barriers to adoption include:
Validation Tax – Currently, in many cases, the return on investment is dampened by the (increasingly perceived) need to validate. AI does a first pass of a task, and then human lawyers validate the results. As the technology matures, this will reduce.
Billable-Hour Economics – If your business model rewards hours, a tool whose headline promise is “do this in half the time” can feel misaligned.
Risk Culture & Perfectionism – Law firms operate in a zero-defect environment. “Occasional hallucinations” is not an acceptable feature in that context.
Change Fatigue & Tool Sprawl – Many firms already have more tools than they fully use. Lawyers are rightly skeptical of “yet another platform.”
Skills and Confidence Gaps – Associates and partners aren’t trained prompt engineers; without guidance, they either over-trust or under-use the tools. Many lawyers don’t see the “art of the possible.” The imagination gap is real.
Client Expectations – Some clients are pushing firms to use AI; others are nervous. That ambiguity tends to slow internal decisions.
What the more successful firms are doing:
Start with concrete, high-value use cases. Pick a few workflows – e.g., first-draft research memos, playbooked NDAs, or deposition summaries – where AI can clearly save time and improve consistency. Measure the impact and talk about it.
Create a proper AI governance structure. The firms doing this well have a cross-functional AI committee (IT, KM, risk, innovation, practice leadership, professional development) that sets guardrails, approves tools, and owns a roadmap, rather than letting each partner or practice improvise.
Co-design with lawyers, don’t “deploy at” them. Sit down with partners, associates, and professional staff and redesign the workflow together. If they help shape it, they’re far more likely to use it.
Invest in training and playbooks, not just licenses. Clear guidance – “use it for X, never for Y; always do Z as a human check” – plus hands-on training sessions and champions in each practice group.
Align incentives. That can mean recognizing matter teams that use AI to deliver better value, factoring efficiency into compensation discussions, or building AI usage into innovation awards and promotion narratives.
Let technology support you.
Where lawyers are no longer cutting their teeth on mind-numbing but useful training tasks like due diligence as a result of AI, AI is not the problem but the solution. Also, leverage the technology to train the partners of tomorrow. For example, Verbit, in collaboration with AltaClaro, has developed mock depositions using AI in a transformative way.
In short, technology is the easy part. The hard part is treating AI adoption as a strategic change initiative, not an app rollout.
Information security/cyber security is always near top of mind for law firms and their clients when implementing new technologies. What are the risks inherent in AI utilization and how can firms think through addressing those?
Security and confidentiality are existential issues for law firms, so it’s healthy that they’re skeptical.
There are certain key risk areas we focus on in conversations with firms:
Don’t Use Consumer AI – Rely instead on specialist tools like Harvey, Legora, CoCounsel, Lexis+AI, August, Newcode.ai, and others, or the enterprise version of LLMs that explicitly confirm that they don’t access confidential data or train their models on your prompts and outputs.
Client Policies – Ensure you comply with client requirements and restrictions on AI use. An AI governance tool like Truth Systems may help here.
Model Behavior Risks – Be aware of and know to look for hallucinations, biased outputs, or “over-confident wrong answers” in high-stakes contexts.
Access & Identity – Who can use which models on which datasets, from where, and with what log-in? A tool like Lega may help gain insights here.
Supply-Chain Risk – Many AI tools are built on top of underlying LLMs and cloud providers; firms need to understand that full stack.
Regulatory & Cross-Border Issues – Different jurisdictions have different views on data residency, privacy, and AI regulation. Global firms have to harmonize a policy across all of them.
Some practical mitigation strategies are quickly becoming best practice:
Use enterprise-grade, non-training environments. Whether it’s a vendor tool or a firm’s own AI deployment, ensure contractual and technical guarantees that client data is not used to train public models.
Segment data and apply least-privilege access. Treat your knowledge repositories and client data as different risk tiers and don’t make everything searchable by everyone just because the AI can handle it.
Create firm-wide AI use policies. Set clear guidelines about when public tools are prohibited, when approved tools may or must be used, how to label AI-assisted work, and when human review is mandatory.
Vendor due diligence. Extend your existing security and privacy questionnaires to include AI-specific topics, including model sources, data retention, red-teaming practices, audit rights, and more.
Monitor and iterate. Log AI usage, review incidents or near-misses, and update guardrails. AI is moving fast; your governance has to be a living framework, not a one-off policy document.
The overall message I give firms is this: you can be secure and still be ambitious. The real long-term risk is not “we tried AI, and something went wrong”; it’s “we refused to engage and drifted behind our clients and competitors.”
As you look to and beyond the horizon in legal innovation, what do you see as the next conceptually revolutionary technology out there?
If you look just a little ahead of where we are today, I think three developments are especially important.
Agentic, workflow-native AI. Today’s tools are mostly copilots: they respond when you ask them something. The next wave will be agents that can take multi-step actions across systems – “ingest this data room, update our risk register, draft the client summary, and route issues to the right people” – all while staying inside strong guardrails.
AI-native legal platforms, not AI features bolted on. We’ll see platforms designed from scratch around AI: data models, permissions, user experiences, and business models that assume AI is doing a large share of the work. That has big implications for how legal work is priced, staffed, and measured.
A shift from “tools” to “operating model change.” The truly revolutionary impact won’t be a specific product; it will be firms and legal departments re-architecting how they deliver value – more productized services, more collaboration with clients, and new career paths for people who are great at orchestrating human-plus-machine workflows.
From our vantage point at Legaltech Hub – where we track vendors, advise firms and vendors, and speak regularly with investors – I’d summarize it this way: we’re moving from an era where technology supported the traditional model of legal work, to one where technology is starting to reshape that model itself.
That’s both the challenge and the opportunity for everyone in the ecosystem.
With the holidays approaching and gatherings of all kinds filling up the calendar, politics is sure to creep into conversation.
Spreading good cheer and civility can be challenging, so Managing Director Jane Howze turned to Mike Mower for his thoughts on how to create peaceful exchanges with family and friends this holiday season for Episode Two of the Impact & Insight podcast.
Mower is the Senior Advisor of Community Outreach and Intergovernmental Affairs for Utah Governor Spencer J. Cox and is widely respected for his roles serving with Provo Mayor Lewis Billings, Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt, and Congressmen Howard Nielson and Chris Cannon.
He shares highlights of his political career and how to truly make the holidays merry and bright—regardless of political affiliation.
It’s a wonderfully encouraging and insightful conversation, with wisdom for all.
Developing Leadership Capability Across the C-Suite
(A Perspective from Beth Ehrgott, The Alexander Group)
In today’s world of constant disruption — shifting markets, rapid technological tides, uncertain economies — one enduring reality holds: the strength and trajectory of an organization ride on the shoulders of its leaders. For the modern C-suite, leadership development is no longer a checkbox exercise. It’s a strategic, evolving discipline.
Why It Matters
CEOs and the entire C-Suite are asked to operate on multiple planes: deliver positive financial results, build and sustain a growth culture, guide transformation, and anticipate the future. Leadership isn’t a static asset. It’s living, breathing, and must adapt with the same speed and intentionality that companies demand from the rest of the business.
At The Alexander Group, over four decades of working alongside boards and executive teams, we’ve observed that deliberate leadership capability building is the true differentiator of enduring companies. One of the most rewarding aspects of our work is helping clients define what leadership capability really means for their organization — not just for the next hire, but for the company they aspire to become. With preparation, clarity, and courage, these leaders become catalysts for growth and transformation.
The best companies see leadership capability as a long-term investment — cultivating leaders who adapt, innovate, inspire, and translate vision into impact.
Here’s a real-world moment that captures this:
Before beginning two pivotal C-suite searches for a publicly traded biotech client, the CEO and I invested time in reimagining what the leadership team would need two to five years out. Their science was world-class; their pipeline promising. But they lacked scaled commercial leadership globally and enterprise-level strategists who could lead the company through organizational metamorphosis. The CEO recognized that transformation starts with people — but also that leaders must be aligned in vision, drive a “we” culture, and carry both operational grit and strategic imagination. That groundwork shaped not only how we recruited but how the leadership narrative unfolded.
Seven Competencies You Must Cultivate at the Top
1. Strategic Capability
Turning vision into action is both an art and discipline.
Strategic capability means anticipating shifts, connecting the dots, and aligning people and priorities to long-term value. It’s where big-picture thinking meets purposeful execution.
2. Leadership & People EQ
When executives invest in leadership development, it signals that people matter. This isn’t about elevating a few individuals — it’s about shaping the collective DNA of an organization. Emotional intelligence, inclusion, and cultural stewardship turn leadership into a shared language that drives performance.
3. Operational & Cross-Functional Fluency
Complex organizations require leaders who think beyond their verticals. At scale, no function stands alone —appreciating how finance, technology, operations, commercial, and risk intersect leads to smarter decisions and deeper collaboration.
4. Digital & AI Aptitude
Technology has become another business differentiator. C-suite leaders don’t need to code, but they must know how to harness digital tools to unlock opportunity, mitigate risk, and make faster, data-driven decisions.
5. Change Resilience & Agility
Change isn’t an event. It’s constant. Agility helps leaders stay grounded while navigating uncertainty. The best leaders balance steadiness with speed — providing clarity and confidence when everything else feels in motion.
6. Governance & Board Readiness
Today’s executives often operate in the boardroom as well as the business. Understanding governance, fiduciary duty, and board dynamics strengthens stewardship and prepares leaders for broader influence.
7. Personal & Reflective Capacity
Great leadership begins with self-awareness. Reflective leaders pause, learn, and realign — they lead with clear, values-rooted decision-making. These are the quiet levers that help leaders remain authentic, ethical, and sustainable.
A Parting Thought
If leadership capability development is framed merely as a program or HR initiative, it will always fall short. Done right, it becomes part of the operating system — it’s how teams learn faster, collaborate more deeply, and stay one step ahead of disruption.
Over our more than 40 years at The Alexander Group, working with clients globally, we’ve seen how building intentional leadership capabilities not only elevates individual executives but also transforms the enterprise itself. And it’s an honor to partner with leaders who are willing to lean into that work — not just for today, but for what’s next.
Since our founding in 1984, our firm has conducted dozens of COO searches for the nation’s leading law firms. Over that time, one truth has become clear: the search doesn’t end when the candidate accepts the position. Running a large law firm today is complex. The modern COO must lead international management teams, safeguard client data, ensure operational resiliency, and navigate a dynamic regulatory and political landscape.
When a law firm hires a new COO, the first 100 days are critical to establishing credibility, building trust, and laying the foundation for long-term success. We asked four sitting COOs at Am Law 100 firms to share advice for law firm chairs and managing partners on how to set a new COO up for success. All these COOs were highly complimentary of their chairs for a smooth introduction and orientation to their firms.
Their collective wisdom can be distilled into six key actions.
Signal Visible Support from Day One
Every COO we spoke with emphasized how important it is that chair and firm leadership visibly endorse the new hire—both publicly and privately.
Dave Boden, COO of Haynes Boone, described how his chairman’s strong support gave him immediate credibility among partners and allowed him to do his job effectively. Boden suggests that a chairman’s support should show up in firmwide announcements, an introduction at partners’ meetings, and ideally a personal message (video or in person) reinforcing the COO’s qualifications and the chair’s confidence.
Create a Structured, Thoughtful Orientation
Don’t leave onboarding to chance.
Victor Nuñez of Cooley described a multi-week orientation program that included office visits, participation in board meetings, and scheduled introductions to key partners and business professionals. That blueprint was developed jointly by HR and senior leadership to make sure no relationship was overlooked. Whether formalized or not, the early months should map out key meetings, topical briefings, and office visits.
Facilitate Relationship-Building Across the Firm
Speed matters in establishing trust.
Brian Gross of Morrison & Foerster emphasized that his earlier interviews across the firm gave him insight into the partnership’s mindset even before day one. For firms that ran a leaner search, replicate that exposure after the hire: identify the 20–30 partners whose support is critical and make sure the COO meets them early, ideally in person. As part of that, the chair can accompany the COO on initial office visits or roadshows to accelerate buy-in. It is equally important for a new COO to meet not only their direct reports, but also the team underneath their direct reports. As one COO commented, “It’s important to meet the people who are doing a lot of the hard work.”
Set Communication Rhythms and Clear Boundaries
Agreeing on communication protocols from the start is essential.
Weekly one-on-ones with the chair, informal check-ins, and periodic strategy dinners help keep the COO plugged into firm leadership. Equally important: clarifying decision-making authority and escalation protocols. For example, Rob Brown of Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton made the point that a clear mutual understanding between the COO or Executive Director and the Chair/Managing Partner on where the Chair wants to be involved in joint decisions very much helps to build mutual trust and understanding. The absence of that clear framework can slow down critical decision-making and create organizational confusion.
Balance Patience with Momentum
Early listening is critical.
Several COOs described their first months as a “honeymoon period” spent observing, asking questions, and building informal influence. Boden, for instance, used that time to gather observations and perspectives from his chairman, laying the groundwork for future initiatives. That said, some COOs cautioned that waiting too long may not be ideal—early personnel moves, or other changes might be necessary. The key is to pace change carefully and communicate the rationale clearly to partners.
Include Coaching and Team Building
Many firms, especially those hiring a first-time COO or someone from outside the legal industry, find it beneficial to engage an experienced coach. A coach who has held a COO role within a law firm can help the new leader grasp the nuanced dynamics of firm operations and avoid common pitfalls.
In our work, we often pair coaching with a facilitated team-building session for the COO and their direct reports. Using Personalysis, a well-known personality-based assessment tool, we explore how each team member makes decisions, communicates, and contributes. From these results, we produce a team profile that helps everyone understand how to collaborate more effectively, providing the COO with early insights into leading their team. Direct reports frequently tell us this exercise helps them adapt more quickly and fosters early trust.
The Payoff
When onboarding is handled intentionally, the results speak for themselves: stronger alignment between leadership and partners, smoother decision-making, and a COO freed to focus on strategy rather than credibility-building. As one COO put it, “If you don’t have the partnerships, confidence, and solid channels of communication, you’re crippled from the start.”
For firms preparing to welcome a new COO, taking these six steps—visible support, structured orientation, relationship-building, clear communication, paced change, and coaching/team-building—can transform a promise-filled hire into a transformational leader.
The days of questioning the importance of Artificial Intelligence are over. Staying competitive and ahead of the curve means delving into AI from both leadership and technological perspectives, and knowing where to start is crucial. From boutique law firms to AmLaw legacies, AI is transforming how leadership approaches all aspects of law firm operations.
Rethinking Leadership Roles
Larger firms such as Cooley and Milbank are AI pioneers, establishing internal workflows and protocols, while also serving their clients’ AI needs. Smaller and regional firms are also adapting, incorporating AI into their practice and adding leaders to the executive roster to implement and execute AI. And while technology is intrinsically tied to AI, staying competitive requires executive talent with a broader, more adaptive skill set – prompting firm leadership to ask the following:
Who should lead this transformation?
Should that person have a JD?
Where in the org chart do they belong—IT, strategy, operations?
Managing Director John Mann has his finger on the pulse of the fast-changing needs of boutique and regional firms, finding that AI leaders may not be who you think.
“What’s particularly interesting is that, more often than not, the person leading the AI function within a law firm comes from a legal background,” Mann said. “In my research and conversations, the consistent feedback is that it’s critical for AI leadership to have a legal background, typically a JD, or experience at another law firm. This isn’t about a Chief Information Officer simply implementing off-the-shelf AI tools. Law firms recognize that to remain competitive, especially midsized firms, they must strategically harness AI, because the larger firms are already doing so.”
Survey Says Yes to AI—But With Caution
A 2025 survey of more than 2,800 legal professionals by the Federal Bar Association tracked the changes in AI adoption by lawyers in firms of various sizes.
Respondents from firms with 51 or more lawyers reported a significant 39% adoption rate of generative AI. By contrast, firms with 50 or fewer lawyers had adoption rates at half that level, with approximately 20% indicating the implementation of legal-specific AI within their practices.
In the survey, respondents indicated that the bulk of AI usage falls into business operations, with 54% of legal professionals using AI to draft correspondence, 14% using it to analyze firm data and matters, and 47% expressing interest in AI tools that assist in obtaining insights from a firm’s financial data.
Thomson Reuters surveyed more than 2,200 legal professionals and C-level corporate executives regarding their acceptance and usage of AI and compiled the results in the 2024 Future of Professionals Report. Respondents have warmed to the technology, raising expectations for its use.
77% of respondents believe AI will have a high or transformational impact on their work by the next five years. That’s an increase of 10 percentage points over the 2023 report’s responses.
72% of legal professionals surveyed in the report view AI as a force for good in their profession.
Half of law firm respondents cite exploring and implementing AI as their highest priority. In addition, they believe AI can help address other priorities, such as enhancing customer satisfaction and improving operational efficiency.
Despite the growing AI implementation, Mann finds law firm leadership is staying vigilant and intentional with AI use, especially when attorney-client confidentiality is concerned.
“The AI landscape is still the Wild West,” Mann said. “I recently had a conversation with a managing partner of a 50-attorney firm, and he said they have restricted the use of AI tools for client matters because of the potential breach of attorney-client privilege. Bottom line? They implemented a policy restricting the use of AI in any client matters.”
New Technology, New Strategies
Firms are looking beyond the IT department for the strategic role, prioritizing an executive’s legal experience and deep understanding of technology to drive efficiency, reduce billing bottlenecks, and enhance client outcomes.
Whether a firm labels the role Chief Innovation Officer, Chief Data and AI Officer, or Director of Innovation, there are consistent requirements for each, including 10 or more years of experience in legal operations, professional services innovation, or technology consulting and a proven ability to lead cross-functional innovation or technology initiatives in a law firm or professional services environment.
Ultimately, AI and its presence within law firm structure and leadership are making their own rules, challenging norms and definitions at every turn.
“AI is coming up as its own function and is not tethered to any one functional area,” Mann said. “There’s the tech piece of course, but there’s also strategy and a need for understanding and expertise in the practice of law. The question many firms are asking is, ‘How can we operate more efficiently to drive greater revenue and profitability?’ And for most, the answer increasingly points to leveraging AI to get there.”
