Humanism in Driving AI Adoption for Legal
Show notes
How do you actually get lawyers to change the way they work with technology?
In this episode of Version Up, Roberto Alarcon, Senior Manager, Innovation and AI at White & Case, comes on to talk about what AI implementation looks like from inside a major law firm. Drawing on more than a decade at the firm—beginning in e-discovery and project management before moving into broader innovation work—Roberto explains why successful legal innovation has shifted from introducing lawyers to new tools toward understanding their workflows, incentives, and problems first.
The conversation explores the human side of AI adoption: building trust with lawyers, identifying influential partners and innovation champions, reducing friction, giving lawyers incentives to participate, and meeting different practice groups where they are rather than imposing a single model of technology use. Roberto also discusses White & Case’s partnership with Legora, the role of practice support lawyers and other internal teams, and how law firms can take a best of both worlds approach that leverages what off-the-shelf tools have to offer while connecting and customizing them to drive tailored use cases.
Underlying it all is a broader argument for the importance of distinctly human skills in an AI-enabled workplace. Listening, relationship-building, judgment, organizational knowledge, and emotional intelligence are increasingly central to the work of implementing technology effectively. In fact, one theme that emerges is how humanities backgrounds may become more—not less—valuable as AI automates more technical tasks, and why the future of legal innovation may depend as much on understanding people and institutions as on understanding the technology itself.
About the guest
Roberto Alarcon is Senior Manager, Innovation and AI at White & Case LLP, where he works on technology adoption, legal workflows, and innovation across the firm's practices.
* * *
Version Up Members is a free, invitation-only community for lawyers and legal professionals putting AI to work at law firms and legal departments. Request an invitation: versionup.ai/members