The Last Ticket

Lena adjusted her glasses and sipped her coffee, watching the chat window blink to life. The system greeted her.

"Good morning, Lena. What do you need help with today?"

No more dropdowns, no more forms. Just a simple conversation. She typed:

"I need to check the status of our MSA with OrbitTech."

A moment later, the AI responded.

"OrbitTech MSA: Latest version v3.1, counterparty review in progress. Expected response by EOD. Would you like a risk summary or key deviations from standard terms?"

She smiled. This used to take hours of email chains, manual comparisons, and waiting for someone in legal to dig through folders. Now, it was instant.

Five years ago, the legaltech stack looked different. Ticketing systems were rigid, contract repositories were static, and CLM platforms were supposed to be the answer—until they weren’t. Everything was siloed, requiring human intervention at every step. But Lena had seen the shift firsthand.

Legal Operations wasn’t just about managing documents anymore—it was about orchestrating intelligence.

The AI Agents Take Over

The first big change was how work was tracked. Traditional ticketing was replaced by AI-driven intake. Whether a request came from Slack, email, or WhatsApp, the AI captured it, categorized it, and assigned it to the right process. No forms, no back-and-forth. It learned over time, refining workflows based on patterns.

Then came the death of static repositories. Companies still kept central storage, but documents also lived in federated spaces; cloud drives, email threads, even messaging platforms. AI agents sifted through them in real-time, pulling out key terms, risk factors, and metadata upon request. No more waiting for someone to "check the contract." The contract was alive, and the data was always at her fingertips.

Lena remembered when people still talked about CLM like it was the future. The irony. What actually happened was the rise of automation and AI agents. Instead of relying on lifecycle management platforms, legal teams spun up on-demand agents to extract and analyze information. The AI wasn’t just storing contracts; it was interpreting them, flagging risks, and suggesting alternative clauses.

And that’s where her role had changed the most.

From Information Shepherd to Strategic Advisor

Legal Ops used to be about managing the flow of information, making sure the right people had the right documents at the right time. Now, it was about enabling strategy.

Instead of chasing contracts, Lena spent her time refining the company’s negotiation playbooks. AI agents used those playbooks to suggest edits in real-time, ensuring compliance while speeding up deals. She wasn’t writing the language anymore. She was curating it.

She also found herself integrating APIs across departments, ensuring legal’s data flowed seamlessly into finance, sales, and procurement. Every team had AI-driven dashboards that answered their legal questions instantly, freeing the lawyers for real advisory work.

Requests like "Where is this contract?" or "What’s the status of my deal?" weren’t clogging up inboxes anymore. AI answered those in seconds, leaving the legal team to tackle the negotiations that truly needed human nuance.

The New Legal Ops

Lena glanced at her dashboard. Everything was running smoothly—AI agents handling the intake, contract intelligence working in the background, deal summaries generating in real-time.

Her inbox wasn’t filled with admin requests. Instead, there was a message from the CFO:

"Can you spin up a report on our top five highest-risk vendor agreements this quarter?"

Lena clicked a button. The AI started pulling the data immediately.

As she leaned back, she thought about how far things had come. Legal Ops wasn’t drowning in paperwork anymore. They weren’t just the people who pushed contracts forward. They were the architects of intelligence, the ones who connected business strategy with legal execution.

And as she watched the last traditional ticket close on her screen, she knew there was no going back.

The future will arrive.