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In-house legal teams are under pressure to move fast on AI while building the foundations that make it stick. The MinterEllison Consulting Legal Optimisation team helps you cut through the noise, connect AI to your strategy, and turn ambition into operational reality.

Legal Optimisation

AI is reshaping what in-house legal teams are expected to deliver, and how fast they are expected to deliver it. But the teams seeing lasting ROI from AI are not the ones with the best technology. They are the ones connecting AI to their strategy, their operating context, and the specific problems they need to solve.

Recognised by Chambers NewLaw with a global Band One ranking for Legal Transformation Consulting, we are trusted advisers for in-house legal teams navigating this shift. We are independent and technology-agnostic, and we work with you from strategy to implementation, combining legal fluency with consulting rigour at every step.

Arm yourself with the data to move with confidence

Transformation starts with an honest view of where you stand today. We have built innovative tools to assess your in-house legal team’s baseline rapidly, surfacing insights across your operating model to pinpoint where AI and broader change will have the greatest impact, sharpening strategic decision making, and building a compelling business case for the investment ahead. 

Introducing the Current State Assessment powered by our activity analyser tool.

How we assess your readiness

Lasting AI success requires change across five interconnected areas of your operating model. We use these pillars to identify where your team is today, where the gaps are, and where to focus first.

  • Strategy and governance: we help you set a clear strategic direction for AI and establish the governance needed to support it
  • People and culture: we help you build the skills, confidence and culture required for sustainable AI adoption
  • Sourcing and delivery: we help you redesign sourcing and delivery models to maximise AI-enabled value
  • Process and operations: we help you fix workflows and foundations so AI can be applied consistently
  • Technology and data: we help you select and embed the right technology and data foundations to enable AI at scale

How we can help you

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Know where you stand before you commit to a direction. We give you the data, diagnostics and strategic clarity to make informed decisions about AI and your broader operating model.

  • AI readiness assessment and use case design
  • Strategic planning (including AI) and KPIs
  • Operational and activity assessments
  • Technology review and prioritised requirements
  • Capability and capacity gap analysis
  • Knowledge management review
  • Business case build
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Move fast without creating fragility. We help you build the governance foundations that make AI adoption sustainable and bring your people with you.

  • Ethical and responsible AI use frameworks
  • Legal governance design
  • Service catalogue and prioritisation frameworks
  • Change readiness assessments and stakeholder engagement planning
  • Standard operating procedures
  • Process review and compliance
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Turn strategy into operational reality. We redesign your function, build capability and implement the right technology and AI so that change lands and scales.

  • Function and operating model redesign
  • AI pilot programs
  • Technology selection (including AI) and implementation
  • Process optimisation
  • Competency frameworks and capability uplift programs
  • Knowledge management strategy uplift

Specialities


  • AI Readiness and success
  • Current state assessments
  • Process and service optimisation
  • Team design and capability building
  • Technology selection and implementation
  • Change management
AI Readiness and success

We assess your readiness across the five interconnected areas of your operating model, identifying the use cases that match your context and risk appetite, and partnering with you from roadmap to implementation.

Current state assessments

We provide you with data-driven insights into your current operational performance and maturity, helping you to establish a clear baseline, identify targeted improvements that unlock strategic value and build your business case for change.

Process and service optimisation

We streamline your operations by refining processes, redesigning workflows, defining service delivery models and strengthening knowledge management, enabling you to work more efficiently and deliver greater value.

Team design and capability building

We build scalable legal functions by shaping fit-for-purpose teams, with clearly defined roles, competency frameworks and standards that support you to deliver consistent performance and drive continuous improvement.

Technology selection and implementation

We provide a structured approach to select and implement the right technology, evaluating solutions against your strategic goals and needs, ensuring you are making well-informed decisions and maximising ROI.

Change management

We support you to drive sustainable change with a human-centric approach and practical tools that foster trust, secure buy-in and embed new ways of working so you can adapt with confidence and deliver lasting value.

Lead contacts

Case studies

The team has a breadth of prior experience, both at MinterEllison Consulting and in previous roles, providing these services to major international and national organisations, as well as government clients.

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AI use case development

Designed and delivered a targeted AI use case program for an in-house legal team, identifying high-impact opportunities across contract review and knowledge retrieval for pilot. Assessed pilot outputs, testing accuracy and compliance with governance principles. This enabled the team to validate value, refine use cases and establish a clear pathway for scaled adoption of AI across the function.

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AI capability uplift and training

Designed and delivered structured AI training programs for various in-house legal teams, focussed on building practical capability and confidence in the use of tools such as Microsoft Copilot. Combined foundational education with hands-on use case development and scenario-based exercises to embed learning. This improved understanding of AI’s role within legal workflows, accelerated adoption, and equipped teams to safely and effectively incorporate AI into day-to-day activities.

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Workflow efficiencies

Reviewed a high volume, sensitive claims process to identify and quantify pain points that had been causing delays and inconsistencies, and made recommendations to drive improved cycle times and reduced error rates for the in-house legal function.

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Function design

Designed an in-house legal function strategy, structure, resourcing model and competency framework to better align it with the organisation’s strategic focus areas and business needs, and facilitate a clear and structured approach for the management of the team.

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Diagnostic review

Performed a diagnostic review of eight legal teams with approximately 1,000 FTEs to assess the team's maturity levels, validate their transformational project roadmap, and identify additional focus areas to drive efficiencies.

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Technology selection

Developed a prioritised set of functional and non-functional requirements for a matter management system, before facilitating vendor demonstrations and evaluation of providers and supporting the implementation of technology. This improved intake, triage, and workflows, delivering significant operational efficiencies and reducing time spent on prioritisation.

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https://www.minterellison.com/consulting/legal-optimisation

Our consulting services are provided by the partnerships known as MinterEllison Consulting (ABN 50 017 469 292) and MinterEllison Advisory (ABN 27 632 804 465) which operate through the company, MinterEllison Consulting Pty Limited (ABN 50 077 613 828), all of which are part of the MinterEllison Group. Our consulting services do not constitute legal services nor legal advice and are not provided by Australian legal practitioners acting in that capacity. The laws and regulations which govern the provision of legal services in the relevant jurisdiction do not apply to the provision of non-legal services.