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Corporate legal departments facing surging data volumes often rush to adopt cutting-edge software or generative AI models to solve operational friction, only to discover that the technology amplifies existing dysfunction. Things go awry, just faster. Without well-defined policies, robust information governance, and consistent communication, new digital tools simply automate chaos.
On an episode of the Data Xposure podcast, Nick Curtis, eDiscovery Manager at Tokio Marine, unpacked how high-performing in-house legal operations establish sustainable workflows. Having worked on both the service provider side and in-house within corporate legal, Nick highlights understands that lasting efficiency is built on disciplined workflows, cross-functional relationships, and human oversight—not fancy technology on its own.
Listen to the full episode here.
Transitioning from a legal service provider to an in-house enterprise team requires an operational mindset shift. While service providers operate as profit centers billing for collections, processing, and review, corporate legal teams function under a different financial reality.
"When you're on the corporate side, usually you're not a revenue generating operation," Nick explains. "That places an emphasis on being able to be efficient in saving the company money.”
In this environment, upstream missteps compound quickly. Selecting the wrong vendor or failing to preserve data properly creates rework, increasing costs and draining resources. Operational maturity starts not with purchasing software, but with understanding how data flows across the organization, where it resides, and how information governance policies govern its lifecycle.
Legal tech vendors continually bring new feature sets, applications, and dashboards to market, but acquiring a platform without having an established workflow in place can end up creating expensive shelfware. Software cannot decide what your preservation strategy should be, nor can it resolve competing legal holds and data privacy mandates. That’s where policies and procedures need to step in.
"The software is just an enhancement. It helps with efficiency on already established processes," Nick notes. "So the process and the workflows is where you really do the good work. If you don't have a good process or good workflow, then the technology doesn't really matter."
Nick cautions against chasing novelty for its own sake:
"Sometimes you get vendors and different companies want to show you the newest technology. And sometimes I look at it, I'm like, okay, that's a great technology, but we don't really have a use for it. The technology could be great, but if it doesn't have a use for what you're trying to do, then it's not applicable."
A team must design standard operating procedures (SOPs) that produce reliable, repeatable results first. Only then can enterprise platforms, such as Exterro's, accelerate those operations effectively.
A workflow only works if the broader team can execute it on their own. One of the most common operational vulnerabilities in corporate legal departments is the "single point of failure," where one subject matter expert holds all technical and procedural knowledge. To combat that risk and build department-wide continuity at Tokio Marine, Nick documented workflows, created structured training manuals, recorded instructional videos, and tracked software release notes to train his team continuously.
"It made it to where it wasn't just me being the only one having the knowledge," Nick explains. "It made it easier for other people to be able to come in and do things consistently and be proactive... and freed up time for me to focus on other things and not be worried about whether or not they could handle things in case I wasn't available."
When team members understand how modular systems connect and possess clear SOPs, their confidence grows, operational bottlenecks disappear, and legal leaders can step away from daily triage to focus on higher-level strategy.
Technical acumen alone does not ensure eDiscovery success. Reflecting on his career, Nick identifies four essential pillars that separate struggling programs from mature ones:
Nick divides these pillars into two symbiotic pairs. There’s the task-related aspect of work, consisting of information governance; policies and procedures; and workflows, and there's the soft skills: communication and relationships with the people on the team. With those four things in place, you have a shortcut to being really good at what you need to do.
Because corporate data intersects multiple departments—from HR and IT security to privacy teams—eDiscovery managers cannot work in isolation. Solving cross-border compliance dilemmas or navigating competing obligations between data subject deletion requests and litigation holds requires collaborative bridges long before a crisis occurs.
Today, emerging artificial intelligence and automation tools have undeniably joined the essential solution kit for enterprise legal teams. From early case assessment and document summarization to rapid issue-spotting, AI offers unprecedented scale. However, AI is subject to the exact same rule that governs all legal tech: without process and management, it becomes a liability.
"A lot of people are into AI just to be into AI. But you have to be into AI to make sure you receive a benefit from it," Nick emphasizes. "You shouldn't look at AI as if it's gonna complete this for me and I could just use it. It has to be managed. It can give you output and information, but you have to make sure it's the proper information. It takes a certain level of thinking and a level of supervision, as opposed to thinking you can use it without that human element of quality control."
Rather than replacing legal teams, AI is elevating them into the role of orchestrators. While automation takes over rote processing and surface-level analysis, experienced practitioners must apply the quality control, context, and legal judgment that machines lack.
Nick sees this evolution not as an existential threat to legal careers, but as an opportunity for professionals willing to adapt:
"Humans, we adapt and the world changes and there's different opportunities that open up... I don't really fear long term that it will take everybody's jobs. But I just think we'll see a pivot in the industry and what people have to do."
Sustainable modernization doesn't come from outsourcing judgment to an algorithm or deploying software over broken processes. The corporate teams that thrive in this era of AI will be those that master their data governance, build disciplined workflows, invest in human collaboration, and maintain rigorous oversight over every tool they deploy.
To learn more about building an eDiscovery process that incorporates technology and AI, download the Exterro whitepaper An Action Plan for Smarter eDiscovery.
