At a recent CMO Series LIVE session, two leaders at the forefront of legal industry transformation sat down for an honest conversation about what it actually takes to turn an AI strategy into something that sticks. Emily Gallagher, Senior Director of Business Development at Womble Bond Dickinson, and Joanna Penn, Chief Transformation Officer at Husch Blackwell, spoke candidly about the operational realities of transformation in today's legal market.

The conversation cut straight to a tension most legal marketers know well: the gap between a bold strategy and the day-to-day reality of making it happen.

Strategy Is Only The Beginning

One of the session's central themes was that writing a strategic plan is, in many ways, the easy part. The hard part is executing it and cascading a firm-wide vision down through practice groups, individual teams, and ultimately to the attorneys themselves. 

Both speakers described frameworks for doing exactly that. Joanna Penn described breaking the firm's north star objectives into tiered levels, where each team owns a subset of goals that directly align with the broader strategy. However, the key is translating not just what the strategy says, but what it means for them specifically, what behaviors it calls for, and how their day-to-day work connects to firm-wide outcomes.

AI, it turns out, is a useful tool for this translation. Emily Gallagher described using it to distill two-page practice plans into personalised prompts that guide attorneys through their own business development priorities. A low-risk, high-value use case that builds comfort with the technology while actually moving the needle on BD.

AI Is Not The Plan

Both speakers were emphatic on one point: AI is an accelerator, not a strategy. Firms that treat it as the destination risk building on an unstable foundation. As Emily Gallagher put it plainly, "Technology is easy; I can write a check to get these technologies, but changing behavior, that's the hardest part."

It is a sharp reminder that the more important work is getting people and processes right first. Firms need clean data, clear governance, and a team that understands what the technology can and cannot do.

That includes addressing the vocabulary problem head-on. There is a meaningful difference between machine learning, an LLM, and an agent, and leaders who cannot articulate those differences lose credibility with the teams they are trying to bring along. Walking the walk matters.

One of the most instructive moments in the session was a story about a partner who acquired an AI pitching tool and wanted to deploy it at scale, sending out hundreds of tailored pitches per week at the click of a button. Rather than shutting it down, the response was to work with enthusiasm while building the governance structures around it. Volume without strategy is noise, and the goal is winnable opportunities, not just more output.

Bringing People Along

Change management featured heavily throughout the session, and both speakers were honest about the resistance that comes with transformation, particularly in law firms, where autonomy is deeply embedded in the culture.

The answer is not to slow down or soften the vision. It is to communicate early and often, always anchoring back to the "why." When people do not understand the reason for change, they fill in the gaps themselves, and the story they tell is rarely the one you want. Getting in front of partners in person, going on roadshows, and having individual conversations remain irreplaceable, even in an era of rapid technological change.

There is also something to be said for giving people agency. Letting attorneys experiment with AI tools in low-stakes environments, sharing what works and what does not across teams, and positioning BD professionals as strategic guides through the process all build trust that makes real transformation possible.

The Bottom Line

If there was one takeaway from the session, it was this: the firms that will lead in this era are the ones that resist the urge to let AI drive the agenda, and instead use it to amplify a strategy that's already working.

For legal marketers and BD professionals, the competitive edge won't come from adopting AI first, but from having clear goals and a team that's driven to execute.