President Oyango Snell explains how Chicago inspired the theme and why CLOC found it relevant
Earlier today 5 August, the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC) held its 2026 Australia legal operations innovation summit with the theme Stronger by Design.
CLOC president and CEO Oyango Snell, who flew in from the US for the event, told Australasian Lawyer that the theme was taken from the organisation’s decision to move its CLOC Global Institute event from its usual Las Vegas location to Chicago.
“We looked at the architectural development of Chicago and how resilient it has been in rebuilding and reshaping the city. We were inspired by the hard work that the city has gone through over decades,” Snell said. “Stronger by Design is relevant to the legal operations industry because it moves legal teams from being reactive to the more intentional alignment of people, processes and technology all around to achieve better outcomes”.
He explained that the theme reflected the resilience of the industry.
“Our goal was to say that as legal operations professionals, we don't just sit back and wait for things to happen. We proactively begin designing and engineering; in some instances, we are the conduit between technology and legal and how it all comes together in order to solve business problems that organizations face on a daily basis”, Snell told Australasian Lawyer.
Robotics expert Dr Catherine Ball delivered the opening keynote address entitled Stronger by Design: Converging Technologies and the Business of Law. AI is the topic of the day at the summit because, as Snell put it, “it all stems from artificial intelligence”.
“We're no longer dealing with as much experimentation on AI – we're looking at the outcomes and the governance and how AI is helping to advance the business overall. Humans are involved in that process by exercising judgment, leveraging the tools, using the tools in order to get from point A to point B through strategic decision making”, he said.
Snell emphasised the importance of “keeping the human in the loop” and noted that discussions would revolve around strategies, best practices and best-use cases in this regard. Legal operations, he explained, “is now embedded in artificial intelligence and technology”.
“Before, we were talking about contract lifecycle management - that's why we have so many CLM companies that are thriving still because that is still part of the work that they do. They've shifted to artificial intelligence – it's embedded in CLM programs and products and services”, he told Australasian Lawyer. “So I dare to challenge us to not abandon the AI conversation. When we look at what's to come in the future for legal ops, it's about not only understanding the next tier of AI implementation, but what is it that's going to continue to help define and push the industry forward”.
Snell, who became CLOC’s president and CEO this year, said it was “humbling” and “fun” to be helming the organisation during such a crucial period for the legal operations industry.
“I get to sit at the center of the evolution of this industry at such a pivotal time when we're dealing with such important and significant transformational topics,” he told Australasian Lawyer. “When I was a GC from 2017 to 2021, the issues that I faced were cybersecurity and the hijacking of websites and company information through Trojans. Right now, we're dealing with actually creating robotic employees that work for us, that serve as our office managers, billing specialists, and frontline producing entities.”
The 2026 CLOC Australia Summit was held at the Ivy Ballroom in Sydney.
