of change
Caroline Snow’s path to becoming Senior Partner at Dentons, one of the world’s largest law firms, hasn’t exactly been conventional.
When Caryn Sandler began her legal career, innovation wasn’t part of the conversation. Law firms were built on precedent, billable hours and tradition, and technology was pushed firmly to one side.
What began as a move away from traditional practice has evolved into a leadership role at the forefront of legal transformation. Today, she is one of the few senior leaders in Australia with responsibility for innovation, serving as Partner and Chief Knowledge and Innovation Officer at Gilbert + Tobin.
As AI becomes part of everyday legal work, Sandler’s role is shifting again—from driving adoption to designing the systems, culture and guardrails that will shape the profession’s next chapter.
We sat down with her to discuss the future of law, the realities of leading innovation within a law firm, and why AI tools must always have a human in the loop.
Talk to me about how you ended up as a partner and Chief Knowledge and Innovation Officer, because it’s a pretty unique title!
That’s because it’s a unique role!
I started my law career in the very traditional sense: I did a summer clerkship in my penultimate year of university and then moved into corporate M&A law. I ultimately spent around seven years practising in both the Australian and UK markets before returning to Australia after about three years in London.
It was when I was pregnant with my first child that I realised the hours of the M&A world weren’t conducive to giving 110% to both my family and my work, which is how I’m wired!
That was when I joined Gilbert + Tobin (G+T) and moved into a knowledge management role.
What does a role like that look like?
I supported the G+T corporate team nationally, drafting precedents and keeping our lawyers up to date on legal developments.
That period became a real turning point for me because, around 2015, technology started getting real traction in the legal sector. Before then, innovation wasn’t really part of the conversation, and few people were thinking about how technology could drive efficiency or improve client outcomes.
After five years as a knowledge lawyer, I moved into the Head of Knowledge role, then Head of Legal Service Innovation, before being promoted to partner in 2018.
Your path to partnership wasn’t traditional, especially at a time when dedicated innovation roles were still emerging. How did that opportunity come about at G+T?
I feel very fortunate to work in an organisation that has always been progressive in its thinking. Danny Gilbert set that tone early, and in 2015, Sam Nickless joined (now our CEO), bringing his McKinsey consulting background.
At the same time, the broader market was shifting. Innovation was becoming more prominent, and it was increasingly clear that technology would be a major disruptor in the legal world.
I began having conversations with the firm about what might come next for me. I was already reflecting on my future in my knowledge lawyer role, and it had become clear that returning to practice no longer felt realistic. What did feel right was the innovation side of the work, which I’d grown to really enjoy.
So, in that sense, my promotion was a combination of my own drive to work in innovation and the firm’s forward-thinking mindset. But it was very unusual. At the time, we were one of perhaps only two firms globally to promote a partner with sole responsibility for innovation.
Even today, while innovation-focused partners are becoming more common, that shift has only gained momentum in the past couple of years.
Why do you think more firms haven’t taken a similar approach?
Historically, there’s been a real challenge around what truly drives revenue for a law firm versus what’s perceived as support.
I had a very clear vision about the value of innovation, and our partners, to their credit, shared that vision. They saw innovation as more than support; they saw it as a strategic capability.
For many organisations, though, making that mindset shift is still incredibly difficult.
Do you think this will change?
I think it will start to shift because of the nature of AI, and because people recognise that we’re at a transition point in the legal ecosystem where technology is going to play a far more important day-to-day role within organisations.
Does the firm's approach to innovation and technology differentiate G+T in the market? Do you think it helps win new clients, or is it more about improving internal workflows?
It’s really both.
If you look at the panels and proposals we receive today, most include questions about how we’re using technology and new ways of working. There’s a real focus on it now—it’s almost a ticket to play.
And the benefits show up across the firm. Lawyers want to focus on high-value work, and when technology helps make that possible, it improves both their day-to-day experience and the outcomes we deliver for clients. And it’s not just about efficiency; technology can genuinely lead to better results.
We’re already seeing that with AI, where deeper insights can be drawn from large datasets with far less manual effort. Ultimately, that all feeds into better outcomes for clients, which is what matters most.
“Bringing AI into the business creates huge opportunities, but it also introduces real risk, and managing and mitigating that risk is just as important as the technology itself.”
Has the introduction of technology into the firm changed what your clients need?
What’s been interesting is that, while a law firm’s core business is still legal, everyone (including our clients) is rethinking how they operate. In-house teams are asking: how do we work differently? How do we become more efficient and effective? And how do we manage growing volumes of work without a matching increase in headcount?
Those questions led me to develop an almost consulting-style capability through G+T Innovate. We’ve worked closely with many significant clients on transformation diagnostics — from defining a three-year roadmap, to embedding a mindset of change and continuous improvement, through to adopting and integrating new technology.
How have you managed the challenges of introducing AI into your legal teams, particularly when balancing new technology with existing expertise and established workflows?
Running a generative AI strategy is incredibly complex because it’s so multi-dimensional. You need people who deeply understand the technology, who can deliver large-scale rollouts, and who can keep pace with how quickly the tools are evolving.
At the same time, there are critical legal considerations—privacy, copyright and confidentiality—which means working closely with our lawyers in those specialist areas to shape a clear, informed approach.
We also partner closely with our risk team and our Office of General Counsel to develop AI policies, so there’s clarity around how the technology should be used and how to use it safely.
Our technology team is another key partner. We run security reviews, test the tools, and understand exactly how and where data is processed and hosted, which is complex in its own right.
Then there’s the capability piece. Building a general understanding of the technology requires significant upskilling across our legal teams.
Bringing AI into the business creates huge opportunities, but it also introduces real risk, and managing and mitigating that risk is just as important as the technology itself.
Is choosing the right technology harder for legal teams than it is in other fields?
I think it is. The legal tech ecosystem is huge, and it’s quite different from a lot of other professions. There’s been a very targeted development of tools designed specifically to solve legal pain points.
It can be tempting to think, ‘we’ll just buy one of the systems on the market,’ but the reality is they don’t all fit the way lawyers think or the way legal work actually gets done. They also need to meet our very strict governance and security requirements.
So, how do you decide which technology to bring into the firm?
We run a lot of pilots, but only once we’re confident we understand the tool and have the right governance and risk frameworks in place.
We ran a pilot of a new generative AI technology toward the end of 2024, and it was fascinating. It started with about 80 people and quickly grew to 200 entirely through word of mouth. People were finding genuinely useful ways to apply the technology and were excited about the impact it was having.
I was getting daily emails asking, ‘Can I be added to the pilot?’ which is pretty unusual. We’ve built a strong internal culture around testing and adopting new technology, which has made a real difference, particularly as we embark on our AI journey.
Tech adoption usually comes with pushback, yet this spread almost virally. What made it different?
It nearly always comes down to focusing on the user.
As a team, we spend a lot of time thinking about how people will interact with the technology and how they can get real value from it. You can’t just hand someone a tool and expect it to stick.
We work closely with lawyers to test and refine use cases, and we’re proactive about finding new ones across the firm. We’ve also introduced a ‘bounty program’ to the wider business. It’s been a successful way to encourage people to ideate and think differently about how AI can be used in their day-to-day work.
Previous winners have gone on to create or build real tools, and we’ve just launched another round of the program where the winner gets a trip overseas to attend a prestigious conference.
So, we’re trying to tackle adoption in a variety of ways.
“We see AI as an enabler; it’s a tool that still requires human judgement and verification at every stage.”
You’ve built the guardrails and training, but is AI actually mature enough to handle the work right now, or is the technology still catching up?
It’s a combination. As a firm, we recognise there are different schools of thought on how to approach generative AI. Our view is to lean into the technology. Everything we’ve seen over the past 10 years suggests that, while this is a different kind of technology, the fundamentals still apply.
Experimentation and cultural change take far longer than the technology itself. I’m fortunate to work in an organisation that’s genuinely open to change and highly focused on using technology well, so we’re starting from a strong cultural foundation.
For me, it’s important to get these tools into the hands of our lawyers, with a clear understanding that they can’t do everything yet. We see AI as an enabler; it’s a tool that still requires human judgement and verification at every stage.
We’ve been very clear about that. There must always be a human in the loop, and nothing leaves the organisation without being properly checked for accuracy and validity.
AI gets a lot of attention, but what else do you see coming for legal tech?
I wish I had a crystal ball because everything is changing so quickly. But one thing feels very clear to me: the future of legal services is multidisciplinary. That’s something we’ve been building towards for years.
If you look at how my team works with our lawyers, it’s already a mix of skills—data scientists, transformation lawyers, legal project managers, technologists and knowledge engineers, alongside legal subject-matter experts. That combination is where legal service delivery is headed.
We’re seeing it play out now. Matters don’t always involve just lawyers anymore. We might build custom AI workflows, use existing technology, or bring in different expertise, all working together to benefit our clients.
The other big shift is the pace of change. Generative AI is starting to be woven into everyday workflows, and we’re moving towards more agent-style tools that act as co-pilots for lawyers. That feels very real in the next few years.
Longer term, I expect organisations to become faster, more accessible and more client-centric, and firms won’t be competing on legal expertise alone.
It’s a great example of innovation beyond technology: people, roles, how those roles work together, and even the firm’s business model.
We’re leaning into all of that, and it isn’t easy, because no one has all the answers yet.
Pricing will change too. The billable hour will likely still have a place, but it will be increasingly supplemented by more creative models like fixed fees and value-based pricing. We’re already starting to see that shift.
Capability is another big area of change. Where we once had a single learning pathway for lawyers, we now have distinct pathways for legal skills, tech and innovation, and soft skills. On top of that, we’re rethinking how we build capability in an AI-enabled world, including how AI itself supports legal learning.
All of this requires significant change and investment. One of the biggest open questions is how we train junior lawyers if they’re no longer doing the same work senior lawyers did earlier in their careers.
Maybe the profession adapts, and that challenge resolves itself, but this does feel fundamentally different. If AI is doing the first review, extracting key information, or even redrafting clauses, we need to rethink how juniors develop the judgement and specialist skills required to review and validate AI outputs.
It really is a fascinating and exciting time to be in law.
