What does it actually take for a law firm to adopt AI well, rather than just quickly?
That was the question our Co-founder Karolina Šilingienė brought to the Founding Symposium of Izy Global Partners LLP, convened in Abuja on 20 May 2026 under the theme Artificial Intelligence and the Evolution of Legal Practice. She shared the stage with three Nigerian Senior Advocates, each tackling a different dimension of AI’s arrival in legal practice:
- Dr. Alex A. Izinyon, SAN – the intelligent counsel and the inescapability of professional responsibility
- Isaiah Bozimo, SAN – AI, evidence, and the integrity of dispute resolution
- Michael Jonathan Numa, SAN – regulatory frameworks and compliance obligations
- Karolina Šilingienė (Crespect) – from practice management to practice intelligence
The organisers have since published a white paper capturing the full proceedings. Below are the takeaways most relevant to firm leaders deciding what to do next, anchored in Karolina’s contribution.
AI is one pressure among many, not the only one
Karolina opened by reframing the moment. Firms in 2026 aren’t navigating a single AI wave; they’re managing a multi-front disruption: pricing pressure, commoditisation of routine work, the strain on the billable hour, a generational shift in expectations, rising regulatory complexity, cybersecurity risk, and a growing trust gap between adoption and governance.
The danger she flagged is AI FOMO – rushed, poorly considered investment driven by the fear of being seen to do nothing. The intelligent firm treats AI adoption with the same strategic discipline it would apply to any other major business decision, not as a box to tick.
The real shift is from practice management to practice intelligence
This was the spine of her talk. The distinction isn’t rhetorical:
- Practice management looks backward. It captures, organises, and reports on work that has already been done.
- Practice intelligence looks forward. It reads the patterns in that work to flag where time and money are leaking and to guide the next decision.
AI is the enabler of practice intelligence. It is not a substitute for the organisational work that makes that intelligence possible.
Data governance is the precondition for everything
Here is the part every managing partner should sit with. Before deploying AI for anything reliable, Karolina argued, a firm has to be able to answer four deceptively simple questions:
- Where is the firm’s data right now?
- If it’s stored, is it secure?
- Is the firm ready to collect the data it needs, with a secure and accessible place to hold it?
- Can the firm safely empower AI to analyse that data?
Most firms discover they can’t answer these cleanly. Data is scattered, unevenly secured, and inconsistently structured. Deploy AI on top of fragmented data and you don’t get intelligence, you get unreliable outputs and a new category of risk.
A nine-step path to becoming a data-centric firm
Karolina’s roadmap deliberately starts with data, not tools: unify your data; map how work actually flows; standardise matter and client structures (using the SALI standard and consistent metadata); identify high-friction operations; ask whether each can be automated; start analytics with simple, accessible metrics; reassess how transparent and accessible your information is; move from static historical records to live client and matter profiles; and measure and reward data-driven behaviour to embed the cultural change.
The sequencing is the point. Tool selection comes late, after the foundations are in place.
Governance and compliance are the same agenda
One of the strongest threads connecting Karolina’s talk to the regulatory arguments at the symposium: the data governance work required for practice intelligence is the same work required for data protection compliance. Under frameworks like the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023, a firm that can’t answer the four data questions is, by definition, not fully compliant. These aren’t two separate projects competing for budget. They’re one.
The Crespect perspective
This is exactly the problem we built Crespect to solve. Practice intelligence shouldn’t feel futuristic; it should feel practical. That means software that doesn’t just store a firm’s data but unifies it, structures it, secures it, and turns it into the insight that helps lawyers and firm leaders make better decisions, from client onboarding and matter management through to KPIs and business planning.
The machine is here. The firms that benefit most won’t be the fastest to buy a tool; they’ll be the ones that got their data house in order first.
Read the full white paper from Izy Global Partners LLP, Artificial Intelligence and the Evolution of Legal Practice, covering the regulatory, evidentiary, professional, and operational dimensions of AI in legal practice, plus twelve policy recommendations.
→ Book a demo to see what practice intelligence looks like in your firm.
