Meeting of the Minds - The Legal AI Podcast

What happens when AI moves beyond individual legal tasks and starts changing how an entire legal department operates? In this episode of Meeting of the Minds – The Legal AI Podcast, hosts Hal Marcus and Memme Onwudiwe sit down with Monique White, Vice President and Head of Legal Operations at Link Logistics, to explore the rapid evolution of legal AI and what it means for legal teams, legal operations professionals, and business leaders.

White brings a unique perspective shaped by her career across global supply chain operations, internal audit and compliance, legal operations, and alternative legal service providers. She explains how her audit background shaped her risk-based approach to legal operations and why understanding the business end-to-end is becoming increasingly important for legal professionals.

The conversation explores AI as a potential junior-level resource for low-complexity, high-volume legal work, the shift from legal operations execution to workflow orchestration, the role of AI in contract analysis and risk identification, and the importance of closing the loop between contract insights and future workflows. White also explains why legal teams need to establish clear guardrails around AI and determine where human judgment must remain central.

For legal operations leaders, general counsel, in-house legal teams, and professionals navigating AI adoption, this conversation offers a practical look at how legal technology, workflow automation, AI governance, and business strategy are coming together.

What You'll Learn:

How AI is changing resource sourcing and why legal teams are beginning to consider AI for low-complexity, high-volume work

Why legal operations is evolving toward workflow orchestration, strategy, optimization, and innovation

How contract intelligence can become more valuable when insights are fed back into playbooks and future workflows

How AI can help legal teams identify risk, control gaps, and patterns across large volumes of contracts

Why legal teams need to define what AI should and should not be allowed to do

How centralized AI governance can prevent fragmented prompts, agents, and workflows across legal teams

Why legal operations professionals need stronger end-to-end business knowledge and cross-functional relationships

About the Guest:

Monique White is the Vice President and Head of Legal Operations at Link Logistics, with more than a decade of experience spanning legal operations, supply chain management, internal audit, and compliance. Her career began in global supply chain operations before she moved into audit and compliance, where she developed the risk-based approach that continues to shape her work in legal operations. She has also worked with alternative legal service providers and led digital transformation initiatives involving contract lifecycle management and legal department standardization.

Monique brings a cross-functional perspective to legal technology and transformation, with a focus on legal service delivery, risk management, workflow optimization, AI adoption, and the evolving role of legal operations within the broader business.

Episode Resources

Monique White on LinkedIn: Monique White

Evisort Website - Evisort

Hal Marcus on LinkedIn: Hal Marcus

Memme Onwudiwe on LinkedIn: Memme Onwudiwe

The legal business model has resisted fundamental change for decades: Is now finally the time? In this episode of Meeting of the Minds - The Legal AI Podcast, hosts Hal Marcus and Memme Onwudiwe sit down with Co-founder & CEO at General Legal Ryan Walker to discuss how AI-native law firms are reshaping legal practice. Together, they explore what it truly means to integrate technology at every level of legal processes.

 

What You'll Learn:

How to abandon the billable hour model and implement flat rate pricing

Why AI integration goes beyond research and affects all processes

How AI is accelerating junior attorney development

How to build competitive advantage in a saturated profession through specialization

The specter of AI agents hiring outside legal counsel

Understanding legal market valuation in the age of agentic AI

 

About the Guest:

Ryan Walker is the Co-founder & CEO at General Legal, an AI-native law firm bringing a fresh perspective to legal service delivery. His background in mathematics and machine learning ties into his unique expertise of applying AI solutions to tackle complex legal situations. Previously, he’s also led innovation at Casetext, where he championed the adoption of BERT models and semantic research engines in legal research, giving the company an undeniable edge in legal technology services. 

 

Ryan's work is redefining what's possible in legal technology and accessibility, making this conversation essential for those navigating the intersection of AI, legal innovation, and organizational transformation.

 

Episode Resources

Ryan Walker on LinkedIn: Ryan Walker

General Legal  Website

Hal Marcus on LinkedIn: Hal Marcus

Memme Onwudiwe on LinkedIn: Memme Onwudiwe

Most contract problems begin with teams not knowing where their agreements are, which version is current, and what data those agreements contain. 

 

In this episode of Meeting of the Minds - The Legal AI Podcast, hosts Hal Marcus and Memme Onwudiwe speak with Shelle Elzer, Legal Operations Manager at NetApp, about the operational foundation legal teams need before AI can deliver meaningful value. 

 

What You'll Learn:

Why contract visibility is an operational insurance policy

How to move Legal Ops out of constant firefighting mode

Why new technology cannot compensate for bad contract data

How to define and enforce a minimum viable contract data set

Why AI is giving contract teams a stronger seat at the business table

 

About the Guest:

Shelle Elzer is a Legal Operations Manager at NetApp, where she focuses on contract operations, legal technology and the processes that help teams turn agreements into usable business intelligence. Her career has followed contracts across several very different industries. She began at GE working on the procurement side, later moved into healthcare with a focus on physician contracts, and eventually joined NetApp, where she now works with a contract portfolio of more than 100,000 agreements.

 

Here, Shelle has helped build repeatable contract processes that support major organizational initiatives, including entity changes, M&A activity and the company’s headquarters relocation to Cork, Ireland. 

 

Episode Resources

Shelle Elzer on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shelle-elzer-91ab634/ 

NetApp Website: https://www.netapp.com/ 

Workday Contract Management: Website

Hal Marcus on LinkedIn: Hal Marcus

Memme Onwudiwe on LinkedIn: Memme Onwudiwe

Contracting isn’t just legal paperwork - it’s one of the most important operational systems inside any organization. In this episode of Meeting of the Minds - The Legal AI Podcast, hosts Hal Marcus and Memme Onwudiwe sit down with Sofya Mikhelson, Vice President of Contract Lifecycle Management at Fairview Health Services, to explore how enterprise contracting can become more centralized, strategic, and technology-enabled.

What You'll Learn:

Why contract lifecycle management needs governance, technology, and operational ownership

How to build contracting alignment across siloed departments

Why contracts need to be designed with post-signature monitoring in mind

How CLM and ERP integrations can close the gap between contract terms and financial execution

Why AI can improve contract review without replacing human judgment

How templates, playbooks, and decision trees can speed up contracting while keeping legal involved

Why contracting professionals need to think like strategic business partners

About the Guest:

Sofya Mikhelson is Vice President of Contract Lifecycle Management at Fairview Health Services, a nonprofit health system serving communities across Minnesota. With over 25 years of contracting experience across nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and healthcare operations, Sofya brings a deeply practical view of how organizations can build contracting governance at scale. Her work focuses on centralizing contract lifecycle management, improving cross-functional collaboration, integrating CLM technology with enterprise systems, and positioning contracting as a strategic partner to the business.

Episode Resources

Sofya Mikhelson on LinkedIn: Sofya Mikhelson

Fairview Health Services Website

Workday Contract Management: Website

Hal Marcus on LinkedIn: Hal Marcus

Memme Onwudiwe on LinkedIn: Memme Onwudiwe

Theme music: "Load" Copyright © 1996 by Hal Marcus.

In this episode of Meeting of the Minds - The Legal AI Podcast, hosts Hal Marcus and Memme Onwudiwe sit down with Donovan Bell, Senior Director and Head of Global Operations for Corporate Affairs, Policy, Integrity, Trade, and Legal at Intel, to discuss how Intel’s legal operations team is navigating organizational change and AI adoption simultaneously.

What You'll Learn:

Why agentic AI requires a decision architecture before deployment

How to foster healthy skepticism in AI adoption

The four essential qualities to hire for in legal ops talent

How to balance aggressive AI adoption with human psychology

Why orchestration drives meaningful transformation

How to apply agile frameworks to legal ops innovation

Why contract lifecycle management becomes your competitive intelligence engine

About the Guest:

Donovan Bell is Senior Director and Head of Global Operations for Corporate Affairs, Policy, Integrity, Trade, and Legal at Intel, bringing over 15 years of experience in technology-driven organizational transformation. With a background spanning Microsoft, Walmart, and other Fortune 500 companies, Donovan specializes in orchestrating intelligence across legal operations, AI adoption, and people-centric change management. He also serves on the Board of the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC) and co-chairs the Inclusion and Social Impact Council, while also teaching as an adjunct professor and program director in project management.

Episode Resources

Donovan Bell on LinkedIn

Intel Website

Hal Marcus on LinkedIn: Hal Marcus

Memme Onwudiwe on LinkedIn: Memme Onwudiwe

Theme music: "Load" Copyright © 1996 by Hal Marcus.