Why Contract Ownership Is Your Most Expensive Blind Spot (Presented by Above the Law)

Moderator, Bob Ambrogi | Above the Law

Robert “Bob” Ambrogi is a Massachusetts lawyer and legal journalist who has been writing and speaking about legal technology, legal practice, and legal ethics for more than two decades. He authors the award-winning blog LawSites (since 2002), writes a longtime column for Above the Law, and hosts LawNext, a leading podcast featuring the innovators driving what’s next in law. He also hosts Legaltech Week, a weekly legal tech journalists’ roundtable. In addition to his journalism, Bob represents news organizations and serves as executive director of the Massachusetts Newspaper Publishers Association, which advocates for the First Amendment and freedom of the press.

• Education & Credentials

Bob is a 1980 graduate of Boston College Law School and is admitted to practice in Massachusetts. He has built his career at the intersection of law, journalism, and technology, becoming one of the most widely recognized voices covering legal innovation in the United States.

• Recognition & Leadership

Bob was named to the inaugural Fastcase 50 in 2011, an honor recognizing “the law’s smartest, most courageous innovators, techies, visionaries and leaders.” In 2017, he received the Yankee Quill award for journalism from the Academy of New England Journalists and was honored by the ABA Journal as a Legal Rebels Trailblazer. His earlier honors include the 1993 President’s Award from the Massachusetts Bar Association. His LawSites blog has been repeatedly recognized among the top legal technology blogs, including induction into the ABA Journal’s inaugural Blawg 100 Hall of Fame in 2012.

• Professional Involvement

Bob is a fellow of the College of Law Practice Management and a past-president of the Massachusetts Bar Foundation. For 13 years, he co-hosted Lawyer2Lawyer, the longest continuously running legal podcast, produced by the Legal Talk Network, before signing off in 2018. He also wrote the Web Watch column for Law Technology News (now Legaltech News) from 1999 to 2013.

• Experience

Bob has spent more than four decades at the forefront of legal media and legal technology coverage. Earlier in his career, he served as editor-in-chief of The National Law Journal and as editorial director of ALM’s Litigation Services Division. Before joining ALM, he was with Boston-based Lawyers Weekly Publications, where he was the founding editor of Lawyers USA and editor-in-chief of Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly. In 1994, he founded legal.online, the first internet newsletter for lawyers. Today, through LawSites, LawNext, Above the Law, and Legaltech Week, Bob continues to chronicle the people, products, and trends reshaping the practice of law.

Hal Marcus, Principal of Product Marketing | Workday

Hal Marcus is Principal of Product Marketing at Workday, where he leads marketing for the company’s AI agent portfolio serving the offices of the CLO, CIO, and COO. A licensed attorney who began his career as a Wall Street litigator and later served as a technology company’s general counsel, he has spent more than three decades at the intersection of law and technology, bringing legal software to market for organizations ranging from early-stage startups to multi-billion-dollar enterprises. He is the host of Meeting of the Minds — The Legal AI Podcast.

• Education & Credentials

Hal studied law at the University of Michigan Law School and is a licensed attorney. His combination of legal practice, in-house general counsel service, and product leadership underpins his work translating complex legal technology for corporate, government, and law firm audiences.

• Recognition & Leadership

At DocuSign, Hal served as the company’s Global Legal Evangelist and acted as subject-matter expert for the launches of Docusign Click and Remote Online Notarization. He briefed senior Capitol Hill staff in Washington, D.C. in support of the passage of the 21st Century IDEA Act. Earlier, as EVP and General Counsel of LiveNote, he opened the company’s new San Francisco headquarters, recruited its first COO, devised a licensing strategy that secured control over a key IP portfolio, and helped the company acquire a top competitor.

• Professional Involvement

Hal is a frequent presence in the legal technology community, having delivered hundreds of webinars, user conference sessions, advisory board briefings, podcast episodes, and industry presentations over the course of his career. He has advised general counsel, law firms, and government agencies on eSignature legality, and he writes regularly for industry publications. His podcast, Meeting of the Minds — The Legal AI Podcast, is available on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.

• Experience

Hal joined Workday through its acquisition of Evisort, the pioneering AI-native contract intelligence and lifecycle management provider, where he was VP of Product Marketing. At Workday, he led product marketing for Workday Contract Management — including Workday Contract Lifecycle Management and Contract Intelligence, powered by Evisort AI — guiding Evisort’s post-acquisition assimilation into Workday and its global go-to-market expansion. In his current role, he leads product marketing for Workday AI agents, including solutions leveraging Workday CLM and Flowise.

Before Workday, Hal spent more than four years at DocuSign as Senior Director of Product Marketing, holding progressive leadership roles across AI, security, and admin products and the ISV ecosystem, leading go-to-market strategy for the acquisition of Seal Software, and launching Docusign Insight, Monitor, and Analyzer. Earlier, he headed product marketing for legal and security products at OpenText, covering Recommind and Guidance Software following their acquisitions, including the EnCase forensics suite, and consulted with litigators and litigation-support teams from AmLaw 100 firms and Fortune 500 companies as a litigation consultant with Evolve Discovery (now FRONTEO).

Hal’s earlier career includes eight years with Thomson Reuters, where he was VP of Product Management & Marketing for litigation products and, prior to the acquisition, EVP and General Counsel of LiveNote, a leading adopted litigation software provider. He also held sales and business development leadership roles at Law.com (American Lawyer Media), LegaLink (now Merrill Legal Solutions), iCyte, and LexisNexis, where he managed a 27-person team selling across nine law schools, including Stanford and UC Berkeley Law. He began his career as a litigation attorney at Mudge Rose Guthrie Alexander & Ferdon in New York, practicing IP and antitrust litigation for the firm’s top client team and drafting appellate briefs, pleadings, and jury instructions.

Lisa Lang | WHY THIS NOT THAT™ with Lisa Lang

Lisa is an accomplished in-house lawyer and thought leader dedicated to empowering fellow legal professionals. She offers insights and resources tailored for in-house counsel through her website and blog, Why This, Not That™ Lisa actively engages with the legal community via LinkedIn, sharing her expertise and fostering meaningful connections.

• Education & Credentials

Lisa’s path to the law was anything but traditional. After six years of Army service, she attended law school at night while working full-time during the day as a paralegal for a mid-size law firm in Louisville, Kentucky — an experience that shaped her view that becoming part of a community is the fastest way to propel one’s purpose toward success.

• Recognition & Leadership

Lisa left Kentucky State University in 2022 after receiving an invitation to serve as Ohio Northern University’s second Vice President and General Counsel in the institution’s history. At Kentucky State, she served on the President’s Senior Leadership team and stepped in as Acting Chief of Staff and Acting Director of Veteran and Military Student Affairs. Earlier, as an Assistant Attorney General for the Commonwealth of Kentucky, she served as Acting Executive Director of the Civil and Environmental Division, managing five branches comprising twenty attorneys and sixteen legal support specialists. During her Army service, she was nominated by her BNCOC instructor for a Distinguished Leadership Award.

• Professional Involvement

Lisa is an adjunct instructor in Transactional Skills (Contracting) at Ohio Northern University’s Claude W. Pettit College of Law. As an author and speaker, she helps others strengthen their purpose and recognize that applying C-Suite thinking at the intersection of law and business is the path to success as an in-house lawyer.

• Experience

As Vice President and General Counsel of Ohio Northern University since 2022, Lisa oversees the provision of all legal services to the University, has general charge of all legal matters pertaining to the University and its governing board, and advises the Board, its committees and officers, and the President on opportunities, risks, and the range of topics that confront the institution.

Before Ohio Northern, Lisa spent more than five years as General Counsel of Kentucky State University, a public HBCU, providing legal advice to the President, Board, faculty, and staff. Her portfolio spanned employment law and strategic human resources initiatives, management of federal and state civil litigation and administrative proceedings, oversight of outside counsel, responses to actions initiated by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Department of Labor, and legal support for procurement, contracts, and brand protection.

Lisa’s nine years with the Commonwealth of Kentucky included service as General Counsel for the Education Professional Standards Board, its Executive Director, and its staff; as Assistant General Counsel for the Kentucky Board of Education, its Commissioner, and Kentucky Department of Education staff; and as an Assistant Attorney General representing state agencies and officials in civil and administrative actions before state and federal courts and administrative tribunals, including defending the Commonwealth against constitutional challenges to Kentucky’s statutes.

Lisa spent a total of nine years at Woodward, Hobson & Fulton, LLP in Louisville — first as a senior litigation paralegal and then as an associate attorney specializing in insurance defense, professional malpractice, and commercial litigation. Her legal career began in the U.S. Army, where she served first as a legal specialist and then as a legal non-commissioned officer, deploying to Bosnia-Herzegovina to oversee legal activities for 1,100 soldiers in ten units and later providing legal support at Fort Knox to Brigade and Battalion Commanders for a training brigade of over 5,000 soldiers, supervising and training seven battalion legal clerks.

SESSION 1 – Why Contract Ownership Is Your Most Expensive Blind Spot | 1:00pm – 2:00pm

Ahead of this year’s release of the Contract Intelligence Index Report, join Hal Marcus, Principal of Product Marketing at Workday, and Lisa Lang for a first look at the findings. For last year’s report we asked 1,250 U.S. legal and enterprise professionals a range of questions including an ostensibly simple one — Who actually owns your contracts? — and three out of four couldn’t answer it.

This year the study went global, surveying nearly 7,000 people across 10 countries, and the same confusion surfaced in every market, from Berlin to Tokyo to Sydney. In this session, the group will dig into what the new global data reveals about why contract ownership remains Legal’s most expensive blind spot — and what the gap between organizations that have closed it and those that haven’t will mean for the business. This webinar is sponsored by Workday.