Nothing is stopping your legal team from functioning like a high-performing business unit - except a lack of understanding and clarity on the real potential of AI. In this episode of Meeting of the Minds - The Legal AI Podcast, hosts Hal Marcus and Memme Onwudiwe sit down with Kelly McCord, Founder and Principal Consultant at SimpliPhi Management LLC and former head of legal operations at HSBC, to explore how to leverage AI and automation to transform legal workflows.

What You'll Learn:

• How to cross-train multiple LLMs simultaneously to compound results
• Why legal ops professionals need baseline AI literacy, not deep technical expertise
• The practical framework for embedding legal earlier in business decisions
• How to build AI agents with guardrails that automate routine work while preserving human control
• The skill-building path to AI competency in legal operations
• How to reduce contract negotiation cycles from weeks to hours using agent-to-agent negotiations

About the Guest:

Kelly McCord is the Founder and Principal Consultant at SimpliPhi Management LLC, a legal operations consulting firm. With over 20 years of experience spanning engineering, business process consulting, financial services, and legal operations (including her role as Head of Legal Operations at HSBC), Kelly has become a pioneering voice in legal technology and AI implementation. Her work helping corporate legal teams integrate cutting-edge AI tools while maintaining quality human oversight makes her a leading voice for legal operations professionals seeking to modernize their functions and demonstrate clear value to the broader organization.

Episode Resources

• Kelly McCord on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelly-m-mccord/
• SimpliPhi Website: https://simpliphillc.com/
• Workday Contract Management: https://www.workday.com/en-us/products/contract-management/overview.html
• Hal Marcus on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/halmarcus/
• Memme Onwudiwe on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/memmeonwudiwe/

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