Flexible legal services provider Latitude Legal has promoted chief revenue officer Alex Su to president, in a move that sees co-founder and chief executive Ross Booher hand over day-to-day operational control of the business.
The appointment comes as the Nashville-headquartered flexible legal talent provider looks to accelerate its growth and expand a model that Su believes is becoming increasingly relevant as law firms and corporate legal departments grapple with the realities of AI adoption.
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Speaking to Legal IT Insider ahead of the announcement, Su said the move marks a significant broadening of his role, which had previously focused on sales, marketing and revenue growth. While Booher remains chief executive, operational responsibility for many parts of the business is shifting to Su, allowing the founder to focus more on long-term strategy.
Founded in 2013, Latitude operates a flexible talent model that places experienced attorneys into law firms and corporate legal departments on a project or engagement basis. The company has grown to 20 offices and serves clients across the US, with international placements as well.
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Unlike many providers in the sector, Latitude says it differentiates itself through a team made up of former law firm partners and senior in-house lawyers. “We call them senior decision makers,” Su said. “These are lawyers who spent many years building a reputation while practising law so they’re trusted by and accountable to their own communities.”
The company now plans to lean further into that model. “We are really interested in expanding,” Su said. “What we’ve been doing works. We want to double down and triple down on that model.”
At a time when much of the legal industry debate has centred on efficiency gains and potential reductions in lawyer headcount, Su argues that his team are more required than ever thanks to their deep knowledge bank and judgment.
“You’ve got all this great AI getting better and better every day,” he said. “You also have it shifting from the experimental stage to all of these law firms and legal departments figuring out how to operationalise it.”
What that means, Su says, is that someone needs to oversee the work product that’s being created by AI, “and so we’re seeing a huge amount of demand for lawyers, human lawyers who have significant experience in this deep judgement.”
He adds: “Where we fit in is that when everyone can’t hire quite a FTEs or get approval for headcount, we can provide a contingent workforce. So flexible legal talent. And where what’s interesting is that what appears to be working really well is that trust and accountability matter so much here. Where if you’re not sure about what the work product is being created by AI, you’ve got high caliber proven attorneys who are selected by our client services team who are also highly trusted by our client base.”
Latitude’s talent pool includes more than 7,000 pre-vetted attorneys, many of whom already have experience using AI, contract lifecycle management platforms, matter management systems and other legal technologies.
What will be interesting when it comes to all flexible legal services providers is the extent to which, from a governance standpoint, they will have to prove they are trained on certain technologies, although Su says that his attorneys often act as trainers themselves.