Insights from Elastic, ADI, and Checkbox at ACC’s Legal Ops Con 2025

At this year’s Legal Ops Con hosted by the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC), Checkbox CEO and co-founder Evan Wong led a standout session on one of the most critical and overlooked aspects of legal transformation: intake.

Joining him on stage were two legal ops leaders at the forefront of intake modernization:

• Jen Lenander, Senior Director and Legal Chief of Staff at Elastic

• Nikki Rahimzadeh, Senior Director of Legal & Risk Operations and Strategy at Analog Devices, Inc. (ADI)

Both Elastic and ADI are Checkbox customers, and both are redefining how legal work enters and moves through their departments—starting at the front door.

Intake Chaos, Duplication, and the Cost of Visibility Gaps

Early in the session, Evan asked the room how many legal teams still receive requests through Slack, Teams, email, and hallway conversations. Nearly every hand in the room went up.

The message was clear: intake may be informal, but the costs are real.

Nikki shared how ADI’s legal team experienced those challenges firsthand.

“Before Checkbox, requests would come in from all over the place—email, chat, drive-bys—and there was no real consistency,” she said. “We needed a better way to track, manage, and report on what was coming in and where it was going.”

Without structured intake, requests were duplicated, misrouted, or overlooked altogether. Worse still, legal had no clear way to quantify their workload—or demonstrate their value to the business.

From Firefighting to Forward Planning

For Jen, the shift was about moving from reactive to proactive.

“We were doing the work, but we didn’t have the data to show it,” she said. “Checkbox gave us a centralized way to handle intake so we could finally see the volume and source of requests and plan resourcing accordingly.”

That visibility helped Elastic’s legal team optimize how legal work was distributed, which requests required legal review, and which could be self-serviced or redirected entirely.

Nikki echoed that sentiment:

“Checkbox helped us become more responsive, more aligned, and more visible across the business,” she said. “We didn’t just speed up intake—we changed how legal was perceived by stakeholders.”

Why Intake Is a Strategic Lever

The conversation wrapped with a key message from Evan: legal intake isn’t just the first step—it’s the most important one.

When done right, it empowers legal teams to:

• Deliver faster, more consistent responses

• Free up legal time through self-service and automation

• Redirect non-legal work to the right teams

• Capture structured data for better reporting and resource planning

It also positions legal as a true partner to the business—not a reactive service desk.

As Nikki put it:

“When legal is operating in a black box, people lose confidence. Intake is how you open that box—and build trust.”

It’s clear that intake isn’t just a workflow challenge—it’s a visibility opportunity. And for teams like Elastic and ADI, it’s the foundation for transforming legal into a more strategic, data-driven function.

Curious what that could look like for your team?

Book a demo and see how Checkbox helps legal departments manage intake, triage work, and prove their value—without the chaos.