Charting the Evolution: Legal Automation and AI at Woolworths

Webinar

Charting the Evolution: Legal Automation and AI at Woolworths

Watch Woolworths legal leader Holly share her automation journey, from culture and risk tools to AI pilots, self-service policies, compliance use cases, and 60 initiatives planned.

00:03 Intro & Holly’s Woolworths career journey
01:18 Session overview: culture, automation, AI in legal
02:22 Holly’s intro: 10 years in Woolworths legal
03:38 Woolworths legal team structure (~130 staff, 10 sub-teams)
05:28 Why legal automation matters at Woolworths
06:42 Drivers: speed, scale, and reducing legal bottlenecks
08:04 Risk management: embedding risk into automated tools
09:29 Policies simplified with automation: plain English, easy access
10:47 Use case: outdated 10-page exempt contracts policy automated
12:16 Smart questionnaire: 1–10 risk questions → review outcome
13:32 Buy-in journey: legal-owned vs business-driven automation
14:54 Business stakeholders embrace self-service automation
15:36 Example: food group tool combines contract + supplier onboarding
16:53 Key insight: utilization sparks further innovation requests
17:30 Q&A: contract review tool, quarterly risk question updates
18:51 Q&A: integrated “What contract do I need?” tool before exemptions
21:20 Templates & workflows: built by lawyers + Innovation Hub
24:48 Misconception: “deployment = done” → need change management & updates
27:36 Innovation Hub roadmap: early AI test-and-learn phase
31:02 First AI use cases: chatbots & contract clause extraction
34:20 AI red flags: data security & accuracy concerns
36:30 Budgeting: funded from legal budget, exploring cost-sharing
37:55 Buy-in challenges: more internal legal skepticism than business
40:36 Linking to other functions: privacy & security assessments
42:50 Compliance use cases: risk, corp sec, share trading, etc.
44:10 How intensive is setup? From 30 mins to multi-week builds
46:51 Key advice: deploy at 80%, improve iteratively, educate team
48:55 Pipeline: ~60 automation initiatives planned this FY

Timestamps