From Resistance to 90% Adoption: How Altria Built an AI Legal Front Door Lawyers Actually Use

Altria built an AI legal front door in 52 days, achieving 80–90% adoption. Learn how they drove change, improved intake, increased visibility, reduced outside counsel spend, and built the foundation for scalable AI in legal.

Register to access the webinar

Register to save your spot at the webinar

April 21, 11am PT / 2PM ET

Legal teams don't just struggle to manage work—they struggle to get people to change how they work.

For Joy Thorpe, Director, Strategy Legal Center of Excellence (COE) at Altria, the challenge wasn't just finding the right intake tool—it was reimagining how an entire legal department operates.

With business goals to be faster, more effective, more efficient, and to reduce outside counsel spend, Joy built a Center of Excellence and set out to create a legal front door that lawyers would actually embrace.

In this session, hear how Altria partnered with Checkbox to go from zero intake infrastructure to an AI-powered legal front door, introducing Ask Al in just 52 days, and how they drove 80–90% adoption across the department.

We’ll explore:

Why change management, not technology, is the hardest part of legal transformation
How to choose a purpose-built legal tool over an enterprise system (and make the case internally)
What it takes to meet lawyers where they are and turn skeptics into champions
How a centralized intake system creates visibility, faster turnaround, and data for smarter decisions
How a legal front door becomes the foundation for AI adoption done right

This session is for legal and legal ops professionals who want to give their department a modern overhaul but need a real-world roadmap to make it happen.

Joy Thorpe

Director, Strategy Legal Center of Excellence (CoE) @Altria

Joy Thorpe serves as Director, Strategy Legal Center of Excellence (CoE), where she leads process-driven initiatives to enhance service delivery and operational efficiency, including outside counsel management, financial management, and legal systems implementation. She has held prior leadership roles in Finance, Human Resources and Compliance, and Strategy and Business Development. Skilled in streamlining processes, data analysis and compliance, Joy is a respected leader that drives operational efficiencies to deliver cost savings to the Company.

Joy is a Certified Public Accountant and Certified Information Systems Auditor and holds a bachelor’s degree in Accounting from Virginia Commonwealth University.

Ridhima Mohla

VP Customer Success @Checkbox

As VP of Customer Success at Checkbox AI, Ridhima is a Customer Success leader focused on building and scaling high-impact post-sales organizations while partnering closely with in-house legal teams to drive adoption, operational efficiency, and measurable outcomes through AI and automation. She brings a practical, customer-first approach - focused on delivering value early and turning technology into tangible impact for legal teams.