TLH Ep.49 Elite CEO Mark Dorman on The Strategy Behind Modern Legal Transformation
Today on The Legal Helm, we’re joined by Mark Dorman, CEO of Elite.
Mark’s career has been shaped by leading large-scale transformation across global organizations—helping businesses navigate complex market change while scaling SaaS platforms and driving innovation through technology.
At Elite, he is currently leading one of the most important evolutions in legal technology, guiding the company through a cloud-first transformation and helping law firms rethink how they approach financial management, operational efficiency, and data-driven decision making within a modern legal ecosystem.
In this conversation, we’ll explore the changing expectations of law firms, the realities of cloud adoption at scale, and how technology leaders like Elite are shaping the next generation of legal operations and financial systems.
Mark, welcome to The Legal Helm. It’s great to have you with us.
Your host
Bim Dave is Helm360’s CEO. With 20+ years in the legal industry, his keen understanding of how law firms and lawyers use technology has propelled Helm360 to the industry’s forefront. A technical expert with a penchant for developing solutions that improve business systems and user experience, Bim has a knack for bringing high quality IT architects and developers together to create innovative, useable solutions to the legal arena.
Our Guest
Mark Dorman is the Chief Executive Officer at Elite, a leading provider of financial management and business operations solutions to the world’s most successful law firms. He joined Elite in June 2023 when it became an independent company.
In his role, Mark sets the global vision and strategy for Elite, leads the executive team, establishes the tone for the culture and works closely with the board and Elite leadership to codify and execute the company’s strategic and operational plans. In this capacity, he works with the team to deliver cutting-edge digital and financial solutions, bringing together powerful data, insights and tools to its customers around the world. Elite, which was founded in 1947, counts 15 of the top 20 global law firms and 80% of the Global 100 law firms as customers who use at least one Elite solution.
Bim Dave: Hello everyone and welcome to the Legal Helm, the podcast where we bring together the leaders shaping the future of the legal industry through innovation, strategy, and technology. I’m your host, Bim Dave, and today I’m honored to be joined by Mark Dorman, chief Executive Officer of Elite. Mark brings a remarkable track record of leadership across global technology and information businesses having held CEO and president roles at major international organizations, including S3, McGraw-Hill Education and Waters Klu.
His career has been defined by driving large scale transformations, scaling SaaS businesses, and helping organizations navigate complex market change. As CEO of Elite, mark is leading one of the most significant evolutions in legal technology today, guiding the company through a cloud first transformation and helping law firms rethink how financial management, operational efficiency, and data-driven decision making.
Comes together in a modern legal eco ecosystem. In today’s conversation, we will be exploring change expectations of law firms, the realities of cloud adoption at scale, and how technology leaders like Elite are shaping the next generation of legal operations and financial systems. Mark, welcome to the Legal Helm, and its pleasure to have you here.
Mark Dorman: Well, thank you for inviting me, Bim great to be here. Thank you.
Bim Dave: Indeed. So let me just start by saying, um, because there’s some of our audience that will be listening to us, um, online. There’ll be some that will be on video. So I just want to explain that there’s a banner behind me that was basically put there by my daughter this morning as it’s my birthday today.
Mark Dorman: I’m honored. Happy birthday Bim.
Bim Dave: Thank you very much. Um, so yeah, she’s told me that I’m not allowed to move the balloons that she surprised me with this morning. And I’ve even got, I’ll show you what I’ve got underneath here, a little birthday badge. So she’ll be happy to know that all of this stuff is in place and I’ll play it back for her so that I can prove that, that this, this actually happened.
So, I wanted to get that in there just in case anyone was wondering.
Mark Dorman: Important to get that in there. Gotta get your priority right.
Bim Dave: Yes, indeed. Indeed. So before we dive into the world of legal technology, I’d love to go back to the beginning and you’ve had some really interesting early experiences, um, based on assuming some of my sources are correct, um, including the Army working as a private investigator, tell me a little bit about like your history in terms of your journey, um, to date.
And I’d be really interested to learn how those early experiences maybe shaped who you are today.
Mark Dorman: So thank you for that. It’s a long, a long time ago. You’re bringing, bringing that up. So a lot of, a lot of digging there. So, yes. Uh, I, uh, I did start out as a, as an army officer in the, uh, in the British Army. Um, so spent some time at Sanders. I wasn’t there for very, very long, so it’s only four years I was an army officer.
In the British Army, but it was a, a, a, an important time. So I was, I was a, a young, uh. Uh, officer, but a lot of really good, um, training there, both in terms of, I’d say leadership in terms of that’s the key thing that you’re, that you spend a lot of time, uh, focused on as well as, you know, interestingly, um, strategy, you don’t think about it at that time, and I didn’t think about it at that time, but.
You know, thinking about all of the aspects that go into making decisions about how you move a complex organization forward. Certainly the, the foundations of that, um, were in there. But of course, all business strategy is based on milit military strategy, uh, doctrine to some degree. Um, so there’s, there’s a good polls there in terms of, um.
The capabilities and the thinking mechanism around what’s going on, what’s important to know, and how does that help you build a plan, um, for the future. And then of course, the other component in there is how do you use the, the right resources, including technology to help you get an advantage in terms of delivering against that strategy or mission so that, you know, certainly important components.
Um. Uh, of the foundations of who, who I was there, um, uh, as a, a young, a young Army officer, um, coming there. And then I spent a bunch of time in, in a lot of, uh, different, uh, industries applying some of the, um. Learnings from that time in the nineties that essentially led into those of us of a certain vintage.
And thank you for highlighting my vintage, um, Bim, you know, uh, have a dotcom us. And so that was also a time that there are echoes of that today, I would say, um, that there was huge. Disruption in the market and maybe some overblown expectations, but big change that happened over an extended period of time, of a new technology touching everything we do in a lot of different industries.
And that then largely got me into. Leading change in thinking through how do you apply new technology to large organizations? Because I, I joined from that, uh, dot com. Ours was acquired by, uh, by re Elsevier, which was the Lexus Nexus business is the division that, that we, that we were, uh, acquired by. And that was one of those businesses that was being touched a lot by, uh, web 1.0.
And so that really got into the how do you use technology, not. As, uh, a defensive mechanism, but how do you take advantage and, you know, drive growth within large organizations?
Bim Dave: Amazing. What, what a great foundation. Like I lo I love how that’s kind of translated into, uh, some of, some lessons learned that you can apply in, in the rest of your career. And talking of that, um, you spent like a, as you mentioned, a lot of your career leading change in ti inside like long established complex organizations.
Um, tell me what you’ve observed about how real transformation actually happens.
Mark Dorman: Well, the key is you’ve gotta, um, establish, you know, some credibility is, you know, why do you need to change and what we, you know, what does that change look like for the good and. The focus really is gonna be understanding what’s the core underlying value that you’re trying to protect and deliver over time, and what needs to change in order to be able to deliver that value in the future.
Because largely when you’re, when you’re making change, um, happen within an organization, there’s g it’s gotta be a means to an end, and the end’s gotta help drive that. So through my entire career, I think every, every business and every industry. Has been going through some kind of digital transformation and what’s of often confused in that term is we want to buy more technology, but we don’t want it to actually change fundamentally how we operate.
And real transformation doesn’t really exist by tearing things out to do brand new things. It’s about understanding, you know, what’s the legacy, what’s the underlying value? And the technology is really the tool that enables you to deliver that value in new and, you know, more valuable ways. And so that’s really what, you know, the, the core of what I, I’ve done through my career is understanding, you know, what’s the value?
Let’s create some credibility. What does the value look like tomorrow? And how can we use this? New technology to be able to del deliver that for your stakeholders, largely your customers in a, in a more valuable way, um, using that technology, but respecting the legacy that you built on, which is, you know, the, the inherent value that you have right now.
Bim Dave: Yeah, that, that’s really interesting because I think with some of these larger organizations that actually do have really deep roots in terms of how they operate, how they function, just performing some of that transformation must have challenges associated with it and lots of kind of, um, people, elements involved in how you actually perform that transformation.
Are there any like, um, significant things that kind of stand out to you in terms of. Some of the misunderstandings around transformation, uh, from a people perspective.
Mark Dorman: Yeah, so you, you tend to have, um, you know, first of all, take a step back. Nobody likes change. Even the people that say they like change, don’t like change. They like their version of change in a, in a very personal way. And so you’ve gotta approach it from the standpoint of what’s in it for the individual in terms of, and the collective in terms of how, how are they going to benefit from this change moving forward.
And so it’s always about understanding the individual and where they’re starting from, respecting the work that they’ve done and the value that they’ve created over a period of time and enabling them to add more value. And so what if, if you do change well, and you’re implementing technology well?
Largely, you’re elevating the human to do the higher and better value things with their time versus the mundane that they were doing before. And so when technology really is at its best, is automating the mundane, and that then enables humans to, to, to, to, uh, to be able to use their skills in a, in a more effective way.
Bim Dave: Absolutely. You, you’ve been quite clear recently about where you think legal operations are headed, uh, particularly when it comes to core platforms. What felt important to put a stake in the ground on that? Right now I.
Mark Dorman: Look, I think it, it was, it was pretty clear that you know where the industry was going. And that the, you know, the technology of, uh, of cloud technology and the, and the transformation that that was, that was gonna take place was here to mature enough where it would add a lot of value to the industry. And so once you, once you’ve made that decision that.
Technology mature enough. You can see a path forward where you go to create extra value. Through doing that, you’ve really gotta, you know, put a stake in the ground in terms of here’s the North Star as to how we’re going to help our customers get there. And so we’ve been clear that the future of legal operations depends on unified cloud native platforms, because that’s the only way that firms can operate with speed.
With confidence and control at scale. And so we could, we could see that, and that’s where the market was going. And so it was important to put that stake in the ground to say, that’s the direction we’re going in, and here’s the value that you’re, you’re going to get from us.
Bim Dave: Hmm. Yeah, absolutely. And when you, so when you are, um. When you kind of take that step back and you think about where things are going from that platform perspective. And I can, I, I think when you were talking about some of the experience that you had in the.com era, um, and, and kind of looking at how AI is impacting things now, it’s, it feels very similar in terms of like how you described the impact then, um, with.
Web 1.0, et cetera. And then what we feel right now, how, how different is it? How, how different is AI’s impact in terms of how much it’s gonna revolutionize what we see in terms of legal operations?
Mark Dorman: Um, I, I, you know, it’s the old Bill Gates thing of you, you know, overestimate the impact in the short term and underestimate the impact in the long term. I mean, I think that’s, that’s ai and I would say it’s very akin echoes of web one point or very, very clear. Here where you’ve got this, you take the last couple of weeks, for example, in terms of expectation on valuations in the public market.
Says, you know, AI’s going to destroy everything and value, that’s probably not going to happen. But you had that same clamor at, uh, at Web 1.0, but it’s really around, you know, how can you invest in the technology and think more platform, um. Uh, ways of thinking and how does this technology, which at the end of the day is all technology is a tool that’s going to create value across the enterprise.
And so where we see firms being really successful is where they think about, um, system-wide, um, solutions built on a platform, enabling AI to help them be better. So what, understanding what problems are worth solving. Where is it applicable for ai and how do I do that across the platform? And so in a similar way is what are the, what’s the value of ai, where it is right now and where it’s likely to be in the next, um, couple of years, even though it’s evolving pretty quickly.
What’s it really good at in solving and how does that help the enterprise overall, uh, deliver greater value? So we’ve, we’ve really seen that, um, you know, the importance of getting to cloud is that it enables you to think in a platform way to embed AI where it’s actually going to drive value over time.
And so cloud really isn’t a destination anymore. It’s a starting point for innovation that matters for law firms. And AI is one of those tools that sits on top of that.
Bim Dave: Hmm, indeed. What? Why do you think this moment matters more than it did a few years ago?
Mark Dorman: Um, look, I, I think the maturity and the pace of change is what’s driving, um, the, the dynamics in the marketplace. So you’ve got this confluence of, uh, cloud maturity. In terms of capabilities that are available, and we think about it as a platform and building on a on a platform, and then you’ve got the ability to apply.
The capabilities of ai, if it’s embedded in that platform across the organization, versus thinking about it in a, in a, in a narrow, uh, point solution, uh, basis. So we believe that it’s pretty important to embed it in the organization, and I think the impetus right now is why it’s, it’s, uh, really important is AI has really accelerated expectations.
Faster than most firms infrastructure right now can support. And so that gap is forcing people to confront, do they have that system, that platform, those core systems to actually run their businesses effectively and deliver on the promise of ai. So I think that’s what’s why it’s important right now. And firms can compete with insights that explain performance weeks late.
They want to catch up and that’s what’s driving the, the acceleration right now. And there’s actually solutions there that can deliver for them that give them demonstrable results.
Bim Dave: Yeah. Indeed, indeed. So we’re, we’re obviously seeing as a result of that, more firms, um, that are investing heavily in technology more than ever before. Um, what do you think separates investments that truly change how a. Firm operates from those that don’t.
Mark Dorman: I think it’s that thinking about it at a, a platform scale, so rather than here’s just another tool that does this one task, how do I automate the process end to end? Or the, the, you know, the how does the workflow across the entire cycle. Where we see firms think about that and take a, an approach that is more holistic in thinking about delivering that value.
We see demonstrable results now. They don’t get there in a big bang. So it’s very much an iterative process. So if you think about it, as I said, cloud is isn’t a destination, it’s a starting point that lays the foundation for innovation that can drive things moving forward. And I think firms that think across that spectrum and investments, that that really reshape how the workflows end to end.
They’re just not, it’s not another tool to manage. It’s really what re how do I get those results, um, over the whole.
Bim Dave: Um, we’re seeing some clear signals in the market that even the largest, most traditional firms are accelerating their digital infrastructure and cloud investments right now. Um, I’m interested to get your take on this in terms of. Are we kind of at that tipping point where we were previously talking a lot about small mid-size firms moving to cloud and that was an easier shift.
Um, is that changing now and is this the tipping point where cloud becomes really the default rather than the exception for big law?
Mark Dorman: So, um. I, I, I think that’s right, and I think that we, that’s largely a function not of larger firms making decisions in a different way than mid-size firms. I think the reality is those larger firms are more complex organization with more legacy that they needed to take. So it was always going to take a little more time for them to.
Plan thoughtfully to have that platform thinking and be more sophisticated in their adoption of cloud. But there is no question that cloud is the default, like SaaS native. Cloud is the default number one. Number two is. How do I think about the platform approach to solving my problems? I don’t want to have another tool or another set of tools to manage.
I want to think about working with part technology partners to automate processes across the organization that give me control in the insight as a large firm to operate my complex organization. And so that just takes a little longer to to, to pair that out, but there’s no question. That’s default moving forward, and I’m confident that you know that that is only going to accelerate as they move forward.
Bim Dave: Yeah, it makes sense. And how, how does Elite think about, um, how you scale to the, those kind of customers that are, you know, multi-jurisdiction, like kind of, uh, have a employee footprint across the globe? Um, how, how does your platform. On scale for those kind of firms.
Mark Dorman: Well, of course we’ve always been, um, supporting tho those firms in multi jurisdictions with, you know, employees across the globe, um, in a, in a, in a scalable way. What gives us an advantage with our, with our cloud platform is now we can actually take advantage of the flexibility and scalability of being SaaS native.
So, with a modern infrastructure and modern capabilities, you’ve got automatic scaling performance capabilities, as well as control of the data and the metadata flowing across the system with much more visibility for the firm to actually help focus on. Where, where are the bottlenecks? How do they remove friction from those bottlenecks of moving that, uh, that, uh, those processes, um, across the organization in a, not in a, as much as a serial way, but they can parallel process.
We don’t need, we can have continuous operations, so they don’t need to wait for batches. To happen. And that allows scale and velocity of the process to happen with control and visibility that they can, uh, manage, manage their business more effectively. So you’ve got this combination of, you know, the, the.
Almost 80 years of IP that we built in deeply understanding financial management and business operations of, uh, law firms built into the core software that we had before. Now taking advantage of. Cloud scale and performance capabilities and the flexibility then to build on the data. ’cause the data’s key here in terms of giving access to our customers in the right way, and then applying AI embedded in the platform to help.
Um. Accelerate innovation in the firm, help them automate quickly and, uh, and, and, and get faster processing through the system. So it’s a pretty exciting time that we’ve got this real balance at Elite of Legacy, deeply understanding customers at scale, but also new technology that allows better performance and scale across the globe.
Bim Dave: Hmm. Yeah, indeed. And on, on the subject of ai, um, obviously it’s everywhere in our, um, world at the moment, um, but we see a lot of firms struggling and still struggling to see real results. What are you seeing in that, um, area and where does the gap usually show up between people who are going through that experimentation process to then actually achieving actual impact?
Mark Dorman: Yeah, look, I think it’s a, it’s a, it’s a great question. Everyone’s doing experiments with AI to see where, where it is, and, um, I, I, I, where what we are seeing is. You know, many firms can see that there, there is a benefit to using ai, that it, uh, can help speed up individual processes or enable humans to be much more productive or solve some of the problems within their, within their organization. When it’s fragmented and they can’t get access to the, the right data or it’s bolted on in various different places, it just becomes more complex solutions to manage and it’s hard to get the ROI in terms of the investment in the AI and the time of the, of the, of the team to the results that they’re seeing. When you think about it from a platform perspective, you know, the, the AI really creates the value when it’s embedded, where the work actually is and speeds up the process because the intelligent outside the workflow doesn’t really change outcomes. It really is just another place to go and do some work.
So what we, the approach we’ve taken and what we strongly believe in is that AI embedded in the workflow where people are doing the work and thinking across a platform, that’s where the value really lives because it’s the, um, and partnership of AI plus automation plus data is really what delivers demonstrable value.
And we see that in our customers that are using our platform.
Bim Dave: Mm. And I, I think one of the challenges that I hear a lot of law firm, um, leaders speaking about is just the, the number of options in the market for various point solutions. Um, I’d be interested to get your take on that, because I think you, you touched on this a little in terms of, uh, how do you kind of measure.
Value of a product. Right. And, and what’s your advice to firms that are looking to implement solutions that are fundamentally going to, you know, actually go from experimentation to true pilot and then actually deliver meaningful value? What, what advice would you give them to kind of prepare for that change and, and really kind of.
Dig through the plethora of options, right? Because I think that’s the biggest challenge at the moment, is there’s so many things that you can potentially do, and knowing which one to go with can be a, a bit of a, a, a, a, a bit of a mission to kind of find the right answer.
Mark Dorman: Yeah, look, I think, you know, the danger is, um, you know, a AI doesn’t cause fragmentation, but it certainly exposes it in terms of, you know, what works and what, what doesn’t work. And if, if you’re, if you think that. You know, 1, 1, 1 tool versus another tool, but I’m only going to use a point solution to do this thing you, you’ve just got a different level of fragmentation than you had before with non-AI software tools.
We’ve got this, you know, range of solutions that if they’re not connected together properly are not going to deliver value. ’cause you then have to manage that collection of, of, of solutions moving forward. So the starting point has always gotta be what problem am I trying to solve? And is that a problem that, that delivers real value?
So, with my problem, I’ve got to, you know, uh, get my, get my writedowns or my, um. Sorted out. Am I trying to get paid faster? Am I trying to collect data more accurately so it solves another problem? Am I trying to deliver productivity in a, in a given area and understand, you know, what is the, what is the good end result look like and how am I going to achieve that with the solution I’m getting?
And what we find typically is that AI specifically. Isn’t particularly helpful if it’s disconnected from the workflow, if it’s some new part to be able to do that, you’re back to the world of I’m waiting for this other solution to happen. And so we believe that AI really only creates value when it’s embedded where the work actually happens.
That’s where it, it’s, it’s helping the human become more effective within, in that workflow. And you can then measure the outcome that you’re, that you’re focused on. It’s very hard to do it if it’s a point solution somewhere else, because there’s too many variables.
Bim Dave: Mm. Yep. Agreed. So as, as you look ahead, what gives you the most confidence about where legal, operations and legal technology are headed?
Mark Dorman: Look, I, uh, it’s pretty, it’s pretty exciting. So, you know, we talked a little bit about, you know, how firms are adopting the technology differently, and I would say the conversations that we are having with firms are not about how do I buy technology? It’s about how do I deliver the strategy of the firm?
And how is the technology going to help enable that to happen? And that’s when you have a very different conversation about how do we think about building the operating dis discipline? How do we deliver the platform data and AI that can deliver real value? So, we go back to where we started in terms of.
You know, how do you do change? Well, the change isn’t the technology. The change is really in how do we want to deliver the strategy and modernize the operations of the firm? And the technology becomes a tool to do that. And we are having those discussions with, uh, with all the largest law firms about how do we partner with them.
To have that platform experience of automating the end to end process in the right way, that helps deliver value to the firm and, and, you know, change their operations for the better to deliver the firm strategy. And that’s pretty exciting.
Bim Dave: Yeah. Well I think we’re definitely heading into a very exciting time, so, um, it’s good, good to hear that. So I just wanna move to some wrap up questions. If I may slot on a slightly light, on a slightly lighter note, you be pleased to hear. Um, so. So first question being, if you could borrow Dr. Who’s time machine and go back to yourself at age of 18, what advice would you give yourself?
Mark Dorman: Um, what advice would I give, would I, uh, give to myself? And nothing, nothing is either as good or as bad as you think it’s is in the moment. So just keep going.
Bim Dave: I love that. That’s good. That’s good. Um, if you hadn’t chosen a career in legal technology, what path do you think you would’ve taken instead?
Mark Dorman: Oh, well, you know, if, if it wasn’t for this, I’d be, you know, a professional footballer, so a soccer player for American, and I’d be, I’d be playing in the World Cup this, this, uh, this year,
Bim Dave: Amazing. Amazing. Well, you know, never too late.
Mark Dorman: and I don’t, I don’t know about that. The skill level might not be quite there. That might be an aspirational goal.
Bim Dave: And finally, outside of the legal world, what’s keeping you inspired and motivated to, to kind of move forward and, and bring this change, uh, to the industry?
Mark Dorman: Look, I th I, I, uh, as we, as we talked about, technology is a fa is a fascinating thing in terms of how it elevates humans. You know, the thing that really gets me excited about is, you know, how do we elevate the creativity of the human mind by using technology as a tool. So we’re not quite at the singularity yet where you know, the robots are going to take over.
I think we’re still in control of the technology that enables us to become. You know, more productive, more creative in whatever field it might be, you know, to do things that, you know, our forefathers could never have thought of. So that I find, you know, technology very empowering and that really is what’s, uh, e exciting.
Uh, and so I’m, I’m much more on the optimistic side of how we think and how we can use technology to better, not just. Legal industry, but you know, ourselves individually and then collectively as society. I think, you know, it’s, uh, it’s a pretty remarkable time that we’re just accelerating our capabilities if we want to, uh, grab a hold of it.
Bim Dave: Yeah, absolutely. Um, and as, as someone who’s been part of the elite journey from the early stages of my career, like this is really an exciting time for us. Like we’re loving what we see in terms of how the elite platform is evolving and just, you know. Seeing it from what it was, you know, um, many years ago when I was, when I was first starting out as a baby in the industry to now, it’s really exciting.
It’s really exciting to see what’s, what’s coming next and, and how the platform is developing for the future. So, um, yeah. Keep, keep going. And we’re, we, we’ll be watching closely to see how, how things evolve.
Mark Dorman: Well, we are, we are excited about that. It’s been, uh, you know, a really exciting journey, you know, since I’ve been at Elite over the last three years and how much the industry has changed, um, how much we have changed as an organization. And, you know, excitingly is, you know, the value that we’re delivering to our, our law firm customers.
We’re really seeing, you know, material productivity changes for them as we’ve delivered on our cloud in a way that they would never have been able to get to before. And the adoption of our new data products and then on top of that AI embedded in that, in that system has been, you know, really exciting and the excitement in the industry for.
You know, how do I operate my firm more effectively? So, the the, and the, as I said, the, the exciting thing for us at Elite is we, we tend not to talk to our customers about technology. We talk to them about how do we help them deliver the firm’s strategy, and that puts us in a, you know, a really, a really great and exciting place as a, as a partner to our customers.
Bim Dave: absolutely. Mark, thank you very much for today. It’s been really insightful. Really good to have you on the show. I appreciate you taking time out to speak to me today.
Mark Dorman: Well, it’s been, uh, great to be, to be here and many happy returns. Bim, I hope you’ve got some fun with your daughter for your birthday.
Bim Dave: Thank you very much. I appreciate that.