Theresa Spartichino on Driving Innovation Through Experimentation and Collaboration

In our Innovation Spotlight series, we interview innovation leaders about how they approach their jobs and how they’ve implemented and deployed Harvey.

In this edition, we chat with Theresa Spartichino, Director of Practice Technology at Ropes & Gray.

Theresa is the Director of Practice Technology at Ropes & Gray, where she works with attorneys to identify and implement technology solutions tailored to specific practice group needs.

A lifelong resident of the Greater Boston area, she attended Northeastern University and joined Ropes immediately after graduation. Over her 20+ years at the firm, she has moved from roles within the paralegal department, eDiscovery, and now leads a team of legal technologists who identify solutions and support technology innovation across practice groups.

My team and I work with different practice groups to understand their unique workflows, then find or configure technology that enhances what they're already doing well. When attorneys can take a tool like Harvey and mold it to their specific needs — whether that's contract analysis, due diligence, or drafting assistance — that's when innovation happens.

What drives me is that moment when an attorney realizes they can utilize technology in new ways. Innovation needs experimentation. There's no need to only use the software for the tasks they watched in a demo — instead they can experiment and create their own approaches. We encourage attorneys to see that innovation comes from creative problem-solving and finding new ways to leverage technology effectively.

I'm a mom to a seven-year-old daughter with too many activities. When on playdates, I will try to discuss favorite LLMs with other parents, but they’re not always as enthusiastic about it as I am. During my commute I enjoy listening to legal tech and true crime podcasts and reading, and my favorite book from the past year was Ethan Mollick’s “Co-Intelligence.”

During a recent training session, one of the attendees said, "Wow, your job is fun." At first I was surprised by the comment — the job is demanding and fast-paced — but then I realized it really is fun. I love keeping up with all the tech advances each day and how they can help the attorneys at our firm.

It's amazing to see how quickly technology is advancing with GenAI and to speculate about what it can do in the future. It's such an exciting time for legal technology. Attorneys come to us with their challenges and know that our team is committed to finding the best solution. I absolutely love being a resource for our attorneys and hearing about how our technology contributes to their success.

During our Harvey pilot we had excellent feedback on the interface, ease of use, and the output. We were impressed by the product’s feature improvements and responsiveness to our feedback. Additionally, Harvey’s adaptability across various practice areas, rather than being limited to a single practice group, was a significant factor in our team’s decision.

With Harvey, our attorneys can explore new possibilities, create new solutions, and share their AI successes with colleagues. Harvey’s workflows make this easier, helping our team work more efficiently.

Both junior and senior attorneys are using Harvey in different ways, which was unexpected. Adoption is strong across all offices and practice groups, with many Vault databases set up by both litigation and transactional attorneys.

We focus on practice-specific training. Our one-page tech stacks, created with Legal KM, gave each group a clear view of relevant tools.

Junior attorneys have been key drivers — first-years and summer associates quickly adopted GenAI tools. Leadership support and integrating GenAI training into our core curriculum also boosted adoption.

Harvey delivers meaningful impact through practical, everyday tasks. Our attorneys use it to quickly reformat contract clauses, summarize text, and brainstorm ideas.

Recently, we used Vault and Workflow Builder for compliance risk assessment. We created a custom workflow to automatically extract key terms and flag issues from compliance documents, then used Vault to organize the data in a structured review table. This enabled our litigation team to efficiently assess policy coverage and identify areas for further investigation.

In another example, GenAI helped us build a precedent library for a private equity client. We extracted, analyzed, and compared historical deal terms to create a searchable database, ensuring our drafting aligns with the client’s customary practices.

Success isn’t just about rolling out GenAI or tracking users—it’s about helping our teams get to useful insights faster. We want attorneys to use AI to quickly find key information so they can focus on the strategic counsel and judgment that clients value most. If they can say, “Yes, we can analyze that right now,” we’ve done our job.

Prioritize changing how people work, not just teaching them features. Instead of positioning GenAI solutions as separate tools, weave them seamlessly into existing workflows. Rather than treating GenAI as a separate technology, we embed it directly into our core training and practice development curriculum. By adding GenAI to attorneys’ daily workflows, adoption feels like skill enhancement rather than workflow disruption. Effective GenAI implementation is about people adapting their approach, not just deploying new technology.

GenAI's biggest impact on the legal industry will be this shift towards collaboration and experimentation. We're testing ideas, seeing what works and what doesn't, and attorneys are bringing us new use cases. Instead of the traditional model where we train people on set features, it's become this ongoing partnership where everyone's contributing ideas. This culture of experimentation and collaboration is going to reshape how legal work evolves, and it's a very exciting time to be in legal tech.