Consilio is a global leader in eDiscovery, document review, and enterprise legal services. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Consilio CEO Andy Macdonald to learn more.
Andy Macdonald’s Background
Tell me about your background and how you became the Chief Executive Officer of Consilio. Macdonald said:
When I think about my career, the common thread is building businesses. I’ve been fortunate to be part of teams focused on building and integrating companies in markets that were evolving quickly. Early on, I didn’t have a clear roadmap for where that would take me. One of the biggest lessons I learned was recognizing that you can’t know everything and being willing to ask for help. That mindset shapes how I lead today. A lot of what I learned came from being in the room, asking questions, and learning from people with more experience than I had.
Consilio came from an opportunity we saw in the market. Legal services were highly fragmented, clients were managing multiple vendors, and the experience could vary widely from one matter to the next. Quality and client satisfaction weren’t always areas the industry was known for. We believed there was room to build a company that put client experience at the center and then scale around that principle.
Over time, that meant expanding our capabilities so clients can work with one partner across discovery and related services, supported by teams that understand their business and how they like to work. The goal was to simplify the process, reduce handoffs, and create accountability for results.
That focus on solving real client problems and continuing to build alongside a strong team is what keeps the work interesting and keeps the company evolving.
Company Solutions
Can you share more about Consilio and the solutions and services your company offers? Macdonald shared:
At its core, Consilio is focused on helping clients manage complex legal work through a combination of technology and specialized services that work together. Many organizations are dealing with growing data volumes, more matters across jurisdictions, and an expanding mix of technologies and vendors.
Our approach has been to simplify that experience by bringing those elements together. Over time, we’ve built capabilities that allow clients to work with one partner, supported by dedicated teams that understand their business and how they like to work. Technology plays a central role in that model.
Aurora, our enterprise legal platform, helps bring data, workflows, and tools together so teams can operate with greater visibility and efficiency. What matters is how technology is applied within real workflows and guided by people who know how to use it to solve practical problems.
Around that foundation, we support clients with eDiscovery, document review, risk and compliance consulting, legal transformation, and flexible legal talent. The goal is to provide clients with a coordinated set of capabilities that can be applied across matters as their needs evolve.
Differentiation
In your opinion, what differentiates Consilio in the legal technology space? Macdonald affirmed:
The legal technology market has expanded rapidly, and there are more capable tools available today than ever before. That progress is a good thing for the industry, but clients are also discovering that access to technology does not automatically translate into better outcomes.
Where we see the real differentiation is in how technology is embedded into delivered. Legal work requires consistency, defensibility, and alignment with specific workflows. Generic solutions often fall short because they are not designed around how legal teams operate in real world scenarios.
Our approach has been to focus on helping clients use the expanding ecosystem of technologies in a way that fits their environment. That means integrating tools rather than forcing standardization, supporting the diversity of approaches clients need, and ensuring that technology enhances the way work gets done rather than disrupting it.
We also believe success in this market comes down to execution and results. It is not always the most advanced product that wins, but the ability to deliver outcomes clients can trust and to do so consistently across matters. As AI continues to evolve, the role of experienced professionals guiding those tools and ensuring quality is becoming even more important.
Biggest Shifts In Legal Tech Sector
You’ve been the CEO of Consilio for over 13 years. What are some of the biggest shifts you’ve seen in the legal tech sector over the last decade, and where do you see the industry heading? Macdonald pointed out:
Over the last decade, legal technology has moved from being something teams evaluated cautiously to something that is embedded in day-to-day work. Early on, the conversation was about whether technology could be trusted to support legal processes. That quickly shifted to adopting multiple tools to solve specific challenges, and more recently to experimenting with AI across a range of workflows.
What many organizations are experiencing now is the next phase of that progression. They have access to powerful capabilities, but those technologies have often been implemented independently rather than as part of a cohesive infrastructure, which can create complexity over time. The focus is beginning to shift toward making those investments work together in a way that improves visibility, efficiency, and consistency.
Looking ahead, I think the industry will continue to prioritize practical application over novelty. AI and automation will expand what legal teams can accomplish, but success will depend on how those capabilities are integrated into existing processes and supported by professionals who understand the context of the work. We are also seeing expectations evolve, with clients asking for faster insight, greater transparency, and more predictable outcomes as data volumes continue to grow.
LegalTech Fund
Tell us more about The LegalTech Fund and how Consilio’s investment in the specialized venture fund advances innovation in the industry. Macdonald explained:
Innovation in legal technology is happening across a wide range of companies, many of which are relatively young and bringing fresh ideas to longstanding challenges. We’ve always believed that a healthy ecosystem benefits clients because it expands choice and accelerates progress across the industry.
Our involvement with The LegalTech Fund reflects that perspective. Supporting entrepreneurs who are building new capabilities helps ensure that the market continues to evolve and that clients have access to a diverse set of solutions. It also creates opportunities to learn from emerging technologies and understand how they might be applied in real legal workflows.
For us, the value is not simply financial. It is about participating in the broader innovation landscape and helping create an environment where new ideas can develop and ultimately find their way into real client work. By backing the ecosystem, we are reinforcing our commitment to giving clients flexibility and helping them benefit from the ongoing evolution of legal technology.
Expansion Of Innovation Lab
Consilio recently announced the expansion of its Innovation Lab. Can you share more about the initiative and the technological advancements the lab focuses on? Macdonald pointed out:
We created the Innovation Lab in response to conversations we were having with clients who were trying to make sense of a rapidly expanding set of AI and technology options. Many teams felt pressure to move quickly but didn’t always have a clear way to evaluate which tools would actually work in their environment.
The Lab provides a structured setting where those questions can be explored using real use cases and real data. Rather than focusing on technology in isolation, the goal is to understand how solutions perform within the context of legal workflows, governance requirements, and quality expectations. A number of the ideas we explore start with client challenges and evolve into potential solutions through that process.
Expanding participation to include law firms has been an important step. It creates a shared environment where corporate legal teams and their outside counsel can evaluate emerging capabilities together, align on expectations, and accelerate adoption in a way that feels coordinated rather than fragmented.
Ultimately, the Lab is about building confidence. It gives clients the opportunity to test, learn, and make informed decisions about innovation so that when technology is deployed, it supports real outcomes rather than adding complexity.
Priorities For The Company
What are your top priorities for the company this year? Macdonald described:
Our priority is helping clients navigate a period of rapid innovation while ensuring that technology and services work together to deliver meaningful outcomes. The market is seeing an explosion of AI tools, many of which have the technical horsepower to execute sophisticated work. What clients are trying to determine is not whether the technology works, but whether it works in a way that supports how their teams operate and how their matters evolve.
We are focused on enabling that fit. Clients don’t need a single solution to do everything. They need the ability to combine the right tools, data environments, and expertise so that technology supports their workflows rather than forcing them to adapt to a rigid approach. That requires time-tested processes, flexible infrastructure, and options that allow different capabilities to work together in a coordinated way.
As we move deep into this generative AI era, what has become clear is that the role of people guiding these capabilities is only becoming more important. Technology can execute tasks, but experienced professionals are essential in shaping how it is applied, maintaining quality, and ensuring that outcomes align with client expectations. Our focus is on helping clients bring these elements together in a way that lets them move faster, make better decisions, and apply innovation on their own terms.
Future Of Consilio
What excites you most about the future of Consilio? Macdonald concluded:
What excites me most is how advances in technology are expanding the range of things we can help clients accomplish. AI and data analytics are allowing legal teams to work with information at a scale and level of detail that simply wasn’t practical before. Matters that may have been constrained by time or cost can now be explored more thoroughly, giving clients deeper insight and greater confidence in their decisions.
We are also seeing new opportunities to support earlier stages of legal work. The ability to analyze data upstream, identify patterns, and prepare more effectively for activities like depositions or investigations is improving the overall quality of outcomes and creating efficiencies that benefit both clients and their teams.
For Consilio, that evolution reinforces the opportunity to keep expanding what is possible for our clients and helping them apply new capabilities in ways that feel practical and impactful.
It is an exciting moment because the pace of change is opening doors for clients in ways we haven’t seen before. The opportunity ahead is to take those advances and apply them in ways that deliver tangible value and help clients achieve outcomes that were previously difficult to reach.
