Altria reaches 80–90% adoption of AI legal front door in 52 days

Altria’s legal team struggled not only to manage work but to get people to change how they work. Leadership wanted the department to be faster, more effective, and more efficient while reducing outside counsel spend. The challenge was less finding an intake tool than reimagining how the entire legal department operates and getting lawyers to actually use a new front door.

Joy Thorpe, Director of the Strategy Legal Center of Excellence, built a CoE and partnered with Checkbox to create an AI-powered legal front door. They went from zero intake infrastructure to launching Ask Al in 52 days, choosing a purpose-built legal tool over a generic enterprise system. The effort centered on change management—meeting lawyers where they are and turning skeptics into champions.

The department drove 80–90% adoption of the AI legal front door across the legal team. Centralized intake improved visibility, faster turnaround, and data for smarter decisions. The front door also became a foundation for broader, scalable AI adoption in legal.

• • Change management—not technology—is the hardest part of legal AI transformation
• • A purpose-built legal intake/front-door tool can win over lawyers where a generic enterprise system may not
• • Centralized AI intake creates visibility and data that support efficiency and outside counsel spend decisions