Internal investigations, such as employee relations matters and investigations stemming from ethics hotlines, are a major opportunity for legal ops teams to not only deliver business value to the company: they represent an opportunity to deliver on senior executives' expectations to deliver AI-driven solutions.
At a growing number of major corporations, C-suite executives are demanding that their teams identify AI use cases that provide real business value. For example, in a recent email, Duolingo's co-founder and CEO Luis von Ahn explained that the company is "AI-First" and is rethinking much of how the platform works, including replacing contractors with AI. Similarly, Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke recently dictated that no new hires are permitted unless AI cannot perform the role.
Law departments and legal operations teams are not exempt from this pressure to find ways to use AI wherever possible. For many, internal investigations may provide the perfect opportunity, especially as the number of investigations is on the rise.According to a 2025 Association of Corporate Counsel survey, nearly 45% of chief legal officers say they are seeing an increase in the amount of internal investigations they handle.
Many companies with over 1,000 employees have built complex processes that prioritize the defensibility of an investigation if the matter later goes to litigation, but without much thought given to time efficiency, consistency, and cost. Often these workflows, created during an urgent inquiry and never revisited, operate like a fire drill and are ripe for the kind of process and technology improvements that legal ops professionals are able to deliver.
This paper explores how legal operations professionals are uniquely equipped to elevate the internal investigations process to be more efficient, strategic, and cost-effective, thanks to their deep expertise in process design, technology, and cross-functional collaboration. Here are five ways legal ops professionals can help, whether the investigations function reports into Legal, Compliance, HR, Internal Audit, or somewhere else in the organization.
