What DHL’s Elaine Darr can teach us about legal innovation, leadership and AI

Elaine Darr is SVP, Global Head of Digital Legal and Innovation at DHL.

With a background in commercial law and over a decade in leadership, she’s redefined what’s possible both in and out of Legal. In 2024, she was named Corporate Counsel Best Deputy or Associate GC by the American Lawyer Industry Awards.

Elaine knows what it takes to really innovate: structured change, business alignment, and a deep understanding of the people you want to bring along for the journey.

In the days leading up DHL’s first ever Legal Innovation Summit, Josef Co-founder & COO Sam Flynn sits down with Elaine to learn about her career, DHL’s tried and true innovation playbook, her approach to legal AI, and how she believes legal teams can lead from the front.

Watch the conversation above, listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube, or read our recap below.

From attorney to global leader

Elaine’s journey from attorney to global innovator wasn’t part of any grand plan, but did just “come about naturally,” she says. Her trick? Staying curious and continued, standout performance.

“I came straight from a law firm and thought, ‘I’m going to be in-house, corporate counsel. This is what I’d be doing for my entire career at DHL.’”

But the more she partnered with teams outside of Legal, the company said, ‘There’s so much more you could do to support the business. Are you interested?’”

“We were building high performing teams, we were making our customers happy, we were growing. There was no rush or need to say, ‘Wait, hold on.'”

The American Lawyer Industry Awards

In 2024 Elaine won Corporate Counsel Best Deputy or Associate GC at the American Lawyer Industry Awards. She stood out for her unique mix of legal expertise and innovative, operational leadership.

She shares, “The judging panel were like, wait a minute, what has she done? She’s had P&L responsibility, legal leadership responsibility. She’s ran functions and turnaround and growth engines for DHL.”

“My individual work and capabilities are a huge part of it, but,” she says humbly, “if DHL hadn’t created that environment where I had gotten that experience, I wouldn’t have won the award.”

A summit for in-house legal innovation

One way Elaine and DHL are leading from the front today is by hosting the DHL Legal Innovation Summit, a meetup featuring the best general counsel and legal ops professionals around to share ideas, use cases, and DHL’s very own innovation playbook.

At a previous conference, Elaine and Chief Legal Officer Mark Smolik were on-stage sharing their experience innovating and, she explains, “What we found was the audience and the attendees were hungry for more.”

“We thought, why don’t we give back?”

Innovation at DHL

At the core of DHL’s approach to innovation is a structured, repeatable framework.

First they weigh up their use cases, then cover topics like “project management to sponsorship, to communication,” she says. “We then wrap it out with change management and continuous improvement.”

The final chapter is critical.

“You can have ROI. You can have a business case. From a legal ops or support perspective, you can have all these reasons why we need to do something from a technology perspective. But if you don’t take the time to sit down with the end user and understand what’s in it for them, they will never adopt.”

“They’re just going to say, ‘Uh-huh’, and go back to their desk and manage their day with all of their volume as a practicing lawyer exactly how they do right now. Because as a practicing lawyer with a volume, it’s survival!”

AI with structure, not chaos

DHL is busy integrating AI into its legal operations, but not without discipline. “We don’t just say use AI to use AI,” Elaine explains.

“It may be AI that can help solve our problem. It may be something else like a process change or a policy or framework.”

But with large language models now in the mix, the possibilities are expanding fast.

“With the introduction of LLMs, we’ve advanced a decade ahead. It’s impacting everything from how we structure our intake portal, to how we’re drafting contracts, to how we’re drafting leases, our commercial agreements, everything!”

“You can do so much traditional legal work by leveraging an LLM that’s been trained to help you leverage what you’ve done in the past to get a good start. Then, you bring the human in the loop.”

“It’s not replacing lawyers. It just helps us!”

Elaine’s advice for her peers?

When it comes to pushing for innovation and implementing, new, automated ways of working think: what’s going to be in it for your lawyers?

“Take the time to understand what they’re experiencing. That’s how you drive adoption.”