Yath Ithayakumar on AI: Why Your Org Chart Is Your AI Strategy

By Yath Ithayakumar, Chief Transformation Officer, Morgan & Morgan

Artificial intelligence is changing how law firms think about productivity, technology, and growth. But Yath Ithayakumar, Chief Transformation Officer at Morgan & Morgan, believes the firms that get the most from AI will look beyond the technology itself.

The first question should not be, “Which AI tool should we buy?”

It should be, “How should our organization change now that this technology exists?”

At Morgan & Morgan, we didn’t grow into the country’s largest injury law firm by adding people every time the workload increased. We grew by continually asking where technology, better processes, and smarter organizational design could create leverage.

AI raises that same question at a much larger scale.

A firm can invest in powerful AI tools and still see limited results if the work itself remains organized exactly as it was before. If roles, incentives, workflows, and accountability stay unchanged, AI often becomes another layer of software sitting on top of the existing organization.

That is why your org chart is increasingly part of your AI strategy.

Audit Your Team’s Tasks, Not Just Their Roles

Most organizations think in terms of jobs. AI requires leaders to think in terms of tasks.

A job title may encompass dozens of different activities. Some require judgment, empathy, negotiation, or deep subject-matter expertise. Others are repetitive, administrative, or dependent on gathering and organizing information.

Those distinctions matter because AI will not affect every part of a role equally.

Instead of asking whether AI can “replace” a particular job, leaders should examine the individual tasks that make up that job. Which activities can be automated? Which can be accelerated? Which still require a person but can be performed more effectively with AI assistance?

This kind of task-level analysis can reveal opportunities that are easy to miss when looking only at departments or headcount.

It can also change the way organizations think about growth. If technology can absorb a significant amount of repetitive work, the next increase in volume may not require the same increase in staffing that it once did.

That creates leverage, but only if the organization is willing to redesign the work around the technology.

Rethink Roles Alongside Incentives

Changing workflows without changing incentives is one of the fastest ways to undermine an AI transformation.

Suppose a new system allows an employee to complete a process in half the time. If that employee believes becoming more efficient will simply result in more work, fewer hours, or less job security, adoption becomes much harder.

Leaders need to think about what employees are being rewarded for and whether those incentives support the behavior the organization wants.

The introduction of AI may mean redefining certain roles around higher-value work. It may mean measuring output differently. It may mean giving people greater responsibility for judgment, communication, or client experience as routine tasks become easier to automate.

The objective should not simply be to make the same organization faster. The greater opportunity is to create a better organization.

Transparency Is Part of Transformation

Being early adopters of technology increased Morgan & Morgan’s operational transparency and transformed our firm in the process. Our tools gave us case-level visibility: inventory sizes, litigation rates, where fees actually came from. The data exposed a serious pain point: our best litigation attorneys were spending most of their time in pre-suit work. 

We restructured our pre-suit department to operate more independently, freeing up our best attorneys to focus on litigation. Before we made these organizational changes, every attorney had their own team of case managers, paralegals, and litigation assistants. Separating our pre-suit and litigation work enabled our top litigators to focus their time on managing teams of attorneys working on catastrophic injury cases and achieving better results for our clients.

We developed a global vision for growth, standardized operations across all offices, and redesigned workflows to create more value.  

End the Pilot Loop

You don't need to be an expert on every new AI tool that hits the market. You need to be an expert on your own firm's operations: how work flows, where time gets wasted, and what your people could accomplish if the low-value tasks were off their plates. 

Run the pilot, but don’t get stuck in a pilot loop. Rather than waiting for the exact right tool, design your firm’s operations around technology. The worst decision you can make when it comes to technology is no decision at all.

Changing how people work can be complicated and challenging. The best time to start that process is now.  We’ve continually bet on technology and reorganized our firm structure to capture the maximum benefits. Now, our best people are doing better than they did before. The good news: you don't need a thousand attorneys or a nine-figure budget to apply this framework.

About the Author: Who Is Yath Ithayakumar?

Yath Ithayakumar is Chief Transformation Officer at Morgan & Morgan. His work focuses on technology-enabled transformation, artificial intelligence, operational strategy, and finding new ways to create organizational leverage across one of the country’s largest law firms.

His broader perspective is simple: technology creates the greatest value when organizations are willing to change along with it.