Compliance functions are typically built around individual regulatory requirements — privacy here, AML there, sanctions somewhere else — with each team rebuilding the same processes independently. Integreon VP of legal operations Valerie Charles argues that this vertical structure is why compliance stays perpetually reactive and offers a useful model for what the alternative looks like.
AI has captured the attention of legal leaders, boardrooms, technology investors and most dinner party conversation if lawyers are at the table. Much of the enthusiasm on applying AI to legal work has centered around contract review, matter management and legal research, areas where generative AI offers rapid and highly visible efficiency gains.
Although compliance tech investment has the same potential for dramatic gains in efficiency, investment has been underwhelming, and many compliance tasks remain mired in manual processes. A 2025 WoltersKluwer survey, for example, indicated that among banking respondents, 88% reported using manual processes/spreadsheets “often” or “sometimes.” This backdrop has become a mandate for digitization and automation, with 66% reporting planned investments in digitization, automating regulatory change management (63%) and deploying AI/ML/robotics (56%).
As compliance departments embark on their transformation journeys, legal operations frameworks, with defined metrics, governance models and dedicated technology budgets, can offer a useful inspiration and guide.
A blindspot where growth belongs
Global regulatory obligations now span everything from data privacy to anti-corruption, financial crime, environmental reporting, workplace safety and third-party risk. For multinational companies, regulatory change occurs at a pace no human team can realistically track.
Compliance spend across heavily regulated industries continues to grow year over year, yet investment in compliance AI significantly lags behind legal tech adoption, creating exposure to operational inefficiency, human error and regulatory penalties.
Financial services firms continue to face multimillion-dollar fines for AML control failures, while global companies have been penalized for GDPR violations stemming not from malicious activity but from lack of operational oversight. As regulatory scrutiny continues to intensify, failure to modernize compliance operations becomes a competitive liability and a potential brand reputation debacle.
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Read moreDetailsA complex transformation environment
The imbalance in technological investment in legal functions vs. compliance stems from several factors. One is a fundamental misalignment of incentives. Legal operations is driven by measurable ROI — reduced contract cycle times, cost savings and data-backed performance metrics. Compliance, by contrast, is measured by the absence of failure, i.e., fewer incidents, fewer penalties, fewer headlines. This makes it harder to articulate the economic case for AI, even where the benefits are clear.
Compounding the challenge, many compliance functions rely on deep subject-matter judgment. Regulatory interpretation, risk classification and control evaluation generally require human experts, and rightly so. But because teams are overwhelmed with repetitive operational tasks, they never reach the strategic work only humans can do. The result is predictable: Compliance experts spend their time chasing regulatory updates rather than advising the business, while AI investment flows toward the more visible, easier-to-quantify problems in legal operations.
An additional reason compliance teams feel perpetually stretched thin is structural as opposed to purely resource-driven. Most compliance programs are organized vertically around individual regulatory requirements like privacy, AML, sanctions, anti-corruption or ESG, each managed with independent teams. Teams address obligations one requirement at a time, often rebuilding the same processes repeatedly: monitoring regulatory change, documenting controls, coordinating stakeholders and preparing evidence for audits. This siloed approach may create duplicated effort, inconsistent execution and operational drag. The result is a compliance function that is busy but not scalable, constantly reacting to change rather than managing risk holistically.
A vision for compliance ops
Legal operations offers a useful blueprint for breaking this cycle. Over the past decade, legal teams have begun to standardize horizontally by centralizing core processes, technology platforms, data models and workflows that cut across practice areas. Applying this mindset to compliance enables the creation of a unified compliance operations layer that sits above individual regulatory domains and provides shared infrastructure for intake, obligation management, control mapping, monitoring, reporting and assurance.
A modern compliance ops capability would:
- Provide centralized visibility into regulatory obligations
- Automate the ingestion and interpretation of rule changes
- Enhance control monitoring and transaction surveillance
- Reduce false positives using machine learning
- Strengthen third-party risk programs
- Enable proactive reporting and audit readiness
This layer creates consistency, improves resource utilization and strengthens risk management by ensuring that every regulatory obligation is managed through a common operating model. Compliance professionals gain leverage: less time spent reinventing processes and more time focused on judgment, interpretation and business guidance.
The journey toward transformation does not happen overnight; it begins with a single step toward curiosity and collaboration. By embracing this evolution, compliance teams can reclaim their time for the high-impact, intellectual work that drew them to the profession in the first place. This shift offers a rare opportunity to turn the “burden” of compliance into a source of organizational resilience and pride. When we empower our teams with the right systems, we transform compliance from a reactive safeguard into a powerful engine for ethical growth and sustainable innovation.
