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Martin Stockdale
vrv

01 — 0 M · Base

Martin Stockdale · Strategy & Transformation · Professional Services

Your market is shifting on several fronts at once.
AI just made it faster.

I help the leaders of law firms and professional services firms read the shift, see what it means for their business, and plan the route from where they are to where they need to be.

How I work →Start a conversation →

02 — 1,200 M · The View

Most firms are answering the wrong question.

Ask most professional services firms about change and they'll describe an AI project. Ask them where their revenue actually comes from — how much is process, how much is judgement — and the room goes quiet.

Clients, pricing, talent, competitors and technology are all moving at the same time, and AI compounds every one of them. The firms that come through won't be the ones with the most pilots. They'll be the ones that understood the shift early and redesigned around it.

I don't build the technology. I tell you what has to change, why, and in what order.

03 — 1,850 M · The Ascent

From the courtroom to the operating model.

  1. 01 — Base · Litigation

    Trained and qualified as a solicitor; years in defendant insurance litigation in the North West. Learned what holds up under cross-examination — and what doesn't.

  2. 02 — Kennedys · Counter Fraud

    Partner from 2011 and Head of the Counter Fraud Unit. Fighting organised claims networks showed that reactive, manual review loses to data-driven fraud. Detection had to move to the front of the process.

  3. 03 — The Science · University of Manchester

    Led the industry side of an Innovate UK Knowledge Transfer Partnership with Alliance Manchester Business School. Co-authored IEEE research (FUZZ-IEEE 2020) using the Evidential Reasoning approach — fraud scoring that can be explained, not just predicted.

  4. 04 — Kennedys IQ · Product

    Strategy Board member of Kennedys IQ, launched in 2020 to help clients use lawyers less. Turning legal know-how into software and automated claims workflows.

  5. 05 — Global AI Programme Lead

    Partner, AI Strategy & Delivery. Enterprise data transformation, secure generative AI for lawyers, and Kennedys' entry into the Responsible AI Institute in 2024.

  6. 06 — Clyde & Co · COO, Change & Innovation

    Partner and COO for Change and Innovation Strategy. Operating models and governance for a global firm where human professionals and AI agents work together.

  7. 07 — Summit · Vrv · Now

    Independent. Helping law firms and professional services firms read the shift and plan the route.

04 — 2,100 M · Muscle, Brain, Heart

Three eras of advantage.

I.

Muscle

Advantage came from scale: more people, more hours, more capacity.

II.

Brain

Advantage moved to whoever processed information fastest — optimisation, analytics, data at scale.

III.

Heart

Now raw intelligence is becoming infrastructure anyone can rent. What differentiates is judgement, context, ethics and trust — the human part, done deliberately.

The firms that win the next decade won't be the ones with the most AI. They'll be the ones who know exactly where the human goes.

05 — 2,400 M · The Practice

Vrv — strategy for the climb.

Senior, selective and hands-on. For managing partners, founders and management boards — law firms first, and professional services firms more broadly.

  1. 01

    Reading the shift

    What is actually happening to your market — clients, pricing, competitors, talent and technology — and which of those shifts will hit your firm hardest.

    For: Managing Partners · Management Boards

  2. 02

    Revenue anatomy

    Your time and revenue, split into process and judgement. It shows where AI will erode income, where it creates room, and which parts of the firm really make the profit. Most firms have never looked.

    For: Managing Partners · COOs · Finance Directors

  3. 03

    The route and the programme

    From where you are to where you need to be: what changes, in what order and who owns it — designed as a programme your people and technology partners can deliver.

    For: Management Boards · COOs · Transformation Leads

  4. 04

    Governance foundations

    You can't govern what you can't see. Data, applications and AI: knowing what is running, what it touches and who answers for it — before you scale anything.

    For: COOs · CIOs · General Counsel · Risk

How an engagement runs

  1. Survey

    Read the market shift and your firm's current capabilities, side by side.

  2. Route

    Bring the two together: how your world shifts, what it does to your business, and the path from here to there.

  3. Ascent

    Design the programme, then stay alongside leadership while it happens.

06 — 2,650 M · Ideas

Ideas I keep coming back to.

[Questions]

Ask better questions

'What legal problems do you have?' is the wrong question. The useful one is what is changing in your client's business — and what that will do to the advice they need next year.

[Revenue]

Process is everywhere

Split a firm's time into process and judgement and process turns up everywhere, even in the highest-value matters. That is exactly the work AI is coming for.

[Governance]

You can't govern what you can't see

One firm believed it had around 80 live applications. Within a week, more than 250 had been found. If you don't know what is running, you certainly don't know what your AI is doing.

[Adoption]

Amara's Law, applied to boardrooms

Leaders overestimate what AI will do in the next two years and underestimate what it will do in ten. Plan for both: modest promises now, structural redesign over the decade.

[Decisions]

Noise is a liability

Two adjusters, two lawyers, two judges — two different answers to the same facts. Institutions have a duty to reduce that inconsistency. Good systems don't replace judgement; they give it a consistent baseline.

[Organisation]

Who decides when the agent acts?

As AI agents join human teams, the real work is decision rights, accountability and escalation — an operating model question long before it's a technology one.

07 — 2,800 M · The Record

On the record.

Recognition

  • DataIQ 100 — 2025
  • DataIQ 100 — 2021
  • The Lawyer Hot 100
  • The Legal 500 UK — recommended, defendant insurance litigation

Research

  • “Automobile Insurance Fraud Detection using the Evidential Reasoning Approach and Data-Driven Inferential Modelling” — FUZZ-IEEE 2020, with X. Liu, J-B. Yang, D-L. Xu, K. Derrick, C. Stubbs
  • Innovate UK Knowledge Transfer Partnership with Alliance Manchester Business School

Stages & conversations

  • DataIQ Congress 2026 — leading the hybrid workforce
  • Swiss Re Corporate Solutions, Claims Insights podcast — commercial claims counter fraud
  • Kennedys Innovation Month — “Cutting through the noise”
  • Insurance Times — generative AI's scalability challenge
  • Responsible AI Institute — Kennedys membership, 2024

08 — 2,962 M · Summit

Let's talk about the view from where you are.

Managing partners, founders and management boards — or simply comparing notes. I read everything and reply personally.