About LawTru Consulting
Founded by Jeff Ward
Founder, LawTru Consulting
Jeff Ward
Jeff Ward directs the Duke Center on Law & Technology and is Clinical Professor at Duke Law, with an adjunct appointment at the Duke Pratt School of Engineering. His work focuses on AI governance, technology-risk oversight, and the institutional implications of AI adoption for knowledge-intensive enterprises. He advises general counsel and C-suites on innovation structures and on AI as an enterprise issue spanning strategy, talent, compliance, reputation, and risk.
As Innovation Scholar-in-Residence at an international law firm in 2025, Ward worked alongside firm leaders on AI strategy, governance, and tool evaluation for thousands of attorneys and staff. The role gave him direct exposure to how a global firm assesses and operationalizes AI in production environments and to how Fortune 500 general counsel are approaching enterprise AI and the future of legal work.
At Duke, Ward founded the Duke Law Tech Lab accelerator and Responsible AI in Legal Services (RAILS) and previously served as Associate Dean for Technology & Innovation. He leads externally funded research on AI governance and the restructuring of professional-services institutions, with implications for technology, consulting, finance, and other knowledge-intensive sectors. He previously held a faculty appointment at Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society and has served on advisory and editorial bodies including the IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous & Intelligent Systems, the Justice Technology Association, and Digital Society.
Earlier in his career, Ward practiced at Latham & Watkins, founded his own legal practice, and worked in management consulting at Arthur Andersen Business Consulting. He holds a J.D. and LL.M. from Duke (Order of the Coif and magna cum laude), an M.A. from Northern Illinois University (with distinction), and a B.A. from the University of Notre Dame (summa cum laude).
LawTru Consulting is a consulting practice for legal organizations and the professionals inside them, anchored by proprietary diagnostic instrumentation built on the Thriving in the Next Era framework. The practice is led by Jeff — practitioner and scholar — whose name is on every substantive client conversation and whose framework the work is built on.
The work has a discipline. Rather than offering a comprehensive AI-era survey of legal services, LawTru engages a defined set of capacities at depth — institutional Architectures that determine whether an organization wields AI well, and personal Profiles that determine whether the professionals inside it develop the judgment, trust-stewardship, and adaptive expertise the era requires. The depth is what the practice trades for breadth.
What LawTru is not: a conventional consulting firm selling billable hours and multi-quarter advisory packages. Not a software vendor. Not an assessment platform sold as a product. The diagnostic instrumentation is sophisticated — and it is in service to a practitioner-led conversation, not a substitute for one.
How an Engagement Might Run
Jeff leads the engagement in collaboration with leaders from your organization — scoped together at the Opening Consultation. No two engagements run exactly alike, but they tend to follow a similar pattern: the shape is consistent; the scope is the conversation. A representative engagement might run like this.
- 1
Opening Consultation
Frames the work in the Thriving in the Next Era framework and scopes the diagnostic to the organization.
- 2
Optional Kickoff
For organizations whose scope calls for framing the work to a broader internal audience.
- 3
Diagnostic phase
Institutional Architectures deployed against senior leaders; the Cultural Conditions survey deployed across a broader respondent set where in scope. Selected leaders complete the instruments asynchronously — roughly 30–45 minutes each. Per-Architecture findings and the Cultural Conditions report are produced; reports remain gated until the Findings Consultation.
- 4
Findings Consultation
Walks the leadership team through the diagnostic findings for the first time. Per-Architecture findings and, where in scope, the Integrated Architecture Findings and Cultural Conditions report are released at its conclusion.
- 5
Closing Consultation
Delivers curated working resources, sharpens priorities, closes the engagement cleanly.
The Engagement Findings Package
The diagnostic-informed artifact set delivered through the engagement, scoped to what was deployed.
Some engagements add components scoped to what the diagnostic surfaces — additional working sessions for working groups on specific priorities, half-day or full-day workshops, executive briefings — quoted with the engagement.
Methodological Foundation
LawTru's diagnostic operationalizes the Thriving in the Next Eraframework — original interdisciplinary work spanning cognitive science, organizational trust, professional identity, institutional design, and adaptive expertise. The framework's eight capacities — three enduring values and five emerging capacities — are examined at two levels: institutional Architectures (how the organization is set up) and personal Profiles (how the professionals inside it are equipped). Scoring is calibrated against the research-grounded framework.