\u201cIt\u2019s not a matter of wanting to leave Aderant,\u201d he told me. \u201cThere just came a moment and an opportunity that, as it was presented to me, my wife and I both were like, this is interesting. \u2026 I couldn\u2019t get it out of my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n
That opportunity, as I reported yesterday, is to become CEO of ImageTrend<\/a>, a company that provides software and data analytics for emergency medical services, fire departments, hospitals and public safety agencies.<\/p>\n Cartrett is leaving legal tech at what he believes is a high point for Aderant, and he said the timing reflects the company\u2019s strength, not any trouble beneath the surface.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have had so much great success here at Aderant with really great people, and I don\u2019t see that changing anytime soon,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re hitting on all cylinders right now. It really was about a timing thing.\u201d<\/p>\n Joining Cartrett on the call was Aisling Fenelon<\/a>, who earlier this year became the company\u2019s first female chief revenue officer<\/a>, and who echoed that theme of continuity \u2014 although, she conceded, it will not be a change without emotion. \u201cChris and I are the crybabies of our exec team, for the record,\u201d she joked.<\/p>\n Emergency services software may seem a radical departure from legal billing and financial management, but Cartrett sees a through line between the two. ImageTrend, he said, is at a stage much like where Aderant stood several years ago at the outset of its own transformation, and the central challenge \u2014 connecting data to drive better outcomes \u2014 is the same.<\/p>\n \u201cThe reality is the connectivity of the data within that emergency services space [is what will] really help drive better outcomes for patients and for care,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not unlike many of the things that are happening all across legal tech right now.\u201d<\/p>\n What is different, he joked, is the jargon. \u201cThe acronyms are radically different. So I find myself now watching The Pitt<\/em> and having to take notes on the side, so I can understand a lot of the vernacular that people are using.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked about the management structure he leaves behind, Cartrett said that Aderant has been preparing for transitions like this one for years, pointing to a series of deliberate leadership moves.<\/p>\n Two years ago, then-chief operating officer Raphael Shure<\/a> left to become president and CEO of PowerPlan, another company owned by Aderant\u2019s parent, Roper Technologies. That move brought Aderant its current CFO, Kevin Janflone<\/a>, in what Cartrett called \u201ckind of a trade.\u201d<\/p>\n Doug Matthews<\/a>, whom Cartrett brought in as chief product officer in 2023, arrived with Lisa Erickson<\/a>, who then took over as head of product and AI when Matthews left last year. \u201cShe has been phenomenal,\u201d Cartrett said. \u201c[She] completely drives all of our strategies [as they] relate to our platform, our AI strategy.\u201d<\/p>\n Fenelon\u2019s own promotion followed the same playbook, he said. When former CRO George Seymour<\/a> left at the beginning of the year, \u201cthat had everything to do with the fact that Ash was ready.\u201d<\/p>\n Between Fenelon, who has been at Aderant 11 years, and Chief Client Officer Josiah Chaves<\/a>, who joined 12 years ago, Cartrett said the leadership team is deeply rooted. But his greatest pride, he said, runs deeper than the org chart.<\/p>\n \u201cThe thing that I\u2019m the most proud of as I leave is that, if I look all the way through our business, the talent level inside of Aderant today is at a level that we\u2019ve never had before.\u201d<\/p>\n Aisling Fenelon<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Fenelon said that Cartrett\u2019s departure is significant. \u00a0\u201cHe\u2019s such a big personality, he\u2019s so important in legal tech.\u201d But she said that his closeness to clients is an attribute the whole company shares.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are all deeply ingrained with our clients. That\u2019s not just a Chris thing. That is an Aderant thing. That is an exec team thing. \u2026 Great companies are built on great teams, not on an individual.\u201d<\/p>\n As for customers, she said they should expect no change of direction. \u201cYou\u2019re going to miss Chris at Momentum, because, you know, the preacher likes to preach. But as far as our vision and our product roadmap and our customer commitments, none of that changes at all.\u201d<\/p>\n To bridge the transition, Deane Price<\/a>, Aderant\u2019s CEO from 2017 to 2021, will return as interim CEO while Roper conducts a search for a permanent successor. Price will return July 20 to begin the transition and will serve as interim CEO when Cartrett formally steps down Aug. 1.<\/p>\n Cartrett said he was involved in that decision, and that Price, whom he called \u201ctruly my mentor,\u201d was among the people he turned to as he weighed the ImageTrend offer.<\/p>\n He credited Roper for not rushing the succession. \u201cInstead of trying to speed things up and try to ram a CEO in here, it was the other way around. It was like, hey, we\u2019re going to take our time.\u201d<\/p>\n Persuading Price took some doing, he said. \u201cI did have to talk Deane off the lake. She was at her lake place, and it was like, you know, Deane, you come back \u2014 the people know you, they love you, they respect you.\u201d<\/p>\n The search has been underway since early June, Cartrett said, and could conclude quickly or stretch to October or beyond.<\/p>\n When I interviewed Cartrett at Aderant\u2019s Momentum conference<\/a> in 2025, I asked him what grade he would give himself on his signature mission of moving the company\u2019s customers to the cloud. With his tenure ending, I asked for his final grade \u2014 and whether the customer reluctance I had sensed<\/a> at that conference had persisted.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t feel that way anymore,\u201d he said. \u201cThe majority of them are there.\u201d On the core financial system, most customers have now moved, he said, while the rest of Aderant\u2019s portfolio \u2014 \u201cwhich has always been AI-enabled, cloud-based applications\u201d \u2014 has grown \u201cupwards of 300% over the last five years.\u201d Just last month, he added, another Am Law 25 firm made the move to the cloud.<\/p>\n Fenelon said the momentum started in the mid-tier and has now reached the largest firms. Virtually every Am Law 100 firm she speaks with is either moving to the cloud or actively mapping out a transition over the next 12 to 15 months, she said.<\/p>\n She attributed the shift to the company\u2019s approach. \u201cThere\u2019s two ways to play this. We took the carrot approach, not the stick. \u2026 And so now you have these big, huge firms, like Holland & Knight and Baker Botts, that are in the cloud and munching on that carrot and seeing improved performance and taking advantage of AI in a way they never could on prem.\u201d<\/p>\n On AI adoption more broadly, Cartrett said the hesitancy of two years ago is gone. He pointed to the recent release integrating Aderant\u2019s iTimekeep with Harvey.<\/p>\n \u201cFirms are so far down that road with Harvey, [Legora], all these other players, [that] bringing that type of efficiency into your back office, with what we\u2019re doing with MADDI and then across other tools, I feel like, is literally a no-brainer now.\u201d<\/p>\n Any regrets? \u201cThere is never a day I wake up that I don\u2019t kick myself thinking I did something too slow,\u201d he said. The company began building out its platform roughly three years ago, and it is now delivering \u201creal return for our clients today. \u2026 I wish I had known to do that five years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n As for reports of the death of the billable hour, Cartrett does not foresee it disappearing. But he believes it will occupy a smaller share of the pricing mix as clients demand that firms translate AI-driven efficiencies into lower or more predictable costs.<\/p>\n \u201cThe billable hour will remain,\u201d he said, \u201cbut I will be crystal clear: Law firms, ultimately, over the course of the next four years, are going to have to shift more and more to outcome-based billing. Every client is asking for efficiencies as it relates to AI and its impact on the bill.\u201d<\/p>\n Fenelon was more sanguine, noting that the profession was predicting the death of the billable hour 25 years ago.<\/p>\n \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter, as long as we\u2019re prepared for the inevitability, whatever that happens to be,\u201d she said. \u201cAs long as we have a technology that can support that outcome, or the hybrid of that outcome, then we\u2019ve done our job.\u201d<\/p>\n For Cartrett, the deeper issue is how firms articulate their value. \u201cMost law firms pitch their value based on hours. And what I was trying to explain was, no, your value is your brain \u2014 the way you come at this information, the creativity. That\u2019s your value.\u201d<\/p>\n Does Cartrett think Aderant\u2019s next CEO needs legal industry experience? \u201cI do not. I can tell you that up front,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n What the next CEO will need is the ability to lead Aderant through a shift he believes is coming for all of software.<\/p>\n \u201cThis idea of applications and products \u2014 that world\u2019s gone. It is truly about an operating system and how you\u2019re able to enable things. And that\u2019s going to require an entirely different approach to how you serve your clients.\u201d<\/p>\n His advice for whoever gets the job: Lean on the team. \u201cOur team is so open and free in conversation. We never have a meeting where there\u2019s something left unsaid. No, it\u2019s said, and then we want to go attack it.\u201d<\/p>\n Also, he added, understand the community. Over the last week and a half, as he began telling customers of his departure, \u201cthey have been so genuinely happy for me. \u2026 I\u2019ve received a zillion emails today, just encouraging emails for me as I go on this next journey.\u201d<\/p>\n The Aderant community of employees and customers, he said, \u201cis unlike anything I have ever dealt with in my life,\u201d and leaving it is what makes him most nervous.<\/p>\n Asked for his unvarnished take on the industry he is leaving after nearly three decades, including his years at Thomson Reuters before Aderant, Cartrett said legal has flipped from laggard to leader.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve gone from always being laggards to, all of a sudden now, legal is moving forward faster than most industries out there.\u201d<\/p>\n But his optimism about legal\u2019s accelerating adoption of technology came with a warning: The gap may widen between companies that have modernized their architecture and those still maintaining aging systems.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are a lot of legal tech companies that have been owned by people for a long time, and they\u2019ve kind of dealt with a little bit of the tech debt, but they\u2019ve not really addressed the problems in the world that we\u2019re all moving into.<\/p>\n \u201cData is just so critically important. Security becomes more important than ever. And so, if you\u2019re just playing around, limping along [with] some of these old legacy systems, you better be careful.\u201d<\/p>\n Law firms, he said, get this. \u201cThey understand that \u2026 it\u2019s a new world out there.\u201d<\/p>\n As for Aderant, Cartrett\u2019s assessment was simple: \u201cIt\u2019s a unique place. It\u2019s a unique business. It\u2019s one I\u2019m very proud to have been a part of.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I spoke with Chris Cartrett yesterday, just hours after reporting that he will step down Aug. 1 as president and CEO of Aderant, he was emphatic that his departure, after 12 years at the company, including five as CEO, was not about wanting to leave. \u201cIt\u2019s not a matter of wanting to leave Aderant,\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":156835,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-156834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawsite"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xira.com\/p\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Cartrett-Pic-169-1024x576-0iLqkK.jpg?fit=1024%2C576&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Different Market, Familiar Mission<\/strong><\/h3>\n
A Solid Management Structure<\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lawnext.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Aisling-Fenelon-Photo-651x1024.jpeg?resize=300%2C472&ssl=1\" "\\"\\""){kind=spacer}
<\/a><\/p>\nBringing Back Deane Price<\/strong><\/h3>\n
The Final Grade on the Cloud<\/strong><\/h3>\n
The Billable Hour Will Remain<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Advice for His Successor<\/strong><\/h3>\n
A Parting Warning for Legal Tech<\/strong><\/h3>\n