Chris Apple
Manager, Member Services & Development
Arkansas
The CLOC Member Spotlight series profiles the incredible individuals within our community who are driving transformation in legal ops. Each spotlight provides inspiration, fosters connections, and gives readers a chance to learn more about their peers. By sharing these stories, we celebrate the diverse voices and talents that make CLOC a vibrant and connected community.
Daniel Acevedo is the Latin America lead partner with ECIJA Tech. He also serves as a founding regional lead of CLOC Colombia. Keep reading to learn more about Daniel.
About me:
I’m Daniel Acevedo: an attorney and systems engineering master’s graduate focused on digital transformation. I currently serve as the Latin America lead partner at ECIJA Tech, where we help legal, tax, and finance teams modernize their operations through practical innovation and technology. Early in my career, I thought “real law” was mostly about courtrooms or high-stakes contracts, until I was asked to help structure a legal department under an ISO 9001 quality management system. I had to define performance indicators and map something as basic (and recurring) as an NDA approval workflow end-to-end. That experience changed my perspective: the real impact of a legal function is rarely in the occasional headline deal or litigation, it’s in how well the team runs the 99% of work that happens every day. My approach is straightforward: turn legal uncertainty into reliable models and actionable decisions. Diagnosis first. Method next. Technology last, as a multiplier, not a fad.
Why I love being a CLOC member:
I value CLOC for a practical reason: no one has all the answers. In LegalOps, what actually works is learned faster through community than through theory, especially when you’re trying to move a real organization with real budgets and real resistance to change. CLOC keeps me close to practitioners who execute: people who measure, document, standardize, automate, and then measure again. That kind of grounded conversation is what prevents LegalOps from becoming “nice slides” without outcomes. From Latin America, CLOC is also a bridge to shared standards, vocabulary, and comparable frameworks, so we spend less time reinventing the wheel and more time delivering measurable impact that the business can feel.
My advice for other legal ops professionals:
My advice for other legal ops professionals: 1.- Start with the real problem, not the tool. If you can’t describe the friction precisely (where it happens, what it costs, who it affects), any solution, tech or not, will be useless. 2.- Do a diagnostic and build an executable roadmap. LegalOps is about operational discipline: processes, roles, data, metrics, and governance. Technology should amplify what is already well-designed. 3.- Build community (and use it). Careers accelerate when you share playbooks, failures, and lessons, without ego. That’s a major part of the value I get from CLOC.
A fun fact about me:
I was part of Colombia’s national judo team from 2004–2008, and I currently serve as a second lieutenant (O-1) in the Colombian Air Force Reserve Force. That combination taught me something I still rely on professionally: transformation is built through operational discipline, doing the small things well, consistently, before attempting the big ones.
CLOC Member Spotlights provide an opportunity to showcase members within our community who are making a difference in their organizations, in their CLOC groups, within the CLOC community and/or the industry as a whole. Do you know of a really cool thing a CLOC member is doing? We invite you to nominate a member of the CLOC Community for a future feature in the CLOC Member Spotlights Series.