Wolters Kluwer has announced that Dean Sonderegger will return to the legal sector as senior vice president and general manager of its ELM Solutions business. This appointment brings Sonderegger back to the legal field after a three-year interval, during which he led various other divisions within the company, most recently overseeing the Financial & Regulatory Reporting (FRR) business, as well as the Canada and Research & Learning businesses in the Tax and Accounting division.
Sonderegger’s return to legal operations follows his departure as head of Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S. (LRUS) in early 2022, when he shifted focus to tax and accounting roles, driven by his background in these sectors. At the time, he expressed a keen interest in returning to his roots in tax, as noted in previous coverage.
In his new leadership role at ELM Solutions, Sonderegger is set to oversee the division’s suite of enterprise legal management tools, designed for corporate legal operations and insurance claims departments. These tools aim to enhance operational efficiency, reduce costs, and provide deeper insights into legal matters. Expressing enthusiasm for his new role, Sonderegger has acknowledged the transformative impact of AI and other innovative technologies in the corporate legal market, and he highlights Wolters Kluwer’s positioning to deliver efficiency and insights to its clients in this context.
Martin O’Malley, CEO of Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory, has praised Sonderegger’s deep understanding of the legal market and his capacity for fostering innovation through his leadership, which is expected to further enhance Wolters Kluwer’s capabilities in legal operations and enterprise legal management.
Having joined Wolters Kluwer in 2015, Sonderegger initially served as vice president of the Legal Markets Group & Innovation, where he helped drive the development of advanced digital products and services. His leadership culminated in his promotion to lead LRUS in May 2019, during which he played a pivotal role in launching several key legal tech products, including the Cheetah legal research platform (later rebranded as VitalLaw).
Prior to his tenure at Wolters Kluwer, Sonderegger’s career spanned nearly 13 years at Bloomberg BNA, where he focused on tax, accounting, and finance software products. His engineering background, which includes the development of tax software, complements his extensive experience in legal technology, equipping him to lead ELM Solutions in its continuing evolution amidst rapidly advancing AI technologies. For more about this development, visit the original announcement.