Dean Sonderegger is departing as head of Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S. (LRUS), a position he has held since May 2019, to become SVP and general manager of Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting Canada and Research & Learning U.S.
WK has yet to name a successor to the position, the formal title of which is senior vice president and general manager of LRUS.
In a brief conversation this morning, Sonderegger said he will begin in his new role on March 1 and will work the LRUS team to help with the transition to new leadership both before and after his departure.
With some 30 years experience in professional software and services, Sonderegger joined WK in 2015 as vice president, Legal Markets Group & Innovation, where he was responsible for driving the group’s vision and strategy, particularly in driving the development of advanced digital products and services.
He was promoted to his current position in May 2019.
He joined just as WK was formally introducing its legal research service Cheetah, which was intended to be a “re-envisioning of the legal research experience” and the successor to its earlier service, IntelliConnect, which WK ultimately shut down in 2018.
Now, as he leaves, WK has just rebranded Cheetah and relaunched it with new features and functionality as VitalLaw.
In addition to spearheading the launch and evolution of Cheetah/VitalLaw, Sonderegger also helped drive the development of products such as IPO Vital Signs and M&A Deals, Next Generation Corporate Counsel Profiler, Bankruptcy Essentials, Defined Benefit Compliance and Practical Insights for KAPP.
Before joining WK, Sonderegger spent nearly 13 years at Bloomberg BNA, where he led project management and marketing for a portfolio of software products primarily relating to tax, accounting and finance. Even earlier in this career, as an engineer, he wrote software for tax products.
“When the opportunity came up, I was anxious to get back to tax,” he said
Even so, he said he loved his time working at LRUS.
“One of the things I’ve tried to do very hard has been to get Walters Kluwer in the conversation a lot more in the legal market — much more in the tech space, much more customer focused and customer centric, and really moving forward with some momentum — and I feel good about that, I feel very confident in the direction of the business.”
A division of Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory internationally, LRUS encompasses legal markets, legal education, healthcare compliance and reimbursement, corporate compliance and international products.