Legal Geek Conference 2023: A Recap

Legal Geek was back with a bang this year, with lawyers and legal ops professionals from all over the world descending on the conference which promises - and delivers - high quality content, good vibes and great coffee.

As ever, Legal Geek 2023 had a wide-ranging agenda, with topics ranging from legal tech advancements such as AI, to asking deeper questions about how to strengthen collaboration within the industry.

So, without further ado, let’s take a deep dive into some of the key themes and events of Legal Geek Conference 2023.

The Word (or Letters) on Everyone’s Lips

Unsurprisingly, AI was top of the agenda for many, with many legal tech vendors exhibiting how AI (and specifically GenAI) has been incorporated into their products over the past year.

There was certainly no shortage of impressive demonstrations, unique use-cases, and bold predictions as to the future of AI (not to mention a dazzling range of tech-terms, luckily TLB brought a notepad).

For example, Jaeger Glucina of Luminance, an AI-powered contract review tool, talked of generating cost-savings of up to 90% on contract review. Other exciting AI tools on display involved analytics, with AI helping lawyers to predict case outcomes and offer insights into legal strategies.

These talks, and the tools on show, demonstrate how AI is well on its way to integrating itself into legal services delivery across the board.

Generative AI is Yet to Fully Deliver for Legal

AI can undoubtedly support lawyers to do their jobs more efficiently. But this isn’t necessarily new, and a lot of these tools powered by “traditional AI” have been available for some time.

Traditional AI performs specific tasks based on predefined rules and patterns (e.g. training a model on contract playbooks). Generative AI, by contrast, goes beyond this limitation and strives to create entirely new data that resembles human-created content.

Although there was a lot of talk about Generative AI at the conference, there were limited examples of concrete use cases for it beyond simply summarising or recalling information (neither of which are to be sniffed at!). But we’d expect to see further developments on this next year - watch this space.

AI is Great, but Humans Matter

Despite all of the talk about AI, the expert speakers were keen to also underscore the enduring importance of human expertise in the field. So, what advantages do we mere humans have over our robot counterparts?

Well, for starters, AI lacks empathy and the ability to interpret the law within the context of human relationships, which is essential to succeed in an in-house environment. And more than that, in-house legal's role is about more than carrying out tasks which now may be done by AI.

It’s about being a strategic business enabler and effecting meaningful change within your organisation.

It’s therefore more important than ever to develop and build those human skills and implement effective tools and processes - including AI-powered solutions - to truly take yourself away from the BAU and to enable you to perform at that strategic level.

Electra Japonas: Legal Ops 101

And now… the main event of Legal Geek! We were very proud to see TLB’s CEO & Co-Founder, Electra Japonas, taking the stage during the afternoon session on the first day of the conference. In her talk “Legal ops 101: How to set your legal function up for scalable success” she drew on her experience not just from her time as a lawyer, but from her 6 years running TLB.

In her talk, Electra emphasised the evolving role of in-house lawyers, highlighting that they must go beyond providing legal advice and become true business enablers.

This transformation is essential, because lawyers who not only fail to understand their role as facilitators of business growth, but fail to build scalable legal functions, may find themselves sidelined or replaced by emerging technologies like generative AI.

You can find the full recording of Electra’s Legal Geek talk, and her slides, here.

How Can TLB Help You?

So, sadly, the event is over. But we came away buzzing with ideas as we’re sure many of you did too!

Above all, we feel confident that our human-first approach (whilst of course taking advantage of the latest tech!) is the best way to approach the current landscape and provide maximum value to the in-house legal teams we work with.

TLB is committed to supporting your journey, providing expertise, guidance, and tailored solutions. Contact us today to learn more here.