Conference programme

This continuing legal education programme brings together an interdisciplinary panel of legal aid practitioners, technology innovators, access-to-justice advocates, and legal ethics experts to examine how AI tools are being deployed and how they should be deployed to assist in closing the widening justice gap. The programme will provide attorneys with a practical, critically informed understanding of AI-assisted legal tools, their demonstrated benefits for pro se litigants and under-resourced legal service organisations, and the professional responsibility framework that must govern their use.

The programme is designed to be solutions-oriented. It acknowledges that AI presents genuine opportunities to extend legal services to communities historically left behind by the justice system, while also confronting the bias, risks, limitations, and ethical obligations that responsible adoption demands.

This panel will delve into the latest trends and best practices for governing AI agents. The discussion will include a live demo and will be followed by discussions covering in particular:

•    strategies for maintaining robust oversight and ensuring compliance in an era where AI development, deployment and usage are democratised and widely accessible;
•    refining risk-based approaches to effectively govern AI systems and use cases that could pose significant risks; and
•    promoting responsible, meaningful and empowered human oversight of AI, despite the fundamental goal of agentic AI to operate independently from human intervention.

As AI becomes mainstream, ethical, bias, and transparency issues are key to successful governance.

This panel will examine how AI adoption is transforming operations, risk profiles and value creation in closely held companies and what boards must do in response.

AI is transforming the way societies process information, make decisions and build consensus. AI’s role in dispute resolution continues to evolve. This session explores how AI can augment the mediation process without displacing human judgment.

While some organisations use AI to genuinely strengthen ESG performance, others risk engaging in 'AI-washing', leveraging AI narratives without delivering measurable impact.

This session explains how AI is used in franchise and distribution operations – demand forecasting, pricing, and customer engagement – and translates the tech into legal issues counsel must spot. We will cover data quality and privacy, bias and transparency controls, human in the loop oversight, IP ownership of AI-generated outputs, vendor and franchise agreement clauses governing model and data use, and emerging regulatory trends.

In a context of reduced staffing levels, heightened sustainability demands and a growing need for spaces that foster creativity and human interaction, how will office buildings and cities be designed and built in the future?

Section 1 - The big picture:
This session provides a high-level, strategic overview of where artificial intelligence has come from, how it is currently reshaping legal practice, and its place in the law, through the eyes of Professor Richard Susskind CBE, one of the world’s most cited authors on the future of legal services and a leading expert on the impact of AI on society. It explores the intersection of AI with institutional decisions, professional judgment, client expectations, and market realities, aiming to re-orient perspectives.

It is a vexed question as to whether social media platforms are “fit for purpose” services that should be accessible to children. Different jurisdictions have taken different approaches to this issue. Some have restricted access by children but would the better approach be to impose a duty of care on platforms?
 

This panel will examine how traditional legal concepts of fault, duty and causation apply to AI systems and will discuss the allocation of risk among developers, users and third parties. We will address ethical, regulatory and enforcement challenges in AI-related harms and review frameworks for responsible AI governance and compensation mechanisms.

This session will explore the effect of Artificial Intelligence on social media and the AI revolution on families and children internationally, and the effective safeguards, if any such safeguards actually exist.

This session will explore how the law is adapting to the challenges and opportunities posed by the roll out of AI with a focus on defamation, privacy, copyright and other media law issues.

Who owns a borderless, AI-generated brand identity and advertising creative? As AI transforms the creative process, legal frameworks are diverging globally.

This session explores how law firms can ensure their lawyers continue to grow, adapt, and add value as AI transforms the legal profession. 

This session will offer a strategic forward-looking, regulatory, legal risk, business market perspective.

Remote employees' use of AI tools exposes employers to overlapping liability across data protection, employment, and cybersecurity regimes, with those lacking adequate policies risking vicarious liability for breaches, trade secret disclosures, and regulatory action. This topic covers the key legal frameworks and practical tools employers need to manage these risks, from data processing agreements and cross-border governance to disciplinary frameworks and AI-related incident investigations.

AI development in this past decade has seen a fairly steep curve.

This panel will examine the multiple and countervailing roles of artificial intelligence in conflict, including: the ethical and legal responsibility challenges that are arising; the uses of AI in monitoring and early warning systems for atrocity prevention; accountability, international standards and guidelines on the use of AI; and other pressing issues.