Conference programme

The panel will critically examine the extent to which the legal profession can integrate AI technologies without compromising its normative foundations. The focus has evolved from considering the possibility of AI adoption to analysing how and under what parameters it should occur. The panel will review specific instances where AI offers efficiency improvements, such as automated document review, analytics-driven strategy development, outcome prediction, and AI-assisted drafting of awards or settlement agreements and evaluate these advancements against established professional responsibilities including competence, confidentiality, independence, transparency, and fairness (including equal treatment of the parties).

The panel will explore the differences of the rules of neutrality among these three professions; what institutions do/should do to safeguard such neutrality and whether (and what) we can learn from one another.

As technology, AI, and digital visibility rapidly transform legal practice, long-settled ethical assumptions are being put to the test. This panel examines where professional judgment must remain paramount, how trust and accountability are preserved in an AI-enabled world, and what it truly means to be an ethical lawyer today. Drawing on global perspectives and lived experience, the discussion explores how the profession can evolve with confidence, while safeguarding the core values that define it.

As lawyers we are engaged as agents of our clients to achieve the optimum outcome for them, so it is understandable that for adversarial lawyers WINNING is important. Some clients are often economically able to exert pressure on their lawyers; however, it is important that we be aware of the line between zealous advocacy and unethical conduct and to avoid crossing that line.

This session will discuss what that line is and how, as ethical lawyers, we must take steps to avoid crossing it.
We will explore:
•    Scenarios in which winning for the client crosses ethical lines.
•    Different ways in which ethics may restrain the adversarial ism of lawyers AND their clients.
•    Is education sufficient to make us aware of what the line is and when it is being crossed?
•    Should we as lawyers take responsibility for advising clients in a way that encourages them to make decisions on ethical grounds as well as legal/practical grounds?
•    How must we as adversarial lawyers balance our duties to the court, the administration of justice and our clients?
 

Is today's soft law tomorrow's hard law? Under that adage, lawyers have been expected to be a wise counsellor to their clients instead of a mere legal representative. Taking into account matters such as diversity and inclusion, climate change, human rights or (other) CSR guidelines. Times, however, are changing, as US pressure on law firms to ditch diversity and inclusion policies shows. To what extent does it fall within the role of lawyers to go beyond hard law? To ask questions that the client would rather not answer? To give advice that clients are not willing to hear it, let alone pay for?

•    AI policies in law firms and legal departments
•    Ethics of negotiation: considerations of exaggeration, truth and fairness