We speak with Cambridge University Press GC Catie Sheret and Weightmans partner and former CTO Stuart Whittle – see video interview below
One of the refreshing things about Beacon Collective’s gathering of legal tech leaders last week was that the conversations were often candid and almost always unruly.
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While much of the legal technology market remains preoccupied with product announcements and promises of transformation, senior delegates at the Chatham House event founded by Elena Folkes spent much of their time discussing what happens when AI collides with law firm business models, legal training, governance, risk and client expectations.
Following the event, I spoke separately with attendees Catie Sheret, general counsel at Cambridge University Press & Assessment, and Stuart Whittle, partner and former CTO at Weightmans, to reflect on what stood out. They highlighted a series of strategic questions that the legal profession is grappling with – although admittedly, answers are in many cases still elusive.
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One of the themes to emerge at the conference was the growing maturity of but also tensions within discussions between law firms and clients around AI adoption.
According to Sheret, the most striking aspect of the event was hearing genuinely open conversations between private practice lawyers and clients about where AI can and should be used, and what trade-offs it creates.
“If you want it cheaper, then you’re going to have to take more risk about there not being so much lawyer oversight.”
She added: “My take away building on that was how do we turn that into more of a broader discussion and sensible framework for how we do this.”
Legal training, meanwhile, may be the profession’s biggest unresolved challenge, and it was a topic that repeatedly surfaced throughout discussions at the conference.
Sheret observed that junior-lawyer development is a major concern, particularly if AI reduces opportunities for repetitive work that traditionally provided exposure to legal scenarios and client issues. She questioned whether simulation-based learning alone can replace years of real-world experience.
“We have a reasonably large team, but not large enough for us to build a training program,” she said.
Whittle argues that the traditional training model was not especially effective to begin with. Rather than lamenting the loss of repetitive tasks, he suggested there is an opportunity to create more deliberate, contextual learning experiences that integrate legal knowledge, technology skills, communication and client service. Effective lawyers, he argued, require far more than black-letter law expertise. You can watch Whittle’s video interview below for more reflections on that and many other topics raised at the conference.
What struck me most about the reflections from Beacon Collective was that the biggest takeaways were not technological. The most valuable discussions focus on difficult strategic questions: how lawyers will be trained, how risk will be shared, how legal services will be priced, how governance will operate and whether the profession’s longstanding business models are finally approaching a tipping point. Well done to Folkes and all of the speakers and attendees for a lively debate that shows at the end of the day, we all (myself included) love the sound of our own voice.
See below my video interview with Whittle for more insights into the conference discussions.