Agenda
The agenda gives you a first look at what to expect on 8 and 9 June. Please note that this is a preliminary programme. Session times are subject to change, and further sessions will be added in the coming weeks.
Monday, 8 June
Registration
Monday 8:00 - 17:30
Welcome & Registration
The Lexpo team will be at the registration desk from 8:00 to welcome you, hand over your badge, and make sure you are ready for the day ahead. The team is on hand throughout the conference, so do not hesitate to stop by if you need anything.
Opening
Monday 9:00 - 9:15
Main Conference Room
Opening Address
Ari Kaplan opens Lexpo'26 with the sharp observations and dry wit that have made him one of the legal world's most engaging voices. The perfect way to set the tone for the day ahead.
Ari Kaplan
Keynote
Monday 9:15 - 10:00
(Followed by a panel discussion)
Main Conference Room
The Human Edge: Leveraging Your Legal Superpowers in the Age of AI
November 30, 2022 was the moment AI stopped being theoretical and became unavoidable. The birth of ChatGPT pulled it out of research labs and dropped it into the real world overnight. Clients saw it. Courts saw it. Legal teams saw it. The conversation stopped being if AI would matter to law. It became who takes control of what happens next.
AI did not arrive politely. It arrived fast, persuasive, and increasingly confident. The loud narrative says AI is disrupting the law. The better read is that it is exposing where legal value has always lived. Modern AI is driven by language, structure, argument, and reasoning. That is the law’s home field. As execution gets cheaper, judgment becomes premium.
Here is the twist most of the industry still hasn’t fully owned. Legal professionals are not behind. AI has evolved to mirror how lawyers already think. Language. Ambiguity. Probabilistic reasoning. Lawyers live there. The real question is whether legal will recognise its advantage before someone else defines it for us.
This keynote is a challenge, not a comfort blanket. AI is already here. The question is how we direct it, how we pressure-test it, and how we set the standards before they are set for us. The law was built for this moment. The advantage is not adopting AI faster. It is taking the reins together, using AI as a force multiplier for legal thinking, and doubling down on the judgment that keeps our work trusted, defensible, and indispensable.
Cat Casey
Break
Monday 10:30 - 11:00
Sponsor Area
Coffee & Connect
The morning break is the perfect moment to step away from the sessions and connect with fellow attendees, speakers, and sponsors on the exhibition floor. Grab a coffee and keep the conversations going.
Session
Sponsored by Newcode.ai
Monday 11:00 - 11:20
Main Conference Room
The Intelligent Layer: transparent control of your Cowork
As AI becomes part of everyday legal work, the real challenge is no longer access. It is transparency, control, and trust. In this 20-minute session, we explore how law firms and organizations can move beyond disconnected tools and build an intelligent layer that brings their AI systems together in one place.
Malin Männikkö
Workshop
Monday 11:00 - 11:40
Breakout Room: Praag
Navigating the Slopes of Legal AI
Want to learn what navigating the slopes and legal AI have in common? And how to create value with AI in your legal work without needing inspiration?
This 40-minute interactive workshop opens with those questions and answers them with the room. Expect to leave with a sharper view of your own legal workweek and clearer, practical tools to decide where AI belongs in it.
Together, we will look beneath the surface of legal AI, at what makes it dependable in real legal work. The difference? The approach, architecture, and explainability.
Session
Monday 11:20 - 11:55
Main Conference Room
Legal Innovation: Back from the Future
Ten years ago at Lexpo, Daniel Pollick asked whether legal innovation was “Back to the Future” or “the End of History.” In 2016, automation was emerging and transformation was still largely theoretical. It is now 2026. The future has happened.
Artificial intelligence has moved from experiment to infrastructure. Technology is no longer optional but operational. Some areas of legal practice have changed profoundly; others remain strikingly familiar.
Looking back, which assumptions aged well? Which developments surprised him? And what has proven more resistant to change than the technology itself? In this ten-year reflection, Daniel revisits his original thesis and explores what a decade of innovation has genuinely delivered — and what it suggests about the next ten years.
Daniel Pollick
Session
Monday 11:45 - 12:05
Breakout Room: Wenen
In the age of AI, context is king
The rapid proliferation and commoditization of AI tools presents challenges for firms of all sizes. More important, this sprawl distracts from a fundamental gap - any AI tool requires rich, client-, matter-, and firm-specific context to deliver maximum value. This presentation will cover how addressing the context gap can power the work of legal professionals and the tools they use to deliver impeccable work product and superior client value.
Mike Kaye
Session
Sponsored by KPMG
Monday 11:55 - 12:30
Main Conference Room
Beyond the Hype: Building a Practical AI Operating Model for Legal
Modern corporate legal departments are inundated with new technology, yet isolated tools alone cannot drive sustainable transformation. True evolution requires shifting our focus from individual productivity to building a new, enterprise-wide operating model. It’s about moving beyond discrete use cases and fundamentally redesigning how legal intelligence is codified, orchestrated, and delivered across the business.
This session will unpack the three layers of legal AI adoption (User, Process, and Platform) with a deep dive into an example of how leading organizations are investing in each. We will explore a practical example of Platform adoption where an organization is moving away from static legal templates to architect a dynamic "Decision Fabric", deconstructing agreements into a structured, queryable graph of legal and commercial DNA. Crucially, the session will also address the hidden barrier to transformation: the human element. We will offer a practical guide to navigating the friction tied to professional identity, leading teams through uncertainty, and redefining legal value to build a function that compounds in value and operates at the speed of the business.
Andy Giverin
Session
Monday 12:10 - 12:30
Breakout Room: Praag
Why your agents don't work, and what it would take to trust them
Most legal AI pilots never make it to production. Not because the models are bad, but because the foundation underneath them was never built to be trusted. In this session, NORRIQ explains the quiet failure mode behind almost every stalled AI initiative in a law firm and shows what trustworthy agent output actually looks like on live firm data. Two angles, one principle. The data has to be governed: one authoritative version of every client, every matter, every right. And the actions have to be governed: the agent calls the same business logic the firm already uses, not its own improvisation. Live demo, real numbers. You leave with a decision lens, where agents act, where humans decide, where AI should never enter, plus three questions to ask your next AI vendor before you sign.
Wouter Madou
Lunch
Monday 12:30 - 14:00
Sponsor Area
Good Food, Better Conversations
Lunch at Lexpo'26 is more than a break from the programme. The extended gourmet buffet is served on the exhibition floor, giving you the time and space to explore the latest products and services from our sponsors while continuing the conversations with speakers, peers, and the people you have been meaning to connect with. Some of the best exchanges at Lexpo happen over a plate of food.
Lunch Session
Monday 13:15 - 13:45
Breakout Room: Wenen
From Experimentation to Accountability: Why Legal AI Needs an Anchor
AI is everywhere in legal—but can you actually trust it? This keynote challenges the hype and explores why accuracy, accountability, and trusted sources are now non-negotiable. Viktor will show why disconnected tools fall short—and what it takes to make AI work in real legal workflows. For anyone ready to move beyond pilots and use AI with confidence.
Viktor von Essen
Session
Monday 14:00 - 14:20
Main Conference Room
Is Legal AI About to Get Disrupted, or Are We?
Jeroen Plink
Session
Monday 14:00 - 14:40
Breakout Room: Praag
Making Law as serious as we deserve - Responsible AI - from a user, training and solutions perspective
AI gives lawyers superpowers, buy the question is who they're used for. In search of answers to the legal market concerns, we find Access to justice and conservation of the rule-of-law to be the most invoked, least operationalised promise. This talk argues that responsible AI should not be a constraint, but an integrated and operationalized part of the promise; or clearer: It is the promise, made structural - and by making law serious means refusing to take AI unseriously.
Knut-Magnar Aanestad
Panel
Monday 14:20 - 14:55
Main Conference Room
The Human Advantage: Culture, Leadership and the Future of Legal Transformation
Technology does not transform organisations. People do.
While new tools continue to reshape legal work, sustainable transformation depends on leadership mindset, cultural alignment, and the ability to guide professionals through continuous change.
This panel explores the deeper human dimensions of innovation. How do leaders create an environment where experimentation is safe? How do organisations build trust in AI and emerging technologies? How do they develop digital literacy across generations of lawyers? And how can firms sustain engagement and resilience amid constant disruption?
Rather than focusing on tools, this discussion examines the cultural foundations that determine whether transformation becomes embedded — or stalls. It addresses the long-term capabilities required to build adaptable, forward-looking legal organisations.
Because the real competitive advantage is not access to technology, but the ability to lead people through change.
Panel members
- Ivan Rašić
- Kyle Gribben
- Arkadiusz Rzepka
Session
Monday 14:45 - 15:05
Breakout Room: Wenen
In a world where every law firm uses the same AI tools… what creates real competitive advantage?
In today’s legal market, AI assistants are quickly becoming standard. But when every firm has access to similar models and platforms, competitive advantage no longer comes from the tool itself.
It comes from knowledge — and from how that knowledge is managed across its full lifecycle.
In this session, we explore why the legal market is shifting from tools to knowledge, and from static document management to lifecycle control. We will show why Microsoft 365 offers a unique strategic advantage: it already sits at the heart of legal work, where documents, email, collaboration, and governance come together. Epona’s new KMS solution will support firms building a curated knowledge layer that continuously improves over time and therefore delivers better AI outcomes.
The result is not just AI adoption, but a sustainable AI advantage.
Topics we discuss:
- If every firm has access to the same AI tools, where does real differentiation come from?
- Why the advantage shifts from tools to curated knowledge, governance, and lifecycle control.
- How Microsoft 365 provides the foundation to manage legal content, collaboration, governance, and AI in one ecosystem.
- How Epona helps firms turn Microsoft 365 into a living legal knowledge layer for better AI outcomes.
- Closing takeaway: AI is only as powerful as the knowledge behind it.
Panel
Monday 14:55 - 15:30
Main Conference Room
Presented by:
Deconstructing Legal Work in the Age of AI
AI is pushing legal teams to rethink not just tools, but how work gets done. This session focuses on breaking legal work into its core components and redesigning it into smarter, more scalable systems.
In a fast-paced, interactive case study, a diverse panel will walk through a real example. You will see the shift from a traditional workflow to an AI-enabled model, and ultimately to a redesigned system that blends human judgment with agentic, multi-threaded execution. Speakers will share practical stories from real AI rollouts and how teams moved from early pilots to intentional design.
What you will learn:
- A simple framework to break legal work into judgment, process, data, and execution
- How to decide what to automate, augment, or keep human-led
- What it takes to move from linear workflows to AI-enabled systems
- Real-world lessons from successful AI implementations
Panel members
- Merve Taner
- Leonie van Gulik
Session
Monday 15:10 - 15:30
Breakout Room: Praag
From Workload to Workflow: AI and the New Legal Workspace
Wolters Kluwer challenges the traditional legal workflow and explores how AI is quietly reshaping the daily reality of lawyers. Starting from your actual workload—drafting, reviewing, researching— and your day-to-day activities, we identify where time, focus and value can be increased, through a unique interconnection of legal content and tools.
This session aims to spark reflection, leaving you with a clear mental model of what a “better” legal workplace could look like—and what your next step might be.
Khedi Verhaeghe
Break
Monday 15:30 - 16:00
Sponsor Area
Tea & Talk
The afternoon break is the perfect moment to revisit the exhibition floor and continue the conversations sparked by the sessions. Grab a tea, recharge, and sharpen your focus for the final stretch of the day.
Session
Sponsored by Harvey
Monday 16:00 - 16:20
Main Conference Room
Fireside Chat: How Cuatrecasas Is Redefining Legal Practice with AI
Cuatrecasas didn't dip a toe into generative AI, it went all in. The firm has built one of the most ambitious AI programs in Europe, and the impact shows: with 80%+ daily adoption and over 3,300 prompts a day.
In this fireside chat, Francesc Muñoz shares the strategy on what it took to embed AI into the daily practice of 1,900+ professionals, how the firm built governance and training frameworks that actually scaled, and explores the human side of successful AI adoption.
We'll get into what's working on the ground, from their proprietary “Cuatrecasas Research Tool”, custom due diligence workflows that are changing how M&A teams operate, and the harder questions about talent development, culture, and what comes next as AI capabilities accelerate towards true agentic work.
Session
Monday 16:00 - 16:20
Breakout Room: Wenen
Built to Win: How to Grow the Modern Law Firm
When AI compresses billable hours, where does growth come from? This session tackles the efficiency conundrum facing law firms in 2026 and makes the case that productivity alone is not a growth strategy. Through the lens of relationship intelligence, trigger-based signals, and systematic client development, attendees will explore how firms can convert the work they already do into the business they want to win.
James Seaton
Session
Monday 16:20 - 16:55
Main Conference Room
Innovation as a Capability: What 10+ Years of Experimenting Taught Vieira de Almeida
When Vieira de Almeida launched VdA Inovação in 2012, few law firms in Europe were thinking systematically about innovation as an organisational capability. More than a decade later, the firm has accumulated a depth of experience that few can match — not just in deploying technology, but in understanding what it truly takes to embed innovation into the DNA of a law firm.
This session goes beyond tools and platforms. Drawing on over ten years of experimentation, Margarida Saragoca will explore the governance structures, cultural shifts, and leadership decisions that allowed VdA to turn innovation from a project into a permanent capability. What worked, what didn't, and what the firm would do differently are all part of the conversation.
At a time when many firms are still asking how to get started, VdA's experience offers something rare: an honest, hard-won perspective on the long game. For legal leaders navigating the pressure to innovate while managing a complex organisation, this session offers both inspiration and practical insight into what sustainable innovation actually looks like.
Margarida Saragoça
Workshop
Monday 16:25 - 17:30
Breakout Room: Praag
A(I)ugmented Lawyer - Creating the Cognitive Enterprise
Join us for a workshop that charts the five levels of AI utilization - moving from prompting and structured workflows to agentic execution and Cowork’s orchestration layer that is reshaping how legal work gets done.
Malin Männikkö
Session
Monday 16:55 - 17:30
Main Conference Room
AI Maturity in European Law Firms: Benchmarks, Insights & What the Data Reveals
How do European law firms really compare when it comes to AI adoption — and how do they stack up against their US counterparts? This session marks the first public release of findings from a landmark survey conducted by Legaltech Hub and Lexpo, measuring AI maturity and adoption across European firms. Drawing on responses from across the continent and benchmarked against Legaltech Hub's US market data, the results offer an unprecedented, data-driven picture of where European legal is leading, lagging, and accelerating. Don't miss this exclusive first look at the numbers shaping the future of legal AI on both sides of the Atlantic.
Chris Ford
Drinks
Monday 17:30 - 18:30
Sponsor Area
Networking Drinks Reception
Relax and connect at the Lexpo networking drinks reception! Join fellow attendees, speakers, and sponsors for a laid-back gathering with drinks, good company, and great conversations. It’s the ideal way to wind down the day, strengthen new connections, and ease into the networking dinner.
Dinner
Monday 18:30 - 20:00
Sponsor Area
Lexpo'26 Networking Dinner
Wrap up the day with great food and even better company. Join us for an informal walking dinner where you can meet industry peers, share ideas, and build valuable connections in a relaxed, engaging setting. A perfect mix of networking and great bites!
Drinks after Dinner
Monday 20:00 - 22:00
Brasserie
Unwind with Saga: Drinks after Dinner
The Monday programme may be over, but the evening is not. Join us for drinks and snacks at the Brasserie and keep the conversations going in a relaxed setting. No agenda, just good company.
Tuesday, 9 June
Rise & Run
Tuesday 6:30 - 7:30
Ari Kaplan's Rise & Run
Start the second day of Lexpo'26 with a breath of fresh air. Join Ari Kaplan for a relaxed morning run around the venue, a great way to clear your head, get moving, and connect with fellow attendees before the programme begins. All paces welcome.
Registration
Tuesday 8:00 - 16:00
Welcome & Registration
The Lexpo team will be at the registration desk from 8:00 to welcome you, hand over your badge, and make sure you are ready for the day ahead. The team is on hand throughout the conference, so do not hesitate to stop by if you need anything.
Opening
Tuesday 9:00 - 9:15
Main Conference Room
Opening Address
Ari Kaplan opens the second day of Lexpo'26, picking up the threads from Monday and setting the stage for what lies ahead.
Ari Kaplan
Keynote
Tuesday 9:15 - 10:00
(Followed by a panel discussion)
Main Conference Room
Beyond Implementation: Making Innovation a Firm-Wide Capability
Technology does not transform organisations; people do. In this session, José Rodríguez Coching explores how law firms can move beyond tool implementation and create genuine firm-wide ownership of innovation.
Drawing on his experience overseeing innovation and technology at KPMG Abogados, José will explain how shifting from top-down technology deployment to practitioner-driven innovation changes everything – with lawyers moving from merely adopting tools to actively leading innovation and driving long-term impact. Rather than positioning lawyers as end users, this Empowered Innovation model treats them as co-creators of domain-specific solutions, embedding new systems into daily practice through trust, collaboration and shared responsibility.
The session will examine the leadership behaviours, cultural shifts and change-management strategies required to build digital confidence at scale. As AI accelerates routine work, organisations that invest in mindset, capability development and cross-functional alignment will be best positioned to convert technological potential into measurable client value.
José Rodríguez Coching
Break
Tuesday 10:30 - 11:00
Sponsor Area
Coffee & Connect
The morning break is the perfect moment to step away from the sessions and connect with fellow attendees, speakers, and sponsors on the exhibition floor. Grab a coffee and keep the conversations going.
Panel
Sponsored by Legora
Tuesday 11:00 - 11:20
Main Conference Room
The Need for a New Delivery Model of Legal Work
AI has made lawyers faster. But the way work reaches clients has not changed. It still arrives as a polished document, attached to an email, followed by a call. That is the new bottleneck.
AKD partner Harm Kerstholt sits down with Suzanne van der Klip and Marcus Rajkowski of Legora to discuss what new delivery models for legal work actually look like, the concrete steps AKD is taking to lead the shift, and what it means for clients.
Panel members
- Harm Kerstholt
- Markus Rajkowski
- Suzanne van der Klip
Session
Tuesday 11:00 - 11:40
Breakout Room: Praag
Evolving Legal Workflows: From Repetitive Processes to Deployable Practice
Most legal work is a repeatable process dressed up as bespoke thinking: triaging incoming emails, marking up contracts, drafting weekly status memos, and preparing for deadline-driven hearings. Until now, associates working late absorbed that gap.
This session introduces Workflows, a new way of practicing law where the firm's recurring processes are captured once on a visual canvas and deployed across every applicable matter. Triggers—like an incoming email, a court deadline, or a scheduled morning briefing—kick off pipelines of AI-driven steps that read the case file, draft in the firm's own voice using its own templates, branch on partner approval, pause to ask a senior associate a multiple-choice question, and produce real deliverables Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PDFs, and emails unattended and fully audited.
Through live demos of the midnight contract redline, counter-edited by 8 a.m., the daily briefing that surveys your matters before your first coffee, and the case status memo that drafts itself in your firm's house format with one click, we'll show how approval gates, recipient allowlists, and per-run receipts keep autonomous execution within the lines a managing partner can defend and close on the framing that matters: build once, activate on any case. No code, real demos, designed so every lawyer in the room leaves with at least one workflow in mind they could deploy on Monday morning.
Flynn Bundy
Panel
Tuesday 11:20 - 11:55
Main Conference Room
Making Adoption Work: Practical Tactics for Embedding Legal Technology
AI investment is rising. Automation is accelerating. Yet many legal organisations still struggle to move from pilot projects to consistent daily use.
This panel focuses on the practical side of transformation. What concrete steps help teams embed new tools into workflows? How do you structure rollout phases, training, incentives, and feedback loops? What role do legal ops, innovation teams, and partners play in driving usage? And how do you measure whether adoption is truly happening?
Designed to provide actionable insights, this discussion will share real-world tactics that firms and in-house teams can apply immediately to improve technology adoption and accelerate impact.
Panel members
- Rolf Brustad
- Baljinder Samrai
- Łukasz Lasek
Session
Tuesday 11:50 - 12:30
Breakout Room: Wenen
Building Confidence in Legal AI: Connecting Trust, Content, and Workflow
AI adoption is rising—but real impact often isn’t. Why? Trust. In this session, Yannek dives into what’s holding legal teams back—and how to fix it. From reliable content to connected workflows, he shows what’s needed to turn AI into something you can depend on. A must-attend for anyone serious about making AI work in practice.
Yannek Wloch
Fireside Chat
Tuesday 11:55 - 12:30
Main Conference Room
Presented by:
The Trust Gap: Why Legal Teams Stall on AI (and How to Fix It)
Most legal teams are not stuck because of technology. They are stuck because of trust. Lawyers question outputs, leaders hesitate on risk boundaries, and organisations struggle to stand behind governance models. This session shifts the focus from training people to use AI to building systems people actually trust.
In a candid fireside chat, speakers will share real-world stories of AI rollout. They will unpack where trust breaks down and how leading teams have addressed it through clear governance, practical guardrails, and continuous feedback loops. The conversation will also highlight how legal and compliance professionals are stepping into more strategic, AI-enabled roles as agents of transformation.
What you will learn:
- How to diagnose where trust is breaking across your team and organisation
- How to design governance, guardrails, and feedback loops that enable adoption
- How to unlock self-service at scale without increasing risk
- Real-world lessons from teams that have successfully built trust in AI systems
Panel members
- Hans Albers
- Jana Blount
- Diana Jimenez
Lunch
Tuesday 12:30 - 14:00
Sponsor Area
Good Food, Better Conversations
Lunch at Lexpo'26 is more than a break from the programme. The extended gourmet buffet is served on the exhibition floor, giving you the time and space to explore the latest products and services from our sponsors while continuing the conversations with speakers, peers, and the people you have been meaning to connect with. Some of the best exchanges at Lexpo happen over a plate of food.
Lunch Session
Tuesday 13:15 - 13:45
Breakout Room: Praag
Why You Shouldn’t Trust Legal Tech Vendors
Every vendor at this conference is here to sell you something - and Iryna is going to be the first one to admit it. In a session that flips the usual conference playbook, she walks the audience through a checklist designed to expose the gaps between what AI vendors promise and what their contracts actually guarantee and what happens when things go wrong.
Iryna Begma
Session
Tuesday 14:00 - 14:20
Main Conference Room
The Broken Ladder: Lawyers Are Ready, Their Roles Aren’t
Law firms are investing heavily in technology. Productivity is rising. Yet something more fundamental is beginning to break.
For decades, the associate pyramid has relied on high-volume, repetitive work to develop lawyers: research, document review, drafting. That work is now being compressed or removed. Firms are redesigning workflows, but not the roles that sit within them.
The result is a structural gap. Lawyers are being asked to operate in a new model of delivery, while still sitting inside roles designed for the previous one.
Much of the conversation in the industry focuses on innovation capability, culture and adoption. This session looks at the layer underneath all three: how roles, career pathways and the allocation of work must change in practice.
Drawing on two decades inside law firms, Niki Avraam explores how leaders can redesign lawyer roles to match the way legal work is now delivered, moving from task execution to ownership of client problems, earlier responsibility and more fluid use of capability across teams.
The session introduces a practical approach to identifying where work is being compressed, what should replace it, and how firms can begin to rebuild development pathways as traditional learning structures disappear.
The firms that succeed will not simply adopt new tools.
They will redesign how their lawyers work.
Niki Avraam
Session
Tuesday 14:00 - 14:20
Breakout Room: Wenen
What (M&A) Lawyers Secretly Want from Legaltech
M&A deals are fast, messy, and unforgiving, and most legaltech doesn’t survive the chaos. This workshop flips the script: instead of asking lawyers to adapt to tools, we’ll explore how tools can finally adapt to lawyers.
We're sharing real lessons from building due diligence software used by top transactional teams. We’ll talk through the features lawyers actually ask for (even if they don’t say it directly), how to build tech that works the way lawyers work, and the design mistakes we made along the way.
Whether you’ve used legaltech and hated it, or you’re curious about tools that finally get it right, this session is for you. No AI buzzwords, no forced “innovation.” Just an honest look at what tech can (and can’t) fix in M&A.
Bring your deal war stories. We’ll bring ours.
Session
Tuesday 14:20 - 14:55
Main Conference Room
Fluent. Confident. Wrong. The Hidden Failure Modes of Legal AI
Hallucination gets all the attention. But the more insidious risks of working with AI in legal practice are the ones that don't announce themselves.
This session takes an honest look at how AI systems actually behave and why their failure modes are particularly dangerous in a legal context. AI doesn't signal uncertainty. It doesn't tell you what you don't want to hear. It produces output that looks finished, reviewed, and ready to send. And once people start relying on it, they tend to stop checking it.
The session covers the full landscape: from hallucination and sycophancy (the well-documented tendency of AI to give pleasing rather than accurate answers), to subtler issues like context collapse, prompt sensitivity, and automation bias. Each is examined through the lens of legal practice, where the cost of confident-but-wrong can be a missed deadline, a flawed contract, or a submission that should never have left the building.
The goal is not to make lawyers afraid of AI. It is to make them better at using it, with the same critical rigour they apply to everything else that crosses their desk.
Damien Charlotin
Session
Tuesday 14:55 - 15:30
Main Conference Room
People first, prompts later: Building Van Doorne's AI Team
Anyone running an AI rollout, in a firm or in-house, will recognise the moment: the tool is in, the team is using it, and you quietly hope the hard part is behind you.
The harder part is what AI does to the way lawyers actually work. The tools are quick to install and slow to absorb. They force uncomfortable questions: when do I trust the output and when do I check it, how much of my old workflow do I keep, and what is my judgment really for now? AI also changes how a matter looks. Where a deal team once read four contracts as a proxy for the rest, it can now interrogate all of them, which shifts the work from reading toward asking the right questions.
Since late 2024 Van Doorne has worked through exactly this, treating adoption as a change of working methods, backed by hands-on technical training across the whole firm, support staff included. Lodewijk Heinsman and Thomas Dasselaar, a tech lawyer and a tax lawyer who drove the programme and are founding members of the firm's AI Team, give an honest account of what changed for them as practitioners, and what they got wrong along the way.
For in-house counsel wrestling with the same questions, it is a chance to learn from a firm that has already been through it. Choosing a good tool is a real milestone. What comes after is the part worth comparing notes on.
Session
Tuesday 15:30 - 15:50
Main Conference Room
And Yet It Moves - A Bridge to the (Near) Future
In 2016, asking how lawyers would work in 2026 felt perfectly natural. Asking the same question about 2036 feels almost reckless - not because the future is further away, but because it is arriving too fast to plan for. Can we still forecast ten years ahead, or is the more honest ambition to prepare for the next ten months?
Henrik Wehrs offers a practitioner's answer. What one of the world's most innovative global law firms is already building today may tell us more about the direction of the legal industry than ten futurists combined.
Henrik Wehrs
Session
Tuesday 15:50 - 16:00
Main Conference Room
Closing address
Ari Kaplan brings Lexpo'26 to a close, reflecting on two days of conversations, ideas, and connections. A moment to thank the speakers, sponsors, and attendees who made it all happen, before we see you again next year.
Ari Kaplan