At UnitedLex’s London Summit on October 23, leaders from global law departments, law firms, and corporate boards converged around a clear message: transformation starts not with technology, but with people. The panels revealed a consistent throughline: action, collaboration and capability-building are the cornerstones of legal’s evolution from reactive function to strategic business asset.
1. Action: If You Don’t Know Where to Start, Start with Training
Across every session, one call to action stood out: start learning about AI and innovation. Whether through formal AI literacy education programs, maturity assessments, targeted consulting engagements, or applied workshops, training is the most pragmatic path into change. As noted in the interactive “Ask the Experts” panel featuring Chris Fowler, Chief Operating Officer of Legal, Governance & Corporate Affairs at Rio Tinto and Max Hubner, Head of Change Management at Municipality Hollands Krune: “there’s no one right way to lead, but the worst way is to stand still.” The firms that succeed in capturing and creating value from AI won’t be those that simply buy AI tools, but those that build a culture of curiosity. Continuous learning for lawyers, operations teams, and leaders ensures readiness to adapt as AI technology and regulations evolve.
Increasingly, many warned, an outstanding risk is not technological failure but the widening training and knowledge gap. Ashley Winton, Chairman of the Data Protection Forum cautioned in the “AI Advantage for Law Firms” panel that AI may respond with the quality of a third-year or fourth-year lawyer, but the biggest question is how first-year lawyers will learn to correct the mistakes it makes. Who will train them to know? Without intentional capability-building, automation risks hollowing out the next generation of talent. The answer again lies in structured training, mentoring, and embedding AI understanding across all levels.
2. Complementarities: Human and Machine, Law and Business
Panelists from Rolls-Royce, MSC Cruises, and Rio Tinto underscored that progress emerges from complementarities between people and technology. “AI is just the tool or the drill that we use,” Rob Jacob, Partner at Stephenson Hardwood remarked, “It’s not the whole that we’re operating in.” The message is clear: successful AI transformation of legal focuses on the outcome and depends not on chasing the latest platform but on integrating AI into workflows that amplify human judgment and business value to create durable change. This outlook highlights both the strengths of the technology and the strengths of the lawyers. Thinking about AI’s capabilities — whether Generative AI, machine learning, or even agentic AI — as complementary to the work that humans do helps distill where and how AI can be truly transformative. While there are many tasks that we may feel increasingly comfortable with delegating to AI with minimal human oversight, there remains, at least for the foreseeable future, a layer of judgement-related tasks that must remain in the domain of humans.
Complementarities also define modern partnerships in the legal industry. The most successful collaborations between in-house teams, law firms, and ALSPs are not transactional. They are symbiotic ecosystems that pair insight, scalability, and trust. As Emma-Jane Tritton, Head Counsel, Brand Protection at Richemont put it, “We can’t do everything, everywhere. We need partners who help us decide what matters most.”
3. Legal as a Strategic Asset
From litigation to intellectual property, the panels reframed legal as an engine of value creation. A large reason for this change in perception of legal is due to being able to leverage legal data in any format. During the “Evolving Litigation Leadership” session, panelists Jomaire Crawford, Global Head of Litigation at Rio Tinto, Damian Murphy, Barrister at Trinity Chambers, and Anthony Kenny, Assistant General Counsel at GSK agreed that “litigation isn’t just defense; it’s geopolitics and risk strategy.” The best in-house teams now translate legal risk into commercial advantage and resilience, shaping boardroom decisions rather than reacting to them.
UnitedLex CEO Renée Meisel echoed this mindset, describing how legal can become a “business partner that powers the corporation it supports.” By connecting process excellence, technology, and legal insight, the legal function evolves from cost center to competitive differentiator.
Progress Over Perfection
The most forward-thinking leaders shared the same advice: don’t wait for perfect data, perfect strategy, or perfect timing. Start where you are, invest in learning, and build partnerships that scale. Law’s transformation isn’t about replacing the human element; it’s about enhancing it.
As summarized in the “New In-House Counsel Toolkit” session featuring Tilly Lang, Associate General Counsel at Interactive Brokers, Richard Given, General Counsel, and Mo Zain, Founder at Lex360: “You’ll never keep up with the pace of change, but you can continue to ask: what are the future use-cases of these tools? How do we see them evolving with our needs?”
No matter where you are in your AI journey, find a partner who understands your business and helps you find ways to extract the most value from each new tool and solution. As law firms and corporate legal teams adapt to an ever-evolving legal landscape, UnitedLex is here to provide the trust, support, and expertise needed to respond to each new challenge. Contact us here to learn more about partnering with UnitedLex.
