As the dust settles on another British Legal Technology Forum, Legal IT Insider asked stage chairs Christian Toon, Christina Blacklaws and Jenifer Swallow for their key takeaways from a day that was packed with content for thought. We also asked Stanford CodeX Fellow Riyanka Roy Choudhury, who spoke on the Future Tech Stage, to share some highlights from her session Trust by Design: Navigating Futuristic Law and Global AI Ethics.
Christian Toon, The ‘Airia’ Innovation Stage 
“We kicked off with our lively panel on “Innovation is a Mindset” where Rainer, Tara, Joe and Stuart reminded us that innovation isn’t just about technology—it’s about culture, collaboration and having the courage to make (and learn from) mistakes. Key is to build teams with curiosity amongst its members, with a single purpose and with psychological safety.
The morning flew by with practical sessions that really resonated with our audience. David Holdsworth’s advice on adopting a team-first mindset when implementing legal tech struck a chord with many, while Ben Nicholson’s candid assessment of why case management transformations can be so challenging offered valuable lessons for anyone embarking on that journey. Realisation is that firms are full of digital clutter and need to be brutal [compliant] in removing old and obsolete content. “IA before AI” where information architecture (IA) is vital.
One of my personal highlights was Dave Horton’s session on AI in legal operations—his practical insights on balancing innovation with responsible AI practices gave us all food for thought. And who could forget Nicole and Ryan’s entertaining “GenAI Olympics” where they put different document review approaches through their paces!
After lunch, Daniel Card opened some eyes about cybersecurity vulnerabilities, while Elizabeth and Lucinda’s thoughtful discussion on wellbeing reminded us that technology must serve people, not the other way around. This session on mental wellbeing deserved it’s own spotlight.
Key takeaways from the day:
- Innovation requires both mindset and culture change—not just new tools
- The “people factor” remains the biggest challenge in technology adoption
- AI is already transforming legal work, but requires thoughtful implementation – “Add AI to your content, not your content into AI”
- Security and wellbeing must remain priorities as we embrace new technologies
- The successful firms will be those who balance automation with human growth opportunities
As the legal sector continues its technological evolution, today’s conversations provided practical pathways forward that balance innovation with responsibility. The enthusiasm and engagement from everyone who attended made this a truly memorable day.
Christina Blacklaws, The Iomart Lounge Stage 
First up was Shilpa Bhandarkar, global head of innovation at Linklaters. Shilpa discussed the size and scale of the growing legal tech market, what it can and can’t do and the challenges- including that of bias.
Nathan Jamieson, Iomart’s CISO, gave us a timely reminder of the real-world threats to us all of cyber-attacks and what is best practice to mitigate this.
Then we had Caroline Hill’s fab session, The Good, The Bad, The PE (or VC), speaking with private equity and investment leaders about some of the drivers for investment in legaltech.
Nigel Williams of LexisNexis Enterprise Solutions reminded us that there is most definitely a place for non GenAI technology .
Then I chaired a session with Dr Stacy Sinclair, Rachel Barnes, Ellie Devey- Robson and Jon Bartman. We talked about what we are seeing from our different perspectives in innovation, the need for agility, change management- especially around culture- and how to provide the right environments for strategic transformation and digital acceleration.
After lunch, we were straight back with another panel I chaired: ‘Legal tech for Big Corporates,’ with Funke Abimbola, Andy Cox and Joy Van Cooten. Funke gave some fascinating perspectives from her work in digital medicine and we discussed the parallels and differences. Andy gave a rallying cry for all private law firms to start to innovate and quickly otherwise their clients will leave. Joy discussed some of the challenges for in house teams who want to employ new tech.
Rich Hale – CTO of ActivNav’s talk was on plausible deniability not being a data strategy, the issues of dark data, and finding our data heroes.
The final panel I chaired looked at future proofing the Legal Tech Stack with speakers from different industries- David Fazakerley, Jeremy Morris, Adrian Cambridge and Matt Armstrong- Barnes. There were some fascinating insights- especially about the many challenges of a cloud first or cloud only strategy when it comes to GenAI, different LLMs for different use cases and the need to attract the right talent.
Our last speaker, Dave Bloor from VWV was able to tell their innovation journey which was inspiring. They have really moved things on at his firm and are embedding a real innovation mindset.
Jenifer Swallow, The Zero Networks FutureTech Stage 
What a great day charing the FutureTech stage by Zero Networks at the Netlaw Media #BLTF2025. Incredible speakers and contributors, and a tsunami of insights. As ever, packed to the rafters and with a heap of increased maturity this year added to the ever awesome vibe.
Some take aways to share and boo if you missed the behavioural science, quantum and futurist sessions in particular: simply brilliant.
The legal industry is top trending in the tech disruption opportunity stakes. Many have settled into the focused work beyond AI proofs of concept and pilots.
Did you know if you want people to use tech, you need to stop talking about tech? Yep. It turns out we can get way more scientific about our behaviour and use this in law, including to stop us all outsourcing our brains to ‘the machine’. Expect behavioural scientists to be in demand, and to see this discipline built into tech tools.
Quantum secure communications have arrived. Trials are live in London, as the bus to board ahead of the day when quantum computing breaks traditional cryptography. Whatever the big tech announcements, quantum commuting is a way off and of more limited utility than we will be led to believe. It wont speed up all computation but it will be great for certain tasks. We’re advised to focus on utility and sidestep hype. Yes to regulation for applications, versus standards being more appropriate to hardware.
Still a mixed landscape on client demand, with some wanting AI and others blocking its deployment. Nonetheless, sophistication is increasing and a law firm having an innovation person wont even get close to the right RFP answer.
Clients should remember their buying power, demand extended adoption support, and push hard to understand the limitations of tech to cut through lies and exaggeration. Procurement is a valuable skillset in this climate, particularly where clear water is opening up in pricing.
We can expect to see AI move beyond our user interfaces and increasingly into the background of all our tools and systems. The premium will turn to joined up workflows and delighting experiences, including the opportunity of ‘feminine design’, to quote Dr Katherine King. Everyone’s excited about agents of course, except SecOps.
To cleanse and structure data or not to cleanse and structure data… depends who you talk to. Data remains a critical commodity, including building ‘journeys’ to capture or generate what we don’t yet have but need. The best time to plant a tree…
It’s wild to think people had to walk in front of cars waving a red flag in the 1860s and now we have no-hands-on-the-wheel self drive. But life and death and everything in between matters. It’s unrealistic to leave everything to regulation and this is where AI ethics comes in, including to provide strategic advantage, e.g. record iPhone sales when they introduced app tracking transparency. In law, depth of AI ethics is of course a must, same goes for new frontiers like space infrastructure and smart cities.
In law firms, 26% of hourly billing is spent documenting things, 21% accessing information, 19% analysing it and only 15% on advising and 5% guiding juniors. We will see those stats shift tremendously through AI automation. Also a mad fact: according to Clio the average billing is now 3 hours a day – what has happened to productivity?!
Very few firms want to pull away from the pack on innovation, preferring peloton safety. This is to miss the market reshaping you wont catch up the other side of the pass.
In the SME law space, clients compare law firms to Amazon and banking apps and expect that level of utility. No digital = no clients.
Digital extortion is big business. The adage of don’t negotiate with terrorists seems to be long gone. 1 in 3 randoms get paid, providing a tidy investment stream back into criminal R&D and operational excellence (wish I was joking). Nation state grade capability is normal. Get ready with your (1) payout policy (2) reporting policy (3) insurance (4) incident response relationship (5) bookmarking nomoreransom.org.
Cyber intelligence is legal data and will be part of future billables and liability frameworks, e.g. data artefacts in M&A transactions on criminal servers. Obviously this space is particularly big in financial services with the landing of legislation like DORA.
Transactional practice will be reformed through agentic methodologies combined with smart contracts. Litigation practice will be reformed through advocacy agents and AI judges deciding on evidential data. These changes predicted by tech futurist Joseph Raczynski, alongside ‘lexbotics’, where dialogistic interactive legal agents handle a range of tasks, will lead to a reduction of 60%+ in lawyers and 30% in law firms by 2030. Law firms run as DAOs will have AI partners and associates and we’ll embrace digital clones for meetings. Blended technology including, harnessing distributed ledger, is where it’s at for the future.
With or without AGI, Richard Susskind’s call to collective consideration of the wide-reaching implications of AI for society we would do well to heed.
And in addition to the unfathomable intelligence writ large across his space visuals, a note from Brian Cox to billable hour lovers everywhere: ‘time is not part of our universe’.
Check out the agenda for speakers.
Loved seeing so many old colleagues and new. It’s an incredible time to be alive and an incredible time to be working in law. The world order is reshaping and the legal profession within it. May we enjoy this moment as much as we take responsibility for our next.
Riyanka Roy Choudhury, FutureTech Stage
It was an absolute honor to speak at the British Legal Technology Forum 2025 on The ‘Zero Networks’ FutureTech Stage, chaired by Jenifer Swallow on March 11th. Traveling from California and pretty jet lagged, it was a privilege to join this distinguished gathering of legal and technology leaders, especially to share insights on Trust by Design: Navigating Futuristic Law and Global AI Ethics. Being a fellow panelist alongside Prof. Richard Susskind and Prof. Brian Cox was an incredible experience, as I explored the evolving legal and ethical landscape of AI.
With an audience of over 1,400 attendees, the event underscored the critical intersection of AI, tech, and law, sparking thought-provoking discussions on shaping the future of responsible AI governance. During my talk, I explored how historical technological disruptions, such as self-driving technology, inform today’s legal adaptation and discussed why ethical AI isn’t just about compliance—it’s a strategic advantage that fosters business trust through explainability, digital watermarks, and accountability. I also examined how businesses can transition from viewing privacy as a compliance burden to leveraging it as a market differentiator. A key theme was the importance of inclusive AI design, advocating for Feminist AI and the ethical imperative of building fair, transparent systems. Looking toward the future, I delved into the evolving role of AI in legal tech, from AI-powered judges to automation and the emerging legal frontiers of space law.
It was inspiring to connect with fellow experts in AI policy, legal technology, and global AI ethics and to see the collective momentum behind responsible AI innovation. Meeting legal tech disruptors from Litera, Salesforce, Thomson Reuters, LexisNexis, and Clio was equally rewarding, exchanging ideas with those driving the future of legal technology, especially understanding the legal landscape of the UK and EU. A special thanks to Netlaw Media for capturing the day’s highlights! Looking forward to continuing these important conversations and driving forward the future of trustworthy AI and legal innovation. I hope to attend BLTF2026 next year!