Amsterdam this week saw the 10th anniversary edition of Lexpo, the intimate European legal technology gathering that shines a light on some of the greatest innovations across the Continent and beyond.
If there was a single message emerging from this year’s event, it was that the conversation has moved beyond AI experimentation and into the much harder challenge of organisational change.
The theme of the anniversary conference, “The Human Advantage,” was reflected throughout both the formal agenda and in the conversations taking place around the exhibition floor. While generative AI remained the dominant topic, the emphasis appeared to have shifted from the capabilities of the technology itself towards questions of leadership, governance, adoption and business transformation.
There were a ton of interesting takeaways, including a day one keynote from Cat Casey, long term legal tech adviser and author, who argued that as execution gets cheaper, judgment becomes premium, in a talk about ‘leveraging your legal superpower’ as a human. As AI output rises, studies show that human judgment ability is declining, Casey warned. Of all the things we should devolve, this is not one.
For those looking for advice on how to supercharge your business, three of the sessions really jumped out.
KPMG Abogados – Innovation starts on a Tuesday
Jose Rodriguez Coching’s day two keynote on what it takes to make legal innovation was excellent. Coching is director and head of tax & legal innovation & technology at KPMG Abogados. His talk, based on KPMG’s own journey, included the statement that we must all ban innovation teams, observing that only a lawyer-led and centric approach really works.
Coching said that changemakers already exist in the business – not the “ones in the workshops or boasting on LinkedIn,” but those who are peer teachers without being asked. Those who are tech dependent, and annoyed when the tool is off. The unprompted builder, who builds with no permission, and we need to make sure there is governance. And the metric sceptic, who don’t believe what you say and are probably right.
At KPMG, what was previously top down, old-school deployment is now lawyer led innovation. “Stop treating lawyer as end users and start treating them as creators,” he said. “When it stops becoming a mandate, it becomes a daily practice.”
What makes things work well? Trust. Collaboration. Shared responsibility. All three are needed. “Culture doesn’t change in a town hall, it changes on a Tuesday,” said Coching.
Coching rejects noisy initiatives and hackathons and instead says innovation is personal, silent and continuous. However, Coching and the team did also gamify AI and created a group called the AI Ninjas, which had prompt battles. The difference seems to have been that the Ninjas weren’t a one or two or three thing off, it was a continuous effort of lawyers teaching lawyers.
Coching says that AI is now used across 100% of their service lines “because the people who own the domain, own the tools.”
His last interesting and challenging observation was this. If you want to test adoption, turn off the technology. If you don’t hear screams you don’t have adoption, you have a licensing agreement.”
VdA – Zoom In, Zoom Out, Zoom Up, Zoom Forward
Another very good presentation along similar lines was Margarida Saragoca at Portuguese law firm VdA. VdA has regularly been recognised by RSGI’s FT Innovative Lawyer awards, including for the most innovative law firm in Europe. How have they achieved it?
Four years ago, Saragoca said that VdA needed a strategy for innovation and created four pillars: Zoom In; Zoom Out; Zoom Up; Zoom Forward.
Zoom In is about promoting and rewarding innovation efforts every day. VdA has book clubs and creative writing courses and encourages new perspectives. Zoom Out includes an innovation club that everyone would want to be involved with. In additional to learning sessions and roundtables, they have had trips to MIT and to Japan to open minds to working differently.
Zoom Up is working with the client, and VdA has an incubator that supports the launch of innovative new products and business models.
And Zoom Forward focuses on working with new technologies. VdA works with Harvey and has pockets of Legora and local legal AI tool Affine. The firm uses Microsoft Copilot and is currently focusing on applying AI to its pricing conversations.
The challenge, Saragoca said, is measuring impact and creating clear governance and ownership structures, as well as scalable processes and decision making.
For incentives, she warned not to put money on the table, although fee-earners are allowed time away from revenue generation. “Recognition and awards drive participation,” she said.
Fireside chat – The trust gap
An international fireside chat on The Trust Gap looked at why legal AI teams stall. Hans Albers (Deloitte); Jana Blount (Norton Rose Fulbright); and Diana Jimenez (Rydoo) agreed that legal teams stall on AI because human factors (culture, governance, process), not technology, are the primary bottleneck.
The core problem, is that teams lack confidence in outputs and clear risk boundaries; benefits feel uncertain so initiatives stall.
The evidence for that is leadership often fails to explain the “why”; a Deloitte Legal survey found 45% report inadequate communication and training about AI’s impact.
Quick fixes include reframing adoption as managed change — start with small pilots, clear guardrails, and measurable success criteria. Other takeaways included:
- Leadership actions: define a clear AI strategy and narrative, promote a culture of exploration and calculated risk‑taking, and treat change as enterprise‑wide.
- Put Legal at the centre: make Legal a visible governance champion so policy, compliance and risk are embedded from the start.
- Practical entries: use low‑risk agents, prioritise integration over bolt‑on solutions, and scale proven pilots.
- Skills & training: redesign training (e.g., require first drafts before LLM use), and invest in human strengths – ethics, judgement and collaboration.
- Governance & controls: adopt “compliance by design”, ensure audit trails/security, and use DPO‑led education to build instinctive caution and safe experimentation.
The panel found that trust is a capability you build and you need to test quickly, govern clearly, measure outcomes (not just activity), and keep humans firmly in the loop.
Concluding thought
There were plenty of excellent panels we haven’t mentioned here, partly because these sorts of write ups can be too long if you weren’t there, but the examples above give a great flavour of the high level conversations. Well done to Lexpo organiser Rob Ameerun (and the Ameerun family) on this decade anniversary for Lexpo, and to eternally energised US-based legal analyst Ari Kaplan, who did a fantastic job of once again chairing a very thoughtful and fun event that put European firms centre stage.
