Ride the Lightning

It’s a Wrap: The COLPM Futures Conference on AI in Law Practice

October 30, 2017

I had the honor of co-chairing the College of Law Practice Management Futures Conference with the brilliant, witty and warm Mark Tamminga, which made the year of organizing the conference much less stressful. As always, we pre-tested all of the technology, which didn't keep a couple of technology demons from bedeviling us. Not sure why this is always inevitable at a technology conference!

It was a marvelous conference – the subject of AI in law practice is so hot that we sold the conference out and had to close registration early. It was great to have so many people from so many different backgrounds in the legal profession in a single place. As always, the audience members had many questions and many thoughts to share. It is never a shy group. 🙂

Thanks to a remarkable faculty for illuminating a subject that is murky to many and for interjecting wit along the way. Even those of us who follow AI regularly learned a lot. I teased Ed Walters, one of my co-presenters (and a new College Fellow this year) that when he dropped new PowerPoint slides into the deck the day before the session, I didn't even understand the titles of some of his slides. So I got a great education from my own session on ethics and AI.

When we queried the audience about whether they were more excited for or afraid of AI, it was surprising how many people were BOTH excited for the future of AI and afraid of it. There were those who sided with the AI enthusiasm of Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates and those who shared the dark fears of Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking.

It was a great conference full of the usual collegiality, getting to know new people and rekindling friendships – and the knowledge transfer was, as always, powerful.

Interested in coming to next year's conference? We'll be in Boston at Suffolk Law School on October 25-26, 2018. And next year's theme is "Cybersecurity: This Way Be Dragons." Mark your calendars!

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