THE BRITISH LEGAL TECHNOLOGY FORUM 2024 IS ANOTHER SELL OUT
Legal tech experts and senior decision makers come together in London for one day, under one roof at the longest standing legal tech event in the calendar.
The British Legal Technology Forum (BLTF) will return to London in two months. An estimated 1,300 visitors from the world of law, legal technology and IT security are expected to attend this year’s BLTF, which takes place at the Old Billingsgate in central London on 14th May 2024.
The full line-up of expert speakers for this year’s event is stronger than ever. The selection includes legal practice IT Directors, CIOs, Managing Partners, Regulatory Representatives, Government Officials, innovation and transformation leaders, technologists, academics, futurists, and security advisors, amongst many others.
The 2024 opening presentation will be delivered by Nigel Tranter, Chief Digital Officer at Orrick, who will delve into the five tenants of digital fluency and the need for firms to welcome adaptability whilst ensuring a solid foundation to ride the wave of ever changing invention and innovation.
A regulatory panel will follow to look to the future of AI and the regulatory responsibility of legaltech within the framework with input from Ian Jeffrey, CEO, Law Society and Richard Orpin, Director of Policy & Regulation, Legal Services Board chaired by Prof Richard Susskind OBE KC (Hon).
Libby Jackson MBE, Managing Partner – Digital and ALT Global, will kick off the afternoon Main Stage session.
The day would not be complete without focus on a hot topic impacting the technology sector, ‘Build, Buy, Both or Integrate.’ Speakers include Shawn Curran – Travers Smith, Joe Cohen – Charles Russell Speechlys and Jeremy Morris – Clyde & Co which is to be chaired by Jenifer Swallow. The panel will discuss future proofing for tomorrow and whether off-the-shelf tech can truly align with business processes and the needs of the business.
And, in what promises to be a popular and insightful session, Lounge Stage Chair, Christina Blacklaws, will facilitate a forward thinking panel discussion on Data Decision Making, AI Tooling, Hyper Productivity & Business Transformation – speakers include Amanda Chaboryk, Head of Legal Data and Systems, PwC, Aimee Greene, Data Extraction Specialist, PwC, and Nirbhay Sharma, Data Scientist, DLA Piper.
Later, will welcome Jo Owen and Nirupa Wikramanayake – Group CIO, Irwin Mitchell, for a practical conversational piece entitled ‘Transformation Decoded’ – The real-life lessons and more importantly; what does change actually look like and the reality that not everyone will welcome it with open arms. How collaboration across teams is key to be stronger together and the importance of making sustainability not just the by product of a project but rather, the end goal as well as much more!
In a panel discussion led by Legal IT Insider Editor, Caroline Hill, LegalTech trailblazers. Appropriately entitled ‘Fist Full of Dollars; The Truth Behind LLMs and Gen AI’ and delivered on the ‘Telstra’ FutureTech Stage, this stellar panel highlight three key pieces of the puzzle…The importance of stepping beyond automation, the need to up skill in order to meet demand and the window to the board, the truth on budget decisions.
Besides a stellar line up of legal IT speakers, this year’s event will feature a fireside chat with Keynote Speaker Louis Theroux, a genre-defining documentary presenter, best known for producing immersive documentaries that explore the controversial and complex aspects of the human condition. Louis will take to the stage to discuss the human Connection in the digital era, AI & technology shaping the future, bringing the next generation into technology, and much more!
In addition to advanced artificial intelligence and ongoing transformative disruption, this year’s BTLF presentations will debate a wide range of IT and Technology leadership issues relating to the use of technology in the legal sector and accelerated industry innovation. Topics to be discussed include Digital Innovation: Interconnecting Technology to Power Trust and Integrity, Using AI to Define Business Strategy and Growth, Why Transformation is Critical to The Business of Law and much more.
More than 70 leading solutions providers will also be on-site at the BLTF, demonstrating a wide range of technology-related products and services aimed at the legal market.
Commenting on the final speaker line-up for BLTF 2024, Frances Anderson, Netlaw Media’s CEO, says: “The distinction between mere buzz and actual progress in smart technology is unmistakable, as it transforms our environment. Navigating the complexities of today’s legal and economic milieu presents considerable ambiguity,” Anderson remarks. “Pioneering operational methods are now paramount in corporate strategy, and with the widespread debut of GenAI, it has captivated the legal sector. The focus is on assimilating this technological evolution into existing systems while maintaining data integrity, ensuring ethical practices, and securing companies’ longevity, all the while enhancing skills to satisfy the growing needs of the firm and client.”
This is a message that many of the event’s speakers will be sending out to more than 1,300 BLTF attendees, across each of event’s five presentation stages.
The British Legal Technology Forum 2024 is Europe’s Leading Legal IT Forum.
To keep up to date with the latest news, follow @netlawmedia @ LegalTechNLM on Twitter or visit www.britishlegalitforum.com.
Artificial Intelligence Act: committees confirm landmark agreement
- Safeguards agreed on general purpose artificial intelligence
- Limitation for the use biometric identification systems by law enforcement
- Bans on social scoring and AI used to manipulate or exploit user vulnerabilities
- Right of consumers to launch complaints and obtain meaningful explanations
MEPs have endorsed at committee level the provisional agreement on the Artificial Intelligence Act that ensures safety and complies with fundamental rights.
On Tuesday, the Internal Market and Civil Liberties Committees voted 71-8 (7 abstentions) to approve the result of negotiations with the member states on the Artificial Intelligence Act.
This regulation aims to protect fundamental rights, democracy, the rule of law and environmental sustainability from high-risk AI. At the same time, it aims to boost innovation and establishing Europe as a leader in the AI field. The rules put in place obligations for AI based on its potential risks and level of impact.
Banned applications
The agreement bans certain AI applications that threaten citizens’ rights, including biometric categorisation systems based on sensitive characteristics, untargeted scraping of facial images from the internet or CCTV footage for facial recognition databases, emotion recognition in workplace and schools, social scoring, predictive policing based solely on profiling a person or assessing their characteristics, and AI that manipulates human behaviour or exploits people’s vulnerabilities.
Law enforcement exemptions
The use of biometric identification systems (RBI) by law enforcement is prohibited in principle, except in exhaustively listed and narrowly defined situations. “Real-time” RBI can be deployed only under strict safeguards, e.g. limited in time and geographic scope, with prior judicial or administrative authorisation. Such uses involve, for example, searching for a missing person or preventing a terrorist attack. Using such systems after the fact (“post-remote RBI”), which is considered high-risk, also requires judicial authorisation, and has to be linked to a criminal offence.
Obligations for high-risk systems
Clear obligations were also agreed for other high-risk AI systems, which could significantly impact health, safety, fundamental rights, environment, democracy and the rule of law. High-risk uses include those in critical infrastructure, education and vocational training, employment, essential services (e.g healthcare, banking), certain systems in law enforcement, migration and border management, justice and democratic processes (e.g. influencing elections). Citizens will have a right to launch complaints about AI systems and receive explanations about decisions based on high-risk AI systems affecting their rights.
Transparency requirements
General-purpose AI (GPAI) systems, and the models they are based on, have to meet certain transparency requirements and comply with EU copyright law during their training. More powerful GPAI models that could pose systemic risks will face additional requirements, including performing model evaluation, risk assessment and reporting on incidents. Additionally, artificial or manipulated image, audio or video content (“deepfakes”) needs to be clearly labelled as such.
Measures to support innovation and SMEs
Regulatory sandboxes and real-world testing will be established at national level, offering SMEs and start-ups opportunities to develop and train innovative AI before placement on the market.
Next steps
The text awaits a formal adoption in an upcoming Parliament plenary session and final Council endorsement. It will be fully applicable 24 months after entry into force, except bans on prohibited practises, which will apply 6 months after the entry into force; codes of practise (nine months after entry into force); general-purpose AI rules including governance (12 months after entry into force); and obligations for high-risk systems (36 months).
The Jury: Murder Trial review – surely this is the end of the UK legal system as we know it
This brilliant reconstruction of a real-life trial lifts the lid on the usually secret deliberation room – and the results are agonisingly close to Big Brother. TV doesn’t get more addictive … or more harrowing
It’s a premise so simple and so brilliant that you wonder how on earth it hasn’t been done before. Rerun a trial – verbatim, from the records, using actors – in front of another jury, film their usually secret deliberations and see if they come up with the same verdict as the real jury did. That is the premise of Channel 4’s The Jury: Murder Trial, with the added twist that they have not one but two juries attending the same trial, unbeknownst to each other.
It is absolutely terrifying. You know how they say you should never see how a sausage is made? Well, my friends, better a thousand sausages than any of the workings of this foundational piece of the criminal justice system – the best method of dispensing fairness we have been able to invent, and upon which the fates of uncountable millions of accused, their accusers and silent victims have depended.
According to the best guesses of criminologists – and they can be little more, given the secrecy surrounding the process, including the prohibition against jurors talking about their decisions in the deliberation room afterwards – juries reach the wrong verdict in up to 25% of cases. Ten minutes in to The Jury, you will be longing for the time when you thought such a low figure was possible.
We meet some of the jurors before the trial begins. A couple seem to be dreading the responsibility to come. Others are raring to go.
On the first day of what will be the reconstruction of eight days in court, the facts of the case are given. They are relatively simple. John (Sam Alexander) admits that he killed his wife of two months, Helen (Katie Sheridan). She was strangled and then hit three times in the head with an industrial-sized hammer. She died two days later in hospital. He admitted it as soon as the police arrived, saying he “just snapped” – on which grounds he is pleading not guilty to murder. If the jury believe the defence of loss of control, he will be convicted of manslaughter, which carries a sentence as short as two years. If not, it’s murder and a life sentence (with the tariff set by the judge).
It is at this point in proceedings that the jury’s first break begins and – just possibly, the annals of judicial history may come to record – the end of the UK legal system as we know it. What unfolds is, if you are a pessimist, everything you feared was true about your fellow man but were quite happy pretending couldn’t possibly be deployed when it was people’s lives and justice for the dead at stake. If you are an optimist – well, there’s a world of pain coming your way and all I can say is I’m sorry and maybe stay away from televised social experiments in the dismal future that now lies before you.
There are those who are swayed every which way – by facts, by the assertions of friends and ex-partners in witness statements, by John’s tears and body language – and there are those who refuse to be moved from their original positions. Which is occasionally a steadfast commitment to impartiality until all the evidence has been heard, and more often – not. People’s personal experiences colour their interpretations of events, making them prioritise different facts and impute different motives to the defendant and the late victim. Larger personalities dominate and some upset others. Conflicts between individuals threaten to subsume the reason they are all there. Jury deliberations, you cannot help but feel, should not remind you so much of scenes from the Big Brother house. There are no Henry Fondas here.
Wider, more philosophical questions abound: is personal experience always prejudicial or does it deepen understanding and empathy? Is the man who has thrown crockery at his wife in a rage the sort of man who should be hearing this case, or not? Could it be that their collective life stories can give rise to wisdom – this bias counteracting that one, this new thought enlightening another? If so – is 12 people on a jury enough? Shouldn’t we get a thousand in, like they did in ancient Athens? In an increasingly fragmented, siloed society, is the jury system still fit for purpose? Was it ever? Or is it, like democracy and capitalism, a terrible one but the best we’ve got? Whatever the answers, it is wholly addictive and possibly even valuable television, if you can afford the despair.