Sir Stephen Fry speaking at Legal Geek 2025.
Conference update
The annual Legal Geek conference, now in its tenth year, has grown from strength to strength. This year’s conference took place on the 15thand 16th October. Team ICLR was glad to attend as delegates and witness the enormous range of tech providers supporting the practice and administration of law.
Paul Magrath, Head of Product Development and Online Content, and Paul Hastings, Global Account Manager, attended from ICLR, made their way to the Old Truman Brewery in just off Brick Lane in London’s East End, queued for coffee, courtesy of Clio, and worked the exhibitor hall to see what was on offer from all the providers. Whether it was digital signatures, translation services, discovery software, or litigation bundling, there was something here for everyone. And most of it flavoured with AI.
Swag there was, too, in the form of branded pens and notebooks (always useful), and tote bags (ditto). There were branded bars of chocolate, too, among other little treats. But most of all, there were socks. Yes socks. That seems to be the number one choice of stocking filler, in the world of lawtech providers.
One size fits all, but who will be footing the bill?
Speakers and sessions
Over the two days of the conference we heard a number of interesting presentations from a crowded agenda spread across several stages. On the main Hoxton stage, speakers included Sir Geoffrey Vos, Master of the Rolls; Sarah Sackman KC MP, Minister of State for Courts and Legal Services; Baroness Helena Kennedy KC, Director of IBA’s Human Rights Institute; and Christina Blacklaws, Chair of LawtechUK all discussing the role of tech in supporting and promoting the administration of justice.
On a more practical level, among many others, we had providers such as Catherine Bamford of BamLegal who discussed document automation, and urging us to let lawyers do their own edits, leaving engineers to work on the engineering; and practitioners such as Dee Masters, a barrister from Cloisters Chambers, discussing the professional risks as well as rewards of AI, such as in relation to personal data, discrimination, and accuracy of advice.
But the highlight of the event was the appearance of tech savvy littérateur, actor and noted eruditionist Sir Stephen Fry, whose question and answer “Fireside Chat” session with Beth Fellner of Legal Geek consisted mainly of his answers, though she did manage to get about three questions in. Fry spoke eloquently about mental health (he is president of MIND) and began by explaining the difference between a personality disorder and a mood disorder, before defending the power of language and bemoaning the British distrust of exquisite phrasing. That neatly segued into large language models and AI, which he compared in significance to the power of steam for the digging of canals in the industrial revolution. AI, he said, would replace the unpleasant work of the “navvies” (and not, by implication, that of the “savvies”?). Computers found it easy to do what humans find difficult; and vice versa. But no one can predict what AI can or will do for all of us. His main objection to it was not its potential, but that the people who were currently in charge of developing it were the same as those in charge of social media. And what had they achieved? Rivers of sewage. Yet our current political leaders were in thrall to them. We were being ruled by an oligarchy of technocrats, who were out to destroy all the institutions that had once provided an ethical framework for scientific advances (such as nuclear developments after World War II). As for the law? Well, said Sir Stephen, his father had recommended it as a career before he became an actor, and there was a part of him that wished he had a little tin box with a wig in it and a place somewhere in chambers.
The arts were represented elsewhere in the conference. Two of the sessions as the smaller Vinyl Stage were about using storytelling to to inspire your team or to highlight legal issues. David Griffin from BP urged us to “make Yuri smile” and said if you want to build a ship you must teach your team to “yearn for the vast and open sea”. Cherno Jagne, COO of Cloisters Chambers, explained how he had financed, produced and acted in a short film, The Backway, highlighting issues around migration from and deportation to The Gambia.
Networking
The conference being held in the relaxed surroundings of an old brewery, with every urged to dress down and chill out, made for a really good atmosphere. We were delighted to speak to many new exhibitors and catch up with old friends and sometimes rivals. And since ICLR is currently piloting a development with Grounded AI, we were especially glad to meet up with Konrad Rzezniczak over lunch in the tap room. Here he is, with ICLR’s Paul Magrath (photographed by Paul Hastings):
