Profile picture: Brian Liu, Founder of LegalZoom
FutureLaw 2025 was more than just a conference—it was a defining moment in legal transformation. Over two immersive days in Tallinn, 500 forward-thinking professionals explored the intersection of law, AI, data, and technology. The discussions were not just about advancements but about reimagining fundamental legal principles for a digital era.
One of the clearest insights from the event was the evolving role of technology in legal practice. Brian Liu’s takeaway was particularly striking: top lawyers will not charge less, but more—provided they leverage technology effectively while maintaining trust with their clients. The legal profession isn’t facing a decline in value but rather a shift toward expertise augmented by digital capabilities.
Brian W Tang, Founder of LITE Lab@HKU
Brian W Tang emphasized that AI should not be seen as magic but as a strategic tool. The real question is not how AI works but how professionals can integrate it responsibly. Effective knowledge management plays a crucial role in this integration, ensuring that AI-driven systems are utilized in ways that maximize value while maintaining ethical and strategic considerations. By organizing, preserving, and refining institutional knowledge, businesses and professionals can better harness AI’s potential to enhance productivity, improve decision-making, and drive innovation. Without proper knowledge management, AI’s benefits may be underutilized or misapplied, reinforcing the need for structured processes that align AI-driven insights with organizational goals.
Pēteris Zilgalvis, Judge at the General Court of the European Union
Pēteris Zilgalvis emphasized that judges must be able to explain their rulings—something AI cannot yet do. This underscores the critical role of human oversight in legal decision-making, ensuring that judicial outcomes remain transparent, accountable, and aligned with fundamental principles of justice. His testimony further highlights that concerns about transparency and explainability are present even at the highest levels of European jurisdictions, where legal systems are actively exploring and experimenting with AI-driven solutions. As AI continues to evolve, maintaining ethical and interpretative safeguards becomes essential to prevent opaque reasoning or unintended biases from undermining trust in judicial processes. Human judgment remains indispensable in applying legal precedents, contextualizing cases, and ensuring that rulings reflect both procedural fairness and societal values.
Helena Haapio, the Queen of Contract Design
Beyond technology, FutureLaw 2025 reinforced the importance of cultural transformation in legal institutions. Vasile Tiple argued that innovation alone is not enough—mindset shifts are required for real progress. Cheryl Ashman’s insights on change management were a wake-up call: no technology can fix a broken process, and successful digital transformation starts with culture, not tools. Helena Haapio framed the challenge succinctly with her concept of “Simplifier vs. Complifier,” urging legal professionals to move past the “this is how we’ve always done it” mentality. Her proactive stance on clarity over complexity reinforced the idea that streamlined legal processes not only benefit practitioners but also create lasting value for clients, enhancing trust and engagement in legal services. The legal sector’s journey toward modernization is as much about rethinking entrenched norms as it is about adopting new tools—ensuring that innovation serves people, not just systems.
Richard Napier, Deterministic AI propagandist
A defining moment was the discussion on the evolution of legal teams. Experts emphasized that legal professionals must expand their expertise beyond traditional law to remain relevant. Richard Napier highlighted how deterministic AI solutions, compared to generative AI, provide greater accuracy and reduce errors, making them particularly suited to precise legal tasks. Uwais Iqbal compared ChatGPT’s role in law to a microwave in a Michelin-star kitchen—not all technology is suited to every workflow. A key revelation emerged as most of the audience expressed that they wouldn’t sacrifice accuracy for time efficiency but would for user experience, shifting the evaluation conversation from AI models to broader legal systems. This shift signals a deeper recognition that successful AI integration requires a balance between precision, accessibility, and adaptability, ensuring legal technology supports rather than disrupts professional judgment.
Stefan C. Schicker, Maarten Truyens, Kaisa Kromhof and Nathalia Schomerus
Discussions on legal education and training underscored a major gap. Stefan C. Schicker tackled a critical issue: “Training the machine is easy. Training the humans—that’s the problem.” As AI literacy becomes essential, understanding concepts like vector search and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) is no longer optional. Poor training leads to poor usage, and the risks of misusing AI are real.
Cybersecurity also took center stage, with Rafał Prabucki warning that paying ransom in cyberattacks is largely ineffective, with data recovery occurring in only about 4% of cases. This insight reinforced the need for law firms to prioritize proactive security measures instead of reactive solutions.
Alex Hamilton defended a hybrid approach to contract automation, combining deterministic algorithms with strategic insights to preserve accuracy while still benefiting from automation. Damien Riehl, Tiphanie Bent, Brian W Tang, and Heikki Ilvessalo explored how lawyers add value by contributing intellectual property to firm-wide knowledge bases. This included examining the structure of Large Language Models (LLMs), breaking them down into atomic data bites. The conversation encouraged AI literacy and democratization, urging legal professionals to engage with the fundamentals of data science.
FutureLaw 2025 was not just about AI or automation—it was about redesigning legal institutions with trust, adaptability, and clarity at their core. It was a reminder that while AI and automation are reshaping legal practice, the core of the profession remains unchanged: trust, adaptability, and human connection.
Valentin Feklistov
Co-Founder, FutureLaw Conference
“A lawyer without imagination risks becoming obsolete in this technological era.”
