LegalTechTalk 2026: The Lawyer of 2030: Risk, AI & Human Judgment - James Smither - E08

0:00What happens when the brightest minds in legal, technology and innovation come together to shape the future of our profession? Welcome to the Legally Speaking Podcast Legal Tech Talk 2026 miniseries. As the UK's number one legal podcast and show ranked in the top 1 % of podcasts globally, we're delighted to be returning as the official media partner for Legal Tech Talk for the third time. Having supported this event since the beginning, we've witnessed firsthand how it has become Europe's largest legal technology conference, bringing together the people, ideas and innovations transforming the legal industry.

0:37Across this special series, we'll be speaking with some of the world's leading legal professionals, founders, technologists, change makers to explore what's next for law. Because our mission remains the same, inspiring legal minds, transforming legal futures. Let's get into it.

0:58Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Legally Speaking podcast sponsored by Clio, recording live here at Legal Tech Talk 2026 in London. Joining me now is another fantastic guest. So to begin with, please could you kindly introduce yourself? Name, title and organisation.

1:14James Smither:Hi, Rob. Great to be here. I'm James Smith. I'm the Global Head of Risk Management at Freshfield. You absolutely are. and we're very kindly connected by Patrick McCann, who are big fans of within industry. Look, everyone here is talking about the big shift, transformation. In your view, what's the single biggest shift happening in the legal industry right now that people can no longer afford to ignore? No prizes for guessing. Given it's the massive theme across the conference today and tomorrow, it's AI and it's wider application of transformation and what the legal industry looks like in six months, 12 months, five years.

1:50James Smither:It's anyone's guess, but as a risk professional, it's going to be more exciting to be in the middle of it. And absolutely. I love how you take it on the exciting opportunity side of things. Just before we get deeper into that, I want to talk about Legal Tech Talks. It's become very much a signature event, very much on the calendar now for everyone in year three. Some of the most influential people in and around the world of law here. What brought you specifically to Legal Tech Talk and what's been the best conversation or highlight that you've garnered from being here thus far? Yeah, I mean, I was invited to be on a panel.

2:19James Smither:I got it out of the way early doors. I was on at 9.30, so now that's out of the way. The shoulders are down and it's relaxed mode. I think the conversation this morning was about the transformation of a legal career in light of all that's going on with technology, some really interesting insights from that. But I just came out of a panel on well-being, and I think you mentioned opportunity, a lot of focus on the downside of AI, but one of the interesting things coming out of that was if we can move away from an hours-based measurement of what value looks like, that could have a really positive well-being impact as well.

2:48James Smither:So that was interesting. Yeah, no, definitely. And former guests that we've had as part of the series as well have also been highlighting that point on the well-being side. You spend a lot of time at the forefront of the industry. I know looking from a risk perspective, but what's one legal problem or challenge you're most passionate about solving right now? And why does it matter? That's a good question. I mean, I wouldn't want to spend too long in the well-being area. It's not my day job. That's more of a side hustle. But I think in terms of how we measure value, that's never been a paradigm that's opened up before.

3:19James Smither:I think long before I joined the profession, and I only joined it in 2019, to be clear, I'm not a lawyer, the death of the billable hour has been foretold, often incorrectly. But we are at a reflection point now where we're already having clients asking us, is time still the appropriate unit of measurement for what you guys are doing for us anymore? And I think we know that it's probably not going to be the only measurement, but we still don't know what value is going to look like and how we deliver value in a high stakes litigation or a massive deal transformation that hasn't really been determined yet and I think that's where the sort of the inflection point of opportunity and risk is really coalescing at the moment so that's something I'm very interested about how we solve and I think we'll have to solve that in the next five years.

4:01Yeah and obviously the work that you're doing is fantastic and one thing that will resonate with you is the human impact because we're hearing a lot about technology innovation automation of course but if we get this right what is the real human impact how does this improve life for lawyers legal professionals

4:15James Smither:clients and society overall oh okay i mean let's work our way back through those different layers i think you know we touched on the well-being point and i think the opportunity there to take people away from what lawyers might call the drudge work the kind of repetitive high volume high intensity tasks into the real value in adding human interacting judgment based end of things that's got to be a win for everyone it's a win for the client in terms of efficiency and pricing It's a win for the junior lawyers in terms of where they can immediately start feeling like they're adding to the equation.

4:44James Smither:And obviously, it's a win for the partners who can maybe make more profit out of it as well. So I think that's exciting across the board. But the wider angles of how we interact, how we work with our clients, how we work with tech providers and partnerships, all of this is new, right? And the sort of the partnerships and interactions angle, I think that's very new as well. Yeah. And again, very candid. Let's look forward now. Difficult question, perhaps. But looking over the next few years, what will seem completely obvious in, say, 2030 that many league professionals are perhaps still ignoring?

5:14James Smither:Yeah, I kind of answered a similar question this morning. I like this question because at the start of the AI journey, people like me who are, let's say, only on middle age, heading towards the toilet because we thought we were the endangered species. It was going to be the bright young things who understood the tech that took all the toys. I've changed my view on that actually because I've been doing quite a lot of reading about cognitive atrophy and the sort of AI native generation not developing its own judgement not developing those basic skills so I actually think what will seem obvious in 2030 that maybe doesn't seem obvious now is that you have to invest in your brain not just invest in your tech upskilling and protecting your judgement protecting your ability to discern information derive insight from raw data and from white noise is actually going to be a really valuable skill and the people who end up leading our law firms aren't going to be people who aren't the best prompts.

6:02James Smither:That's going to become a barrier to entry and a baseline expectation. It's going to be people who can still express opinion, exercise judgment, and make a snap decision for things that machines can't do in a deal room, across the arbitration table, whatever it is. So I think protecting your intellectual independence is actually what I would commend young lawyers to be thinking about now. Sage advice, and I agree with you. Okay, action-focused question now. If you had the attention of every global managing partner, law firm leader, law firm owner, general counsel legal operations professional you name it listening or watching right now what's one action they should take in the next 90 days to prepare for a better future one action one action i think it's get everyone around the table together and make sure you are lined up you know there's a lot of danger and experimentation and excitement all going on and people playing with different products and trying different stuff you have to get aligned and it's all good sandboxing and it's all good experimenting but so much risk and i mean the opportunity side of it as well as the potential pitfalls exist in the silos and the failure of conversation so i think it's yeah align on strategy and make sure you're clear about where you want to be in five years and what you need to do to work backwards from that vision now because now's the time to invest to get there in five years yeah well said okay what's one belief about the legal profession legal technology or the future of law that you hold that most people will disagree with

7:25James Smither:i'd have to think about that one um i mean i guess a personal topic that i find quite passionate is is the resilience question i think a lot of organizations in our world think resilience is a is a muscle you have to build um and i see that much more as an organizational um characteristic if if we make an environment which our people can thrive and follow different career paths and have spiky profiles and different skills then we won't have to tell them that they have to cope through adversity we'll remove adversity from the equation And as I've mentioned, I think AI and efficiency and removing highly repetitive time consuming tasks actually give us an opportunity to build organizational resilience that can reduce the dependence on individual resilience that perhaps the industry has defaulted to a little bit too much in its history.

8:05Well said. OK, before I let you go, the Legally Speaking podcast all about inspiring minds, transforming legal futures. So my final question is this. What skill, mindset or behavior do you believe will separate tomorrow's leaders from everyone else?

8:20James Smither:I mean I've already said the intellectual independence and I think emotional intelligence goes along with that we're in a profession where technical excellence is rewarded the baseline as I've said of technical excellence is rising and machines will do more and more of the sort of basic work so it's the exercise of judgment it's the building of relationships and it's the understanding of the people in your team on the other side of the table on your client side that will set the leaders apart as I said the best coder or the person who writes the best prompts isn't going to be the leader of the tomorrow it's the person who has that that magic dust that makes a relationship happen or makes a deal spin on a critical moment.

8:50James Smither:They're the leaders of the future. So don't neglect that. Don't just focus on the tech. Yep, agreed with you. Okay, finally, if you want to know more about yourself or indeed your organization, feel free to tell us where they can go. Any websites, any social media handles. We'll also share this episode for you too. Brilliant, yeah. I mean, I'm mainly on LinkedIn, so follow me on LinkedIn, James Smith at Freshfields. I should mention my side hustle. I'm a co-founder of an organization called the Legal Neurodiversity Network. we're very focused on making the legal profession a more welcoming and accommodating place for people whose brains work differently so people with autism adhd dyslexia dyspraxia it's actually a great industry for minds that work differently i've already said why i think the future will be kind to people who think a bit differently and don't just rely on core skills so yeah check out the lnn as well perfect well just leaves me to say thank you so much james for joining me here live at legal tech talk on the lead between podcast sponsored by cleo wishing you lots of continued success with your own career but from now for all of us over and out thank you for listening to this week's episode.

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