Over 300 leaders in AI and law gathered at the Royal Opera House on a Thursday afternoon for what felt less like a summit and more like a turning point. We called it Precedent. And this time, we brought it to London.
The Royal Opera House is a fitting setting for a profession in the middle of its most dramatic transformation. On a stage built for the extraordinary, legal leaders, technologists, and thinkers came together to ask the questions that matter most: What does the AI transformation of law actually look like in practice? Who bears the cost of disruption? And what does it mean for a profession grounded in judgment and trust to genuinely embrace what comes next?
On stage, the audience heard from some of the most compelling voices at the intersection of law, technology, and society: Richard Susskind, whose 1996 predictions about legal technology are now reality; Rory Stewart, bringing his humanist lens to a profession wrestling with hype; Des Traynor, co-founder of Intercom, with unvarnished lessons from the front lines of AI transformation.
After the break, Tom Quoroll (Partner, Linklaters), Richard Punt (Global Legal Leader, Deloitte), and Isabel Parker (Chief Innovation Officer, White & Case) took to the stage for a candid client panel, sharing how AI has changed the way their legal teams work and what they want from legal technology next.
The afternoon was brought together by moderator Tamzin Booth, and marked by an original composition by Jakob Mühlrad — a reminder that even in an era of machines, human touch still sets the tone.
Here are four themes that defined the conversation:
1. Thirty years of legal technology: Richard Susskind spent three decades predicting that technology would shift law from bespoke advice to commoditized services, from dispute resolution to dispute prevention. Generative AI, he reflected, isn't the end of that arc but the acceleration of it. The question now is how deliberately the profession chooses to lead that change.
2. Hype, risk & the AI reckoning: Rory Stewart challenged the room to hold the tension between excitement and responsibility. Who benefits from AI-driven transformation and who absorbs the disruption? Rory argued that, for a profession built on judgment and trust, optimism needs to come hand-in-hand with scrutiny.
3. Learning from the support revolution: Des Traynor's session was a wake-up call grounded in hard-won experience. Customer support was one of the first functions genuinely reshaped by AI, and Intercom went all in. He talked through the candid details of how AI is shaping businesses today and the importance of being deliberate, ambitious, and direct about adoption.
4. AI in practice: The client panel saw Tom Quoroll, Richard Punt and Isabel Parker — senior leaders from some of the world's most respected legal organizations — share what has genuinely changed inside their teams, how they measure the success of adoption, and their predictions for the year ahead.
Keep an eye out for the session recordings from Precedent London here.
The afternoon closed with a keynote from Legora's co-founder and CEO, Max Junestrand.
Max introduced the world to Legora's latest innovation: the next-generation agentic operating system for modern legal teams.
“Legal AI made lawyers more efficient. Agentic law changes what a lawyer can be. The Legora aOS™ is a single connected system that facilitates the flow of information, communication, and execution of legal work. Every layer engineered to handle the depth and complexity of legal work at scale. This is the operating system that will power the next generation of lawyers.”
Alongside aOS™, Max unveiled the Legora Agent and set out what it means for the profession: “The Legora Agent represents a generational from assistive AI to agentic execution, redefining what a lawyer can achieve. It’s remarkable on its own, but inside the aOS it becomes a legal powerhouse. The agent works with you and for you, even when you're not there. You set the objective, you set the plan and it executes.”
He also revealed updates to Portal, and introduced Skills, Agentic Legal Research, Monitors, Lists, and Client Matter Centricity — a new slate of products built around a single conviction: that the future of legal work is not a tool to support you, but a system that works alongside you.
Learn more about the Legora aOS™ here.
Legora has grown from a thousand to over tens of thousands weekly active lawyers on the platform. But the mission is still to build technology with lawyers, not just for them. Precedent London was proof of that commitment, and a signal of everything still to come.
