The Futures Lab at LegalTechTalk 2024

How will new technologies change the way legal work is done?

What impact will this have for legal operation and resource models?

What skills will be most essential to success for the future lawyer?

These are just some of the questions many of the 3000 people who attended LegalTechTalk 2024 explored in the Futures Lab – an immersive experience created and run by Treehouse.

We were delighted to partner with LegalTechTalk – Europe’s event for legal transformation – to create an engaging and creative way for visitors to the conference to explore what the future of the legal sector might look like, and how it might impact their roles and organisations.

Sponsored by DLA Piper and Ambar Partners, the Futures Lab invited participants to engage with the future of law via a mix of facilitated and self-guided interactive experiences.

At the heart of the lab was a set of 40 possible futures, illustrated in the style of a graphic novel. These future ‘vignettes’ addressed questions related to the future of technology and talent, operating and financial models, and how the overall legal market landscape might evolve. People were invited to review each possible future, and share their reactions via QR codes.

This set of 40 possible futures was drawn from our decade-plus experience working with, and within, top law firms and in-house teams, combined with insights gained from a series of roundtable events held before LegalTechTalk. These events brought together leading law firm leaders, in-house counsel teams, and legal tech providers to share their expertise and perspectives on the greatest challenges and opportunities facing the sector by 2035.

If they had a prediction not shown in the gallery, visitors to the lab could create their own, which were automatically visualised by our custom AI tool in a style consistent with the other graphic novel illustrations.

As well as exploring the vignettes, visitors also shared their views on the skills that will be most (and least) important to success for lawyers in the future. And, to add a touch of mysticism to the lab, our legal-sector specific tarot card reader, Marisha, was with us throughout, taking people on an alternative journey into various different scenarios the future might hold through the cards.

We had an incredible time at LegalTechTalk and really appreciate how engaged and open attendees were to exploring how 2035 might look for the legal sector.