The event drew practitioners, general counsel and technology innovators together to examine priorities and build lasting relationships
The pace of AI adoption has given Canadian law firms plenty to discuss, but few definitive answers. How are other practices integrating the technology? What are corporate clients beginning to expect? And how are firms balancing the efficiencies on offer with the need to develop the next generation of lawyers? Hearing how peers are approaching these issues, including what has and hasn’t worked, was a compelling reason to gather.
These concerns featured prominently at the Canadian Legal Summit 2026, hosted by Canadian Lawyer on October 14 at The Carlu in Toronto. Bringing together law firm leaders, general counsel, legal professionals and technology providers, the event offered an opportunity to hear how different parts of the profession are responding to those pressures, with perspectives from both sides of the lawyer-client relationship.
Across three parallel streams, small and mid-size firms, AI and innovation, and GC–law firm partnership, AI ran through nearly every conversation, addressing profitability, client expectations, talent development and the protection of sensitive information.
The event was supported by LEAP Legal Software, alongside platinum plus sponsor Legora, platinum sponsors Array and Epiq, and insights partner Thomson Reuters, amongst others.
For LEAP, the summit provided an opportunity to strengthen relationships with existing clients while introducing more firms to the practical applications of legal technology.
Director of Marketing at LEAP, Michelle Spezowka, emphasized the importance of educating practitioners about tools that can make their daily work more productive, particularly as firms explore AI’s capabilities. The company also facilitated a peer discussion on technology choices for smaller firms, where the economics of adopting new systems can be particularly consequential.
The delegates were hardly strangers to LEAP. “Not only are we here to create new relationships, but we’re also here to see our existing client base,” Spezowka said.
At Thomson Reuters, a returning sponsor, the focus was on helping professionals tell one offering from another. With AI now a common thread in nearly every product pitch, Sunny Joginder said the term and many of the offerings behind it have become commoditized. “Customers need to make educated choices, and vendors need to show how they stand apart and help firms’ future-proof’ against what’s coming.”
The conversations beyond the conference floor
The breadth of the program was reflected in sessions examining the demands placed on legal professionals themselves. Among them was Burnout as a Business Issue: Managing Workload to Sustain Your Organization, which explored the effects of unmanaged workloads on a firm’s capacity, profitability, and continuity.
Carole Dagher, general counsel, author and mental health advocate, joined the panel alongside Jason Ward, retired founding lawyer of Wards Lawyers, with Leanne Goldstein moderating.
Speaking about the conference, Dagher identified information sharing and networking as equally important benefits, particularly as firms confront the consequences of AI adoption for their employees.
While she sees considerable potential in the technology, Dagher cautioned that automating work traditionally assigned to junior lawyers creates a training problem that firms cannot afford to overlook. Associates need opportunities to observe experienced practitioners and develop professional judgment, even if those activities cannot be billed directly to clients.
Andrea Williams at Array echoed the sentiment, highlighting that the opportunity in AI comes with conditions. Firms that adopt it, she says, need to be transparent with clients, bill appropriately and keep training junior lawyers.
“I think it’s quite critical for us to understand how to use AI, how to not be scared of it, and how to use it as a tool that propels our careers rather than dampens them,” Williams says.
The risk, she notes, is that junior work is easily replaced by AI, and that work can’t be billed the way it once was. Some firms are having juniors shadow senior lawyers without billing the time, which strains a billable-hour model built on leveraging associates beneath a partner.
“Something has to give in order to train those juniors,” she said, suggesting that firms may need to invest more heavily in mentoring and coaching outside the traditional billable-hour structure.
Farah Kudus, a knowledge management lawyer at Davies, found particular value in hearing how corporate legal departments are approaching AI and what they increasingly expect from outside counsel.
“I think some of my takeaways have been how much clients expect firms to be using AI,” she said, noting that the sessions offered valuable insight into how her firm’s knowledge management function could collaborate with its innovation team to serve clients better.
Kudus also appreciated the distinctly Canadian focus of the discussions. “I think it’s really nice to see such a large conference in the Canadian market focused down on Canadian practice,” she said.
The variety of participants was another attraction. Kudus encountered professionals from in-house departments, large law firms, and sole practices, giving her opportunities to hear how different organizations approached similar issues.
The summit’s closing panel, Clash of the Counsel: Is AI Your Next Legal Partner?, offered a particularly lively exchange about those changing client expectations. Moderated by Rick Liu, director of AI solution architecture, Canada, at Epiq, the discussion featured Jonathan Leibtag, assistant general counsel at Microsoft; Phil Brown, senior counsel at the Law Society of Ontario; and law professor and author Dr. David Cowan.
Leibtag offered a pointed example of how AI is changing the relationship between corporate clients and their external lawyers.
“We pay you for value,” he explained, arguing that sophisticated clients increasingly expect lawyers to exercise conviction and judgment rather than merely outline available options.
The debate also returned to the challenge of developing those capabilities in younger lawyers. Leibtag suggested that reviewing the prompts used to generate AI-assisted work, rather than examining only the finished product, could help senior lawyers better understand how junior colleagues approach legal problems.
For attendees, such discussions provided a useful opportunity to hear how firms and clients are adapting their expectations.
Fernando Garcia, in-house counsel at Cargojet and a participant in the summit’s discussion on legal recognition and professional visibility, said the opportunity to exchange experiences was particularly valuable.
“Everybody has the same challenges,” he observed. “You learn from each other, and you also get encouraged to try, experiment, and learn together.”
Garcia also emphasized the value of learning what other organizations are doing, rather than relying solely on internally developed approaches. Exposure to different practices gave attendees opportunities to reconsider their own methods and identify ideas worth exploring further.
That willingness to exchange experiences helped explain the enthusiasm among both first-time delegates and returning sponsors.
For law firms, the summit offered direct access to peers, clients and technology providers whose decisions are influencing the practice of law. For sponsors, it created opportunities to strengthen commercial relationships and hear firsthand how practitioners’ needs are changing.
