From data strategy to human judgment: Key Knowledge Exchange takeaways

By Caroline Hill on July 10, 2026

What does the tech stack of the future really look like? It’s a huge question and one that was at the centre of discussions hosted at the start of July by Legal IT Insider and partner LexisNexis. Together with 25+ CIOs and legaltech leaders we also looked at how you should be preparing your people for a very different future environment to the one we work in today.

The tech stack: IP and resilience are key

In terms of tech stack, A&O Shearman’s global CIO Andrew Brammer and LexisNexis director of product development Karen Waldron helped to host a discussion that centred not just on solutions, but on what firms’ end goals and strategy are. Every conversation around technology ought to start with IP: what is the core IP you are the custodian of? What you will cede? What you will hold onto?

It’s important to think and plan around the resilience of your business in the future. Are you nailing your colours to one mast? And what is your strategy when AI providers stop subsidising the cost of tokens, which is already happening? It is clear that firms need to have a very clear data strategy and knowledge strategy, and one that is portable and doesn’t lock them into one vendor. “We have to be very careful with our knowledge and where it is stored,” one participant reminded.

One of the challenges, the group agreed, is that no-one currently knows what ‘good’ looks like. We know that the base line is that legal practice and work product must be error free, efficient and ethical. But the model and hierarchy is changing.

The group discussed the risks around working with legal AI companies and the danger that they will move into legal services. Firms must give clear direction as to their expectations around data. “You should be able to dictate more to vendors how and where your data is used,” observed one IT head.

In a natural segue into training, the group observed that absolutely key to any conversation about technology is the need for critical thinking. How do we ensure that our lawyers and business professionals retain their judgment, which is at the core of what it means to have a human in the loop? “That’s the piece that isn’t talked about enough,” said one UK law firm AI head. “This is where we need to spend more time and thought.”

Training and development

With human skills and judgment critical to the tech-advice matrix, the group discussed how you retain the right balance between efficiency and uniqueness and human creativity. Leading this discussion were Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer IT director Nina Gratrick and LexisNexis’ director of strategic markets, Mark Smith.

It was collectively agreed that legal training needs to change – starting with universities and colleges. The deal between Legora and eight universities was noted as a potentially positive development, although similar deals in the past with tech vendors haven’t always produced change in practice, and it would be great to see a commitment from legal education establishments around practical tech training deliverables. The group also noted the acquisition by training company BARBRI of Lega, a platform that will help students to interact with legal large language models for legal outputs. Again, the training will need to be focused and the objectives clear.

The needs of firms will change as time evolves and training will need to evolve with it. For example, firms are already in many cases no longer leaving prompts to chance and are creating prompt libraries and templates, meaning that not everyone is going to need to be prompt engineers. It was also noted that the technology is improving to make up for bad prompting.

With technology evolving at the speed of light, what firms need to think about now is how humans will collaborate and communicate in an agentic AI world.

Circling back to technology, there will be need to be frameworks and processes that make it clear how work will be delivered; what technology is used for what task; and how humans are part of the mix.

Concluding thoughts

Culturally, firms are still not where they need to be in terms of acknowledging the scale of change ahead but there are immediate strategic steps that can be taken.

Firms need to identify what their valuable data and knowledge is and upskill their people. At the end of the day, with further advances in AI, it is likely that highly skilled people will be our biggest assets, and our biggest differentiators.

Our thanks to our speakers and everyone who joined this conversation – your contributions were invaluable.