Is AI a very 'confident' trainee? Law Society of Scotland Legal Tech Conference 2026

AI, technological frustration and bringing your people with you were key talking points which dominated a day of legal tech discussions at the Law Society of Scotland's conference in Glasgow.

Frustrated by technology

I’m queuing for a coffee from a self-service machine during a break at the Law Society’s Legal Tech conference when there’s a holdup at the top of the line. The multi-functioning appliance that frees up staff at the Hilton Hotel in Glasgow while creating every possible variation of your favourite beverage is not delivering a latte to the decaffeinated delegate no matter how often she punches the button. ‘Frustrated by technology!’, she exclaims, not without irony considering the theme of today’s conference. Thankfully human intervention resolves the issue, and the queue of thirsty lawyers quickly gets their hot drinks. Perhaps this is a microcosm of today’s gathering. Most law firms have AI technology to support them but how do they use it productively to alleviate frustration and deliver a solution that meets everyone’s needs; staff, partners and of course clients?

“Getting stuck is the entry ticket, not a failure”

First up to address the issue is keynote speaker Jamie Tso livestreaming from Hong Kong. The senior solicitor at Clifford Chance who builds his own AI tools explains to a rapt conference hall how they can use AI leverage to become better lawyers. He explains that as more and more solicitors build AI tools, the functionality just gets better and better. By way of example, for his Scottish audience he has created a template which generates a will, power of attorney and covering letter from a meeting transcript which could be delivered in 15 minutes. He tells us the process of building the tool only took 30 minutes but offers words of encouragement to the non-digital natives who are worried about getting left behind: “Everyone is a beginner. The barrier isn’t your ability to code, the barrier is permission to try.” adding, “Getting stuck is the entry ticket, not a failure.”

But he stresses this doesn’t mean solicitors will become the brilliant architects of their own obsolescence. Like a malfunctioning coffee machine, judgement tasks will still need trained and experienced human intervention: “The AI handles the how-you just need to know the what and the why. AI doesn’t make a good solicitor less valuable- it moves your value up the stack. Your judgement is the scarce asset.”

When the forum is opened up to the audience -questions delivered to the stage through a QR scanner naturally- an age-old concern is addressed; will I be replaced by new technology? Tso recommends getting to the digital frontier by building your skills as quickly as possible. He adds: “The ultimate skill a lawyer needs to learn is high agency.”

Humiliation or curiosity?

These thoughts dovetail neatly with the roundtable of industry experts chaired by Rachel Coleman, senior legal industry specialist from iManage and our host for the day, entitled ‘How to drive tech adoption in resistant cultures.’

Ally Hollins-Kirk, founder of Jera IT, describes the issue of barriers to change as a human problem with two layers- how it impacts the individual and the culture. When people use something new or face change, they are governed by two human emotions, humiliation and curiosity. He explains: “The fear of humiliation actually causes people to withdraw from trying something new, whereas curiosity, which manifests as care, is actually what moves people forward- so you have to drive that curiosity.

“And this is the bit that is ignored by people doing projects, because it’s really easy to buy licences for client software but actually going through that human element and managing what that change looks like is underfunded.”

His thoughts are echoed by Chloe Kennedy, senior manager at Deloitte, who emphasises to the busy room the importance of the human element: “Tech is only one component but it’s not the most critical, it’s engaging with your staff and bringing people along that is the transformational journey.”

“AI: a very confident trainee with no supervision.”

After a quick break where the ‘coffee incident’ occurs, we are back in the hotel’s ballroom for an address from Steven Hill, managing director of Denovo, with the rather bullish title ‘Why some Scottish law firms will grow rapidly over the next five years- and others will quietly disappear.’ He argues the conversation around AI has moved on from whether to adopt to how to successfully integrate: “The risk is not that firms ignore AI completely, the risk is that firms adopt AI badly, without deciding where it fits, who checks it, what data can go into it, what good output looks like and what process it’s meant to improve.”

He adds the conversation is not about technology, but about management, workflow and human behaviour. Of course, workload issues arise: “Lawyers aren’t resistant to technology because they are dinosaurs but because it’s one more thing to do in an already fragmented legal workday.”

He quips: “In a law firm, a ‘quick question’ is rarely quick and only occasionally a question.”

Hill moves on to talk about that shift in perception across this decade from asking ‘Should we get AI?’ to ‘Is AI being used properly?’ An example where it obviously isn’t is the court cases that have been appearing in the press recently where artificial intelligence created false citations and are characterised as ‘AI failures’. Offering false material before the Court of Session because AI output was not checked properly received blunt criticism from the High Court, raising issues of competence, supervision training and professional duties. But, Hill argues, AI did not mislead the court on its own by allowing unchecked material to leave the building. Hill believes: “This misses the more useful lesson. The real failure is not just the tool but the absence of a safe workflow to check the output against what was sourced before it left the building.” Adding, “AI is only powerful when it has access to the right knowledge in the right workflow with the right guardrails. Otherwise, it’s just a very confident trainee with no supervision.”

Hill finishes his session with some powerful hard truths. He tells us many firms have digitised inefficiency rather than removing it. AI won’t replace lawyers however lawyers using AI safely, commercially and intelligently will have an advantage over lawyers who cannot and finally the bottleneck is usually culture, not software. He adds the most powerful technology blocker in a law firm is the sentence, ‘but we’ve always done it this way!’

“The lesson for this room really is not to spend hundred of millions, it is own your knowledge and your processes.”

Ice cream in the breakout rooms

As part of the day-long conference there are options to attend breakout sessions, including an International Perspective on Legal Tech, chaired by Arletta Gorecka a research fellow at the Information Society Law Centre. After lunch I slip into a session on how AI can save High Street firms hours every week, hosted by Denovo. A couple of late arrivals are eating cones from S Luca who have an ice cream cart in the exhibition space. Having attended numerous conferences, I can safely say I have never seen ice cream cones in a breakout session, but the queue was long and the ice cream does look delicious. Meanwhile, senior solicitor Jay Goodwillie of Russel and Aitken is here to get a better understanding of how to make the LawY programme work for her. She tells me at the end of the session it looks a useful tool but having time to learn the process will be the problem.

Monday morning takeaways

Achieving the almost impossible, Rachel Coleman sums up six hours of conferencing with three key takeaways. Firstly, bring your staff with you: “It’s all about the people. Understand what matters to the individuals in your firm, your team, your business and use that to drive whatever technology you are trying to bring into your business.

“If they don’t understand the why, I don’t think they’re going to engage with it.”

Her second point is to not waste your budget on technology that isn’t doing anything useful- spend that time to explore friction points. Finally, she adds, the law society (small s) within Scotland is relatively small and willing to share their successful and otherwise experiences with technology and are unafraid to say, ‘I don’t understand this’. As the delegates are invited to have a drink in the bar with their fellow professionals as the conference closes, I’m sure they will have many points to discuss.

I’m just wondering where that ice cream cart has got to.