AI is part of the job now

The day is chaired by consultant Mark Ford, who opens and closes proceedings, and the substantive programme begins with a keynote that reframes the entire adoption debate.

Olivia Dhein, Global AI Strategy Counsel for Practice Innovation at Baker & McKenzie, delivers AI Is Part of the Job Now: Building the Mindset for Sustainable Legal Transformation. Drawing on her global role overseeing AI use by attorneys across the firm, Dhein argues that adoption is as much about mindset as technology, addressing the fears around jobs, expertise, and professional identity that stall progress, and how firms build sustainable operating models that move past permanent pilot mode.

The underlying premise is direct: AI capability is becoming part of every lawyer's role, not a specialist add-on.

From knowledge custodians to legal system leaders

Sharon Jenman, Director of Knowledge Management at McDermott Will & Schulte, leads the morning panel on how knowledge teams are being reshaped as AI embeds into legal workflows. The session confronts the tension between automation and professional judgement, the risk of KM being undervalued at exactly the moment it becomes critical, and the practical work of building verification layers into AI-generated outputs.

That repositioning is already visible in the market. New titles, Chief Knowledge Officer, Knowledge Director, AI Knowledge Lead, signal the shift from legal process support to organisational intelligence leadership. Director of KM salaries rose 20% year on year to a median of £167,260, and KM cost-per-lawyer grew 31.8% between 2017 and 2023, outpacing every other function in the firm. Jenman's panel closes on the question that follows: how KM demonstrates that value to firm leadership.

The expanding PSL mandate

Two sessions before lunch address how knowledge roles are widening.

Rebecca Jones, Legal Director PSL at Gateley Legal, presents Beyond Precedents: How PSLs Are Creating Client Value Through Knowledge and Technology, examining how professional support lawyers are combining know-how, legal technology, training, and document automation to deliver measurable value to lawyers and clients alike.

Caroline Mattin, Knowledge and Innovation Lawyer at KPMG Law, then runs Turning KM into Products: From Precedent Bank to Knowledge Apps, a working session in which delegates take one of their own high-volume use cases and sketch a product specification, covering rollout, adoption, and integration into AI-assisted workflows.

The shift from static repositories to clause banks, guided workflows, and playbooks connects directly to client expectations: General Counsel at sophisticated clients now assess firms on knowledge discipline, not just legal expertise.

Adoption as a knowledge team responsibility

The afternoon focuses on the operational reality of getting AI into practice groups.

Sophie Taylor, Lead Knowledge & Innovation Counsel at Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, presents Training for Transformation: How Knowledge Teams Drive AI Adoption in Practice Groups, drawing on BCLP's experience of designing training that produces confidence and sustainable behaviour change, while balancing innovation, wellbeing, and professional judgement through transformation.

Becky Jobling, Managing Knowledge Lawyer at Lewis Silkin, follows with Training the Machine: How Knowledge Lawyers Are Designing AI Workflows, a case study on PSLs designing and testing real workflows across AI-assisted drafting, research, and matter support. Its central question is one most firms have not answered cleanly: where should lawyers train AI, and where should AI support lawyers?

Governance, suppliers, and metrics that survive scrutiny

Aileen Johnson, Director of Knowledge at Charles Russell Speechlys, leads the closing pair of panels. AI in Practice: Training Lawyers, Managing Suppliers and Governing AI Tools examines how KM leaders are piloting tools such as Harvey AI and Microsoft Copilot, designing training, and managing supplier relationships while maintaining professional standards. It also tackles a problem specific to knowledge functions, keeping legal content current when regulatory and legislative updates must flow continuously into AI workflows, alongside emerging considerations including AI's environmental footprint.

The final panel, Measuring What Matters: KM and AI Metrics You Can Actually Track, moves past adoption counts toward metrics that hold up in front of a management board.

Also contributing to the faculty are Tom Whittaker, Director and solicitor advocate in the technology team at Burges Salmon, bringing a governance and risk perspective across taxonomy, architecture, and data analytics.

The governance foundation beneath all of it

Before any of this works, firms must confront their data. AI magnifies quality problems at pace and scale, and taxonomy inconsistency has become the number one AI deployment blocker. As Rob Taylor of Tiger Eye puts it, "AI will magnify any data issues at scale." A pre-deployment data audit is now effectively market standard, which is why the programme includes a hands-on Data Governance Workshop on auditing your own knowledge infrastructure for AI readiness.

There is a quieter risk running underneath the day, too. As AI absorbs routine drafting, Luminance reports a 60% reduction in contract review time, junior lawyers lose the apprenticeship tasks that build judgment, while retiring practitioners take irreplaceable tacit knowledge with them. It is no accident that Taylor's session explicitly pairs transformation with professional judgement.

The Details

Inside Legal KM: London takes place on Thursday, September 17, 2026, at 10 Union Street, London SE1 1SZ. Registration and networking breakfast open at 8:30 AM, the programme runs from 9:30 AM, and the day closes with a networking reception from 5:30 PM to 6:30 PM.

Registration is open: £995 Law Firm/Legal Services, £795 In-house/Legal Operations, £1,495 Solution Providers. To register, visit insidepractice.com/inside-legal-km-london or contact contact@insidepractice.com.