AI Visionaires
Legal AI’s Boldest Innovators
AI Visionaries celebrates individuals from all walks of legal life who see a bigger picture for the future of AI—and make it real.
AI has outgrown novelty. What was once explored is now essential—a momentum reflected in the work of our 2026 AI Visionaries. From every corner of legal, these leaders have embraced AI in distinct ways. Redrawing, redefining. Pulling the future into focus. Delivering value through every decision. Their articulation of AI is thoughtful, determined—gritty, even. We celebrate you, our AI Visionaries, as you usher legal into a new reality.
2026 AI Visionaries
Gilbert & Tobin
Bayer US
PLUSnxt
Alvarez & Marsal UK
Nonprofit Corporation
Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP
JND Legal Administration
Quinn Emanuel
University of New South Wales (UNSW)
Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP
Clifford Chance
Redgrave LLP
GE Vernova
Page One, Inc.
Nextra Solutions
Wickard.ai
Artificial Lawyer
Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP
Walmart
Generative AI is impressive, but its impact needs to be viewed through a disciplined lens. Humans have a tendency to associate fluency with authority, often to our detriment. In law, where language is the medium of advocacy, that bias can become dangerous if left unchecked. Establishing guardrails around the use of technology matters.
Adrian Agius
Director of Legal Informatics
We've had great success leveraging AI to do analyses that would simply never have been done due to the required time and costs. We can support our litigations in ways that we could not have before, because we can do incredible amounts of work and analysis so quickly, efficiently, and accurately.
Jesse Burroughs
Discovery Counsel
The accelerated rise of AI is a direct call to action. This is the moment to deepen your fluency in generative AI, understand how it reshapes your client's businesses, and get clear on the value you deliver. The attorneys who lean in will guide their organizations with confidence. Ignoring the shift isn't caution -- it's surrender to your competition.
Bobby Coppola
Chief Strategy Officer
To be at the forefront of using AI, it is key to surround yourself with all different kinds of AI experts and to be in a place that allows you the flexibility to react when you find the opportunities to do so.
Gary Foster
Managing Director
The inertia of existing systems is a powerful force in the public sector. This can be a good thing. Change for the sake of change is not a good policy for institutions that rely on public trust. Any substantial tech improvements must be built on solid footing. There are no shortcuts.
Dave Fronapfel
eDiscovery Professional
Nonprofit Corporation
In a large, sophisticated practice, every single one of your clients has more data than they know what to do with. The ability to identify the right data, collect it in the right way, negotiate through that, work with it, know what it says, master it early on--that's it. That's where cases live and die.
Liz Gary
Of Counsel
AI will be woven into every stage of the discovery workflow within the next five to ten years. Starting with identification of potentially relevant custodians and sources, flowing through automated collection, processing, and error remediation, and on to review and production. With oversight from human teams, I believe AI can improve all aspects of the discovery process.
Andre Golueke
Discovery Strategy & Operational Support Lead
You don't need all the answers before you begin. The most powerful thing you can do is start the conversation. Every AI-enabled future started with someone asking, 'What if we tried this?
Rachel Koy
Director of Innovation and Strategy
When I think of agentic AI, I think of taking the innovations we've seen over the last three years and multiplying them. I can have one system that helps with reviewing documents for relevance, another for privilege, another for privacy, another that helps draft deposition outlines, another that helps review ESI agreements and so on--these applications are your agents. Next, we place a controller on top that consolidates the information learned and addresses issues identified by the agents.
Jonathan Land
Of Counsel; Director of LTAS
Recent research suggests that AI can outperform individuals and in some cases human teams. But AI and human teams combined outperformed a human team or AI alone. This suggests that the way forward is determining how to combine lawyers and AI.
Michael Legg
Professor
An obvious AI skill set that requires developing is prompting. There is a skill and an art to effective interrogation of your data. Interestingly, many of the skills we develop as litigators are the same skills that are required to effectively interrogate data through prompts; diving in and getting hands-on experience will help lawyers get better at this.
CJ Mahoney
Partner and Global Head of E-Discovery and Litigation Technology
We are in the early stages of trialling agentic capabilities in controlled pilots. The way I see it, agents are interesting because they move from 'answer my question' to 'run the workflow'. The rule is simple: treat them as operators that can propose next steps, but they do not take action without explicit human approval and a clear line of accountability. My focus is on rigorous testing, tightly scoped use, logged decisions to support evidence and governance, and strong guardrails and training. Ultimately, their value is in enhancing professional judgement and reinforcing the standards our clients depend on.
Ankur Malik
Global Head of Forensic Technology & eDiscovery
AI has transformed how I work. Working with AI assistants doesn't just make things easier and faster--when done correctly, it produces better results. The key is iteration: going back and forth, staying engaged, remaining in charge of the thought process. You have to understand and own the results.
Ray Mangum
Partner
With AI, legal teams can redirect our energy toward strategic counsel and business partnership. When we are freed from repetitive tasks, we can focus on what truly matters: understanding the business, anticipating challenges, and providing the nuanced judgment that benefits from human perspective. AI can help us contribute more meaningfully and creates opportunities for us to support the business beyond risk mitigation.
Christine Hasiotis Martins
Global eDiscovery Leader & Sr. Litigation Counsel
We've been working with clients using pre-coded document sets to evaluate human versus AI coding decisions, and the results are compelling. AI delivers consistent, repeatable outcomes, while human coding often varies from reviewer to reviewer. Showing that proof, using real data rather than theory, has been incredibly powerful for building confidence in AI.
Andrew Milauskas
Chief Operating Officer
Clients use AI every day and are asking about it. If I've done my job, the lawyers will go sell what we're doing with it. But I have to get them to believe in it first. This conversation isn't about a tool--it's about trust, accountability, and helping people succeed.
Angela O'Neal
Director
AI and law remains one of the rare fields where disciplined study and sustained intellectual curiosity can meaningfully accelerate entry and influence. Those willing to do the hard work, engage deeply with the technology, and think critically about its implications can quickly move from observers to contributors. The opportunity is not reserved for incumbents. It belongs to those prepared to outlearn and outwork the pace of change.
Oliver Roberts
CEO and Founder
The only sure thing is: AI will get better, more accurate, more powerful--and that lawyers and their clients will have to operate inside a world that has adapted to this new reality; much as we have all adapted to a world in which the internet is ever-present.
Richard Tromans
Founder
Lean into being the lawyer who can run the project. In e-discovery, the work that moves the needle is often not strictly "legal" work; it's coordinating people, process, and technology. Partner closely with the experts so you can turn complex problems into workflows that are both efficient and defensible.
Melissa Weberman
Counsel, Head of eData and Legal Technology
Whether you have been in e-discovery forever or just started last year, the implementation and impact of AI in the industries we support function as a great equalizer. We are all learning about it at the same time. People with deep historical knowledge of e-discovery have some advantage, but those with new perspectives and diverse backgrounds have so much to offer.
Deric Yoakley
Lead Counsel, eDiscovery
