Join us for a fireside chat with Asier Crespo, Legal Director at Microsoft Ibérica, as he shares his team’s journey in adopting AI and how it has transformed the way they work. Asier will also offer his insights on AI adoption among legal professionals, including law firms and in-house legal departments, as well as on the rise of legaltech and what the future holds for the legal profession.

No-poach agreements have come under increasing fire for distorting labour markets and suppressing wages. Long overlooked in Europe, they now attract heightened scrutiny as antitrust authorities and courts reassess their legality in light of both competition principles and evolving views on workers’ rights.

With cyber threats escalating in scale and sophistication, companies face mounting legal and operational risks. Regulations like the NIS2 Directive are sharpening expectations around cybersecurity preparedness, incident response, and board-level accountability. As attacks become a matter of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’, organisations must increasingly navigate a shifting landscape of liability and compliance.

The unchecked dominance of global digital platforms has exposed the limits of traditional competition frameworks, prompting a rethinking of antitrust enforcement in the digital age. Europe’s response, through landmark regulations like the DMA and broader competition reforms, aims not just to discipline gatekeepers but to create fairer market conditions that enable domestic innovation, support strategic autonomy, and strengthen the continent’s overall economic competitiveness in a rapidly evolving global landscape.

As career paths stretch across borders, Europe’s labour market is becoming more fluid, adaptive, and skills-driven. Legal professionals increasingly navigate opportunities beyond national systems, shaped by cross-border mobility, hybrid roles, and a growing emphasis on transferable competencies over rigid qualifications.

As armed conflict and geo-politics force governments to prioritize strategic autonomy, the concept of ‘economic security’ is rapidly encroaching on traditional conceptions of national security. This session explores the impact of protectionist tendencies and the tensions between cross-border cooperation, open markets, and the protection of essential security interests in an era when virtually anything can be defined as a threat to the state.

As AI outpaces existing legal structures, the challenge isn’t just regulation, but relevance. Building a legal environment that fosters innovation while ensuring justice and reliability requires more than compliance: it calls for vision, adaptability, and cross-sector alignment.

In an era of constant disruption, the role of the in-house legal department is fundamentally changing. No longer a purely defensive function, modern legal teams are “in motion,” actively leveraging technological, regulatory, and market shifts to create tangible business value. The focus is on harnessing the forces of disruption to transform the legal department from a cost center into a strategic partner that drives growth, resilience, and innovation.

Artificial intelligence can potentially enhance legal department efficiency by automating high-volume, repetitive tasks and accelerating data analysis. Related AI tools could rapidly review contracts, streamline e-discovery processes, and perform legal research in a fraction of the time it takes manually. This frees up legal professionals to focus on strategic, high-value work, ultimately reducing costs and improving outcomes. However, given that the solutions are at its infancy, adequate care is required to ensure that this does not become a double-edged sword.

The introduction of the EU Digital Identity Wallet marks a significant shift in how individuals and businesses interact with public and private services across borders. For in-house legal teams, the convergence of digital identity, AML/KYC obligations, and Qualified Electronic Signatures raises new questions around authentication, liability, and regulatory compliance. Ensuring legal certainty in this framework will require close attention to both technical standards and evolving supervisory expectations.

With rising interest rates, supply chain volatility, and regulatory tightening, more companies are facing financial stress. This session explores legal tools available to manage corporate distress—ranging from restructuring and insolvency proceedings to liability shielding and stakeholder negotiation, while addressing the growing role of legal teams in strategic turnaround efforts.

ESG underwriting is no longer limited to assessing environmental or social impact, as it increasingly defines the legal contours of acceptable risk. As regulatory expectations tighten and stakeholder scrutiny intensifies, in-house legal teams play a critical role in embedding ESG criteria into contractual frameworks, liability assessments, and disclosure obligations. The legal function is becoming a gatekeeper in translating ESG commitments into enforceable and defensible standards.

The AI Act and Data Act form the backbone of Europe’s strategy to shape trustworthy and interoperable artificial intelligence. While the EU aims to foster innovation without sacrificing fundamental rights, this introduces a new compliance frontier for in-house legal teams, blending innovation policy with hard regulatory obligations. From negotiating data-sharing terms to assessing AI system risk classifications, legal departments are becoming central to enabling compliant AI deployment.

European digital policy is entering a new phase, with major frameworks like the DSA, DMA, AI Act, and Data Act laying the groundwork for a regulated digital economy. For in-house legal teams, the challenge now shifts to operationalising compliance while anticipating what’s next. From platform liability and data portability to cybersecurity and algorithmic transparency, everthing becomes mission-critical. Understanding the direction of travel is essential as enforcement mechanisms mature and new legislative initiatives take shape.

Cybersecurity is no longer a technical issue, but rather a systemic threat that implicates legal strategy, corporate reputation, and regulatory exposure. As the frequency and sophistication of attacks rise, legal departments are being pulled into the heart of crisis response, often within seconds of detection. The margin for error is razor-thin. Decisions must be made before facts are fully known. Disclosure obligations, privilege concerns, and coordination across jurisdictions compress into a single, high-stakes timeline. In this environment, legal preparedness isn’t about having the right answers but about recognising the shape of the threat and acting with speed, clarity, and control.

How do leading legal departments across Europe structure their teams, set priorities, and measure impact? Data-driven insights can provide novel insights into legal department’s operating models, tech adoption, resourcing strategies, and the evolving role of the in-house counsel in a shifting regulatory landscape.

Leading legal teams across jurisdictions means navigating differences in legal cultures, communication styles, and decision-making norms. This session examines how to manage complex, multi-cultural teams effectively, ensuring alignment, trust, and high performance across borders while respecting local context and maintaining a unified strategic vision.

Following years of divergence, a potential reset in EU-UK relations presents a new set of challenges and opportunities for in-house legal teams. Counsel must anticipate changes in regulatory alignment, particularly concerning data flows, financial services, and trade agreements. Navigating this evolving landscape will require proactive monitoring of political negotiations and strategic adjustments to contracts and compliance frameworks to mitigate risk

Legal operations are evolving from support functions into strategic drivers of efficiency, integration, and resilience, especially in international contexts where complexity is the norm. Global legal departments now manage layered jurisdictions, distributed teams, and escalating expectations for speed, transparency, and cost control. Next-generation models focus on scalable systems, cross-border alignment, intelligent automation, and data-informed decision-making. But success isn’t just technical – it depends on embedding operational thinking into legal culture, navigating organisational politics, and ensuring adaptability across diverse legal and regulatory environments.

Despite progress, women remain underrepresented in top legal roles. This session explores the structural barriers, shifting expectations, and strategies that are reshaping leadership pathways—highlighting the changes across Europe’s legal landscape.

Many innovation initiatives stall not due to poor ideas, but because of organisational inertia, political undercurrents, and hidden veto points. Legal teams, often seen as risk gatekeepers, are uniquely positioned to either enable or obstruct progress depending on how change is framed and managed. Understanding the informal structures of resistance, and aligning innovation with institutional incentives, is key to making transformation stick.

The European Legal Data Space aims to enable secure and interoperable access to legal data across Member States, supporting transparency, innovation, and judicial cooperation. This session explores its foundations, potential impact on legal practice and compliance, and the challenges of balancing openness with data protection, national legal traditions, and technological standardisation.

Long hours and high stakes aren’t going anywhere, but how we lead through them can, and must, change. This session reframes burnout not as a personal failing or resilience gap, but as a strategic design flaw in how legal teams operate, deliver, and define value. Attendees will be challenged to confront the cultural habits driving silent burnout, and walk away with the tools to lead high-performing, human-centred teams without sacrificing pace or quality.

As legal departments grow across regions and continents, traditional structures fall short. This session examines how to organise modern, multi-cultural legal teams operating globally—balancing decentralisation with alignment, managing cross-border projects, and ensuring consistent, high-quality legal value for the business. From operational frameworks to leadership models and internal collaboration tools, we explore how global legal functions can stay agile, effective, and trusted across time zones and cultures.