A one-day Sydney gathering brings together law firm leaders, government lawyers and academics
Most law firms in Australia and New Zealand now use some form of AI in daily practice, yet only a handful can say with confidence what it is actually costing or saving them. Clients want proof the savings are real. Regulators and law societies want proof the output can be trusted. And firms themselves are still working out how much of the job can be safely handed over.
These are some of the problems a room full of legal leaders will try to work through in Sydney this August at the LexisNexis AI Summit 2026. The conference brings together expertise from law firms, corporate legal teams, government and academia, and builds on the success of a similar conference held last year.
The keynote address for 2026, delivered by LexisNexis chief technology officer Greg Dickason, sets the tone for the day. The session will walk through the next generation of the legal AI stack, including agents, skills, workflows and plug-ins, and ask where automation genuinely helps and where a lawyer's judgement still needs to sit above the machine. It is less a product pitch than a working map of what autonomous legal tools can and cannot do yet.
An industry spotlight session will look at experience from outside the legal sector. Dr Owen Bradfield of the Medical Indemnity Protection Society and Associate Professor Narinder Singh of the University of Sydney and Westmead Hospital compare notes on AI adoption in healthcare, a sector that has already grappled with governance, oversight and human-in-the-loop decision making under regulatory pressure not unlike the one law faces.
At the mid-morning customer panel, Associate Professor Wendy Bonython of Bond University, Vanessa Bourne of WaterNSW and Timothy Whincop of Vocare Law will cover:
After lunch, the programme splits into three concurrent tracks, so attendees can choose the session that matches their own priorities:
Attendance is free, but the event is invite-only and reserved for those who meet LexisNexis's industry criteria, among them legal executives, managing partners, heads of knowledge, in-house counsel, legal academics and legal technologists. Anyone outside that list who wants to attend is asked to email the organiser directly. CPD points will be available.
For a profession often accused of moving slowly on technology, the agenda is an attempt to get ahead of the problem rather than react to it once the tools are already embedded and the mistakes already made.
The conference will take place at Telstra Insight Centre Sydney on 26 August, 2026 from 830am to 200pm AEST. To find out details and to register, click HERE.
This article was produced in partnership with LexisNexis.
