Future Lawyer Canada 2026 Agenda: Your Guide to the Agenda, Speakers, Networking and Toronto

Future Lawyer Canada returns to Toronto on November 24–25 for its second edition, expanding from a one-day gathering at a law firm's offices to a two-day conference at the InterContinental Toronto Centre. Organizers are expecting more than 400 attendees and 50 speakers, bringing together law firm leaders, in-house counsel, and legal technology professionals from across Canada.

This year's program examines how Canadian legal teams are moving AI from experimentation into everyday practice. Discussions will address how firms can improve adoption, measure the financial impact of AI, evaluate data security and residency requirements, and adapt their services as technology changes how legal work is performed.

The Canadian edition also offers a different perspective from the Future Lawyer USA conference in Boston. While both address AI adoption and legal service delivery, Toronto places particular emphasis on the operational, security, and professional challenges facing Canadian firms.

This guide covers the sessions to not miss, networking opportunities, and practical details to help you plan your visit. Check the official Future Lawyer Canada agenda for the latest updates.

Know Before You Go

• Dates: Tuesday, November 24 (Law Firm Day) and Wednesday, November 25 (In-House Day)

• Location: InterContinental Toronto Centre, 225 Front Street West, Toronto, Ontario

• Format: In-person, two days, one stage, no parallel tracks

• Daily overview:

  • 8:30am registration and breakfast

  • 9:30am sessions begin

  • 5:40 pm drinks reception

• Session types: Keynotes, panels, a fireside chat, a workshop, sponsor demonstrations and short start-up presentations

• Attendence:

  • Law firms: Managing partners, partners, C-suite executives, and department heads can apply for complimentary attendance

  • In-house: General counsel, chief legal officers, legal directors, heads of legal operations, and senior legal executives can also apply for complimentary access

  • Vendors and other attendees: Contact explore@cosmonauts.biz for attendance options

• Vendors and consultants: The organizer asks them to contact its business development team for an attendance option

If you plan to attend on a complimentary pass, apply early. The review takes up to a week, and it is easier to book travel once your place is confirmed.

What's Different About Future Lawyer Canada in 2026?

Future Lawyer Canada's first edition took place on November 26, 2025, at the Toronto offices of Aird & Berlis. Its program introduced Canadian law firm and corporate legal leaders to questions surrounding AI ethics, new service models, and the evolving relationship between outside counsel and clients.

The inaugural conference included discussions on AI-related outside counsel guidelines, legal competency in the age of AI, and how firms could adapt to changing client expectations.

In 2026, the conference is significantly larger, and the program builds on those conversations with a more operational focus.

Rather than debating whether AI belongs in legal practice, speakers will examine what firms have learned from implementation, how to measure results, and which parts of legal work should remain under human control.

The expanded format also creates more opportunities for meetings, demonstrations, and conversations between law firm leaders and their corporate clients.

How Does Canada Compare With Future Lawyer USA?

Both Future Lawyer conferences divide their programs between law firms and in-house legal departments, but the 2026 agendas emphasize different challenges.

Future Lawyer USA, held in Boston on October 28–29, focuses heavily on law firm redesign, agentic AI, knowledge management infrastructure, and the relationship between AI investment, pricing, and client value.

Canada covers several of these themes but places additional emphasis on practical implementation, data residency, security, and the role of professional judgment.

For Canadian firm leaders, these distinctions are useful. The questions surrounding AI adoption are increasingly global, but their answers must account for a firm's clients, technology infrastructure, and applicable Canadian regulatory and professional obligations.

Choose the Right Day

Law Firm Day (November 24) is designed for managing partners, innovation leaders, IT executives, and operations teams. Sessions examine AI implementation, data security, the future of legal expertise, and the financial implications of AI-assisted work.

Speakers include representatives from Torys, Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg, Langlois, BLG, Cassels, McMillan, and Torkin Manes.

In-House Day (November 25) focuses on general counsel, legal operations teams, and corporate legal departments. Sessions examine AI governance, organizational change, and how internal legal teams are incorporating AI into their daily work.

Law firms may also benefit from attending. Corporate legal departments influence outside counsel selection, fee arrangements, and Outside Counsel Guidelines (OCGs). Understanding how clients adopt and govern AI can help firms anticipate changes in expectations.

If you can only attend one day as a law firm leader, prioritize Law Firm Day. If your firm serves large corporate clients or is adapting its approach to alternative fees and AI-related billing requirements, consider attending both.

Sessions to See at a Glance

Law Firm Day: Sessions Worth Attending

Great Tool, Now What? — 10:15 a.m.

Xavier Beauchamp-Tremblay (Langlois), Tania Djerrahian (Davies), and Sukesh Kamra (Torys) discuss one of the central challenges in legal AI: turning a successful technology evaluation into consistent use across a firm.

The discussion explores what happens after firms approve new tools, including how leaders encourage adoption, measure results, and translate efficiency improvements into business outcomes.

For law firm executives, the distinction between usage and financial return matters. A tool may be widely adopted without materially improving matter profitability or client service.Listen for how firms measure adoption beyond logins and compare the performance of teams using AI against those following existing workflows. PointOne's guide to tracking ROI from AI provides a useful starting point.

Leading AI at a Leading Mid-Market Firm — 12:05 p.m.

Sondra Rebenchuk, Director of AI & Innovation at Torkin Manes, leads a fireside discussion on introducing AI within a mid-market law firm.

Much of the legal AI conversation centers on the largest international firms, which can dedicate significant budgets and teams to technology evaluation and implementation. Mid-market firms face many of the same challenges with fewer specialized resources.

This session is particularly relevant for firms deciding where to concentrate their tech budgets, including how to prioritize projects, evaluate AI tools, and manage adoption across different practice groups.

Where Your Data Sleeps at Night — 2:30 p.m.

Jennifer Davidson (Deeth Williams Wall) and Sanjay Khanna (Cox & Palmer) examine how firms should evaluate data residency, privacy, security, and technology infrastructure when selecting AI vendors.

This is an especially relevant discussion for Canadian firms evaluating products from US-based or international providers.

Where information is stored is only one part of vendor risk. Firms also need to understand who can access their data, which subprocessors are involved, how long information is retained, and whether data can be used to train models.

This would be a helpful session to compare your firm's current security questionnaire with the panel's recommendations. For additional prep, review these security questions to ask an AI timekeeping vendor.

Still the Expert: What AI Cannot Replace in Legal Work — 4:15 p.m.

Laura Levine (BLG), Resa Jacob (Cassels), and Adam Chisholm (McMillan) examine where lawyers continue to provide value as AI takes on more routine work.

The discussion includes the effect of automation on pricing, client expectations, and the professional expertise that remains difficult to replicate with technology.

For finance and pricing leaders, the underlying question is economic. If AI reduces the time required for certain tasks, how should firms adapt staffing, pricing, and matter budgets?

Listen for how firms distinguish routine work from judgment-intensive work, and how that distinction influences the economics of AI-assisted legal services.

In-House Day: Sessions Worth Attending

From Pilot to Practice: Why Some Legal Teams Are Pulling Ahead — 10:15 a.m.

Essa Abdool-Karim (HelloFresh), Sharon Seung (Pizza Hut), and Ryan MacIsaac (Uber) examine how corporate legal departments are moving AI tools into everyday workflows.

The panel considers why some implementations succeed while others create additional review and oversight work, including the less visible costs of adoption.

For law firm leaders, these conversations offer insight into how clients measure efficiency inside their own legal departments.

The End of Legal Work as We Know It: Legal's Identity Crisis — 2:30 p.m.

This panel examines how AI is changing the role of lawyers, including the skills future legal professionals will need and the implications for junior lawyer training.

Speakers include Peter Nguyen (Descartes Systems Group), Maja Czubernat (Samsung Electronics Canada), and Ingrid Minott (Goodyear).

One question is particularly relevant to law firm leadership: what happens to traditional associate development when AI automates the routine research, drafting, and review tasks through which junior lawyers historically gained experience?

Listen for how corporate legal teams are thinking about training, supervision, and the types of legal work they will continue to outsource.

Governing AI at Scale: Accountability, Controls, and the Innovation Challenge — 4:05 p.m.

Liam Campbell (Boehringer Ingelheim) and Senka Grahovac (Kuehne+Nagel) discuss how organizations can incorporate AI governance into existing risk, privacy, procurement, and compliance processes.

For law firms, this conversation extends beyond internal technology policies. Corporate clients may carry their own AI governance requirements into vendor assessments, engagement terms, and billing guidelines.

Firms serving regulated industries should pay particular attention to how legal teams assign responsibility for AI oversight and evaluate third-party providers.

Networking Opportunities Before and During the Conference

November 10: Pre-Event Webinar With Clio

The organizers have announced an online webinar with Clio on November 10, two weeks before the conference. The webinar offers an opportunity to engage with the Future Lawyer Canada community before traveling to Toronto. Check the here for registration updates.

November 24–25: Conference Drinks Receptions

Both conference days include end-of-day networking receptions.

These gatherings are particularly useful for continuing conversations that began during the sessions and meeting attendees you may have missed during shorter breaks.

Look Beyond the Main Stage

Future Lawyer Canada also includes demos, legal tech presentations, and opportunities to meet vendors outside the scheduled panels.

Several companies participating in the 2026 conference have expanded their presence in the Canadian market.

Harvey, the event's headline sponsor, opened a Toronto office in 2025 and has worked with Canadian firms including Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg and Gowling WLG. Clio, which was actually founded in Canada, will also be in attendance.

Many of the questions on this year's agenda come back to understanding the economics of legal work. As firms adopt AI tools, accurate time records become increasingly important for measuring productivity, evaluating profitability, and determining how efficiency improvements should influence pricing.

PointOne automatically records legal work across emails, documents, calls, and meetings, generating compliant, ready-to-invoice time entries for attorneys to review before submitting them to their billing system.

The result is a more complete record of legal work that firms can use to improve financial reporting, assess realization rates, and make better-informed operational decisions.

If your firm is evaluating automated time capture or looking for better ways to measure the impact of AI on legal work, book a demo with PointOne.