Recently, Lawyers Weekly’s annual Corporate Counsel Summit brought together over 200 in-house professionals from across the country to flesh out the biggest trends, challenges, and opportunities in front of Australian law departments.
The Corporate Counsel Summit arms in-house counsel with insights, tools, skills, and strategies to become a driving force in achieving the objectives of their organisations.
Hosted in partnership with longstanding principal partner Lawyers on Demand, the 2024 Corporate Counsel Summit – the sixth annual event for Australia’s in-house demographic – took place at The Star in Sydney on Thursday 2 May.
The agenda was carefully curated by the Lawyers Weekly team in the months leading up to the event, and covered myriad issues facing Australian corporate lawyers, including how best to harness Generative AI, applying lessons from overseas jurisdictions to our domestic market, mastering contract management, costs considerations for external providers, preparing the business for litigation, and navigating looming cybersecurity threats.
Moreover, former Socceroo-turned presenter and advocate Craig Foster, as well as Megaport Limited senior legal counsel Mel Storey, delivered engaging and instructive keynotes to help attendees ensure that not only are they equipped with the necessary practical tools to thrive in the year ahead, but that they also take a holistic approach to their roles as professionals, and as people.
Reflecting on the summit, Lawyers Weekly editor Jerome Doraisamy – who was the event’s emcee, and moderated various panel discussions – said that, in the face of voluminous market change, putting one’s hand up to be a forward-looking, considered, and creative in-house lawyer has become more critical than ever before.
“The expectation to not only effectively react to business needs, and also proactively anticipate future needs of that business, has never loomed so large for corporate legal professionals,“ Doraisamy mused.
“The advent of artificial intelligence platforms and in particular Generative AI is, understandably, front of mind of in-house lawyers across the board, as they continue to determine how best to proceed. This, alone, would be a big burden for law departments to shoulder. But with the ever-increasing threat of cyber and data breaches, and how best to navigate those, as well as figuring out how to keep the business’ legal costs down (even in the face of such developments), it is clear that in-house lawyers face unenviable responsibilities.”
“The annual Corporate Counsel Summit is a leading get-together for in-house professionals of all stripes to hopefully answer some of the burning questions arising from such challenges, and it is Lawyers Weekly’s great honour – in conjunction with LOD + Consilio – to facilitate such conversations and thought leadership discourse,” Doraisamy concluded.
The summit was followed by Lawyers Weekly’s eighth annual Corporate Counsel Awards, attended by over 500 professionals and with 33 trophies presented to lawyers and teams spanning all sectors of the market, and in law departments big and small. Comedian and ABC presenter Mark Humphries served as emcee for the evening.