WHLS International
Festivity of Sant Raimon de Penyafort
C
arolina Marín Pedreño and Coral Hill represented WHLS at the seminar held to mark the Festivity of Sant Raimon de Penyafort. It opened with a short reception at the magnificent building of the Barcelona Bar Association or Il·lustre Col·legi de l'Advocacia de Barcelona (ICAB). The stained glass internal windows and wooden sweeping staircase were a particularly grand setting although, as with our Law Society, there are modern adjoining rooms as well as the historical building. The Friday seminar was opened with a keynote speech from Viviane Reding, former Vice President of the European Commission. She presented her views on artificial intelligence to kick start the discussion of its impact on the legal profession. Vivienne Reding stated “Intelligence is not artificial. Intelligence is human and cannot be copied by a machine. A machine does not invent anything. Reproduces and combines the information that has been introduced in the machine. Lawyers will not be replaced by machines. Machines will help us to be irreplaceable”. After the keynote speech, there was a comprehensive and constructive panel discussion which amongst other issues looked at how the training of lawyers will be affected. We also discussed the issue of bias in AI simply reflecting the bias of whoever does the programming. Clearly this could cause even more diversity issues than at present. In addition, there was an extended discussion on the appropriate professional training for lawyers. Many of the tasks previously carried out by junior lawyers can now be done in a fraction of the time by AI. Everyone agreed that high level legal skills and analysis will be a requirement well in to the future but how do junior lawyers reach that point and earn a living at the same time? It certainly seems unlikely that clients will be happy to pay the high fees required for junior lawyers’ salaries in large firms. The end of the Festivity of Sant Raimon de Penyafort was on Saturday 1 February, and Maria Jose Esteban Ferrer, Professor at Esade presented some of her research. She is from the Ramon Llull Law School University, Senior fellow research at Harvard Law School, practising lawyer and officer of the Academic and Professional Development Committee of the International Bar Association. Maria Jose Esteban Ferrer gave a portrait of the legal profession in the 21st Century, we had a lively discussion on the drivers of change in our profession and the need to adapt to all of them. ■
14 CENTRAL LONDON LAWYER
