London Six times a year Sponsored by Barclays Issue 01, June 2026

Exploring the stack of fast moving legal innovation.

A bi-monthly London gathering for innovation leads at law firms, technically minded in-house, and solution builders. One topic per evening, a presentation and tech-stack discussion, a couple of demos, and shared experiences.

Request an invitation The idea
80–100
Innovation leads, the technically curious and builders
15min
A primer on the evening's topic, from someone who can get into the tech
2
Demos with Q&A
Nominal
Entry fee. By invitation, to keep the room balanced toward explorers, not tourists
The idea

A working group on legaltech.

Legaltech has never witnessed such rapid change. Over the next 5 years the provision of law may change more than over the last 500. Keeping current with the latest developments is challenging, and current conversations reflect that understanding is not evenly distributed.

Legaltech Field Notes aims to solve this with a bi-monthly London gathering for innovation leads at law firms and in-house, and with developers. One main topic per evening — a presentation that explores the tech stack and what's innovative, not a pitch, followed by an open conversation. Then a couple of demos. All covering what's only become possible in the last year. What's said on stage will be written up as field notes for those unable to attend. Conversations afterwards are under Chatham House rules.

Just as the Silicon Valley Homebrew Club nurtured startups including Apple, so we want LFN to be open and collaborative — sharing understanding and insights, and getting into the technical details that determine solution performance, reliability and security. This is for those who know an API from an MCP, marvel at code generation from their prompts, and might spend a weekend setting up email and other automations with OpenClaw.

It is independently run, with the sponsorship of Barclays and support from AiLA. Attendance is by invitation; the nominal fee helps defray costs and acts as a commitment to attend.

Format of an evening

Structured whilst allowing for serendipity.

  • 18:30
    Arrival
    Drinks and introductions. The room is weighted toward innovation leads and developers; most people will know one or two others.
  • 18:45
    The presentation
    Fifteen minutes on the evening's topic, from someone with technical understanding. The aim is to understand enough of the detail to evaluate different solutions, and the use cases where they shine or not, keeping the focus on what's only recently become possible.
  • 19:05
    Panel and/or open discussion
    Questions, challenges, alternatives.
  • 19:30
    Two demos
    Seven minutes each with Q&A, on the same topic, with recorded walk-throughs. Demos chosen for innovation on a common pain point.
  • 19:55
    Wrap
    A short written summary (the field notes) circulates to the list a few days later, alongside the recorded demo walk-throughs.
  • 20:00
    Drinks & onward
    Half an hour of conversations off-record. The evening ends at 20:30.
How we run it

What we care about.

01
Understanding through exploring and questions.
Most legaltech conversations stop at the UI and workflow walkthroughs. We want to go deeper: if AI, what's built into the harness, what eval performance users should expect, data security, integrations.
02
Tech updates, not pitches.
We will choose topics and demos that use state of the art to address meaningful pain points in delivering legal. Topics and demos are chosen by curators, not pay-to-play.
03
Familiar crowd.
Six or so meetings a year at the same venue, with familiar faces. We are not trying to grow the meetups into something larger than they should be.
Get involved

Help shape the first few meetups.

Barclays is hosting, sponsors are in, the first evening is being scheduled. We'd like to hear from people willing to help choose topics, present, or simply suggest who else should be in the room.

Helping curate

  • A co-host with standing in the wider community to share editorial responsibility.
  • Innovation leads, at a law firm or in-house, willing to help select the topics their peers actually need to understand.
  • Technically competent reviewers for presentations and demos.

Presenting or demoing

  • Anyone who has good understanding of the solutions in a specific category, ideally through pilots, and can walk the room through the solution, architecture, pros and cons, and what they learned.
  • Builders with working software in contract drafting, contract review, data and privacy, knowledge management, matter management, or identity.
  • Researchers or technologists thinking carefully about retrieval, evaluation, agentic patterns, or model behaviour in legal contexts.
A few questions

What you might want to know.

Who's running this?

LFN is being put together by Mark Kingsley-Williams, founder of AiLA, an in-house legal AI solution solving routine legal admin. Mark has 20 years' experience developing legaltech solutions around legal process automation and IP, including US-patented work, and first used machine learning in 2014 for a UKRI-funded brand infringement solution. The series is sponsored by Barclays, with support from AiLA.

How is this different from the annual legal conferences?

The annual conferences do scale and breadth well, and they have their place. LFN is a different shape entirely: a recurring working group focused on developing understanding in a rapidly changing technical landscape, where the details matter. It is for explorers, not tourists. We also want to optimise on the benefits of the event both for those in person and those following through the notes, not go for scale.

Who gets invited?

Innovation leads at law firms and in-house, and the developers building alongside them. The invitation model exists to keep the room weighted toward people exploring and applying the technology rather than selling into it. Vendors and consultants are welcome, just not in overwhelming numbers.

Can I bring a colleague?

Yes, where they fit the same profile. Mention them when you request your invitation and we'll sort it.

What does "knowing your API from your MCP" mean in practice?

It means the room can keep up with a conversation about how a system is actually put together: what's called, where data lives, where the model sits in the pipeline. You don't need to be an engineer. You do need to be willing to engage at that level rather than at the level of marketing slides or press release.

When's the first one?

We are aiming for end of June 2026. The interest list hears first when the date, topic and presenter are confirmed.