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Abstract: Given the current hype around generative AI, you could be forgiven for thinking that the future of the legal profession will be all chatbots, algorithms and machine learning. But while so much has and will continue to change at a pace we have never experienced, the practice of law remains fundamentally a people-driven business.

The success of an organisation will not simply be about how intelligent the AI is or how convincing a chatbot can mimic human behaviours, but how the organisation recruits, retains, develops and rewards people. This requires the legal services industry to re-think the training and development of legal professionals to embed a mindset and behaviours that will help them thrive in an increasingly digital world.

In this session Dan will share how O Shaped has been bringing this to life in the legal sector so that human and machine can work in harmony for the benefit of those who use legal services.

Speaker: Dan is founder of O Shaped, an initiative he set up in 2019 with the mission of making the legal profession better for those who are in it, those who use it and those who are entering it.

Dan has previously been widely recognised as a forward thinking, progressive General Counsel with a focus on putting people at the heart of the profession. He has been in the Legal 500 GC Powerlist on two occasions (2020 and 2021) and was shortlisted for GC of the year at the Lawyer awards in 2019.

Dan trained at Dechert LLP before moving in-house to Network Rail in 2007. In 2015, he spent a year as a Senior Programme Manager, leading several strategic corporate projects across the company.

Between 2016 and 2022, he was General Counsel (Regions) at Network Rail, leading a team of 20 lawyers providing multi-disciplinary support across the company.

Dan left in April 2022 to pursue his passion with O Shaped full time. Dan is passionate about leadership development, people and leading cultural change throughout the legal profession, particularly through mindset change as well as human and business skills development.