Summit Workshops

Our Pre-Summit Workshops are filling up fast! If you haven’t secured your spot yet, we recommend registering soon to avoid missing out—spaces are strictly limited. You can select your workshop ticket during registration, or if you’ve already registered, simply email the team at GEMS Event Management to add a workshop to your booking.

Pre-Summit Workshops will be held on Wednesday 3rd September 2025 from 8:30am-12:00pm. Morning tea will be provided (and lunch for those attending Summit on Wednesday afternoon).

You can add a Pre-Summit Workshop to any registration for $100.

Workshop 1 - Building High Performance Law Firms: How to Attract, Retain and Engage Top Talent

Presented by Trudy MacDonald, Managing Director, Founder and Speaker, TalentCode HR.

In today’s competitive legal landscape, attracting and retaining top talent while driving high performance is more challenging and more critical than ever. With remuneration, reward, and performance reviews consistently ranked as the top concerns for legal practice managers, this interactive and practical workshop is designed to help you future-proof your firm’s people strategy.

Join award-winning leadership expert Trudy MacDonald for this dynamic, high-impact session tailored specifically for the legal sector. You’ll explore the frameworks, tools, and conversations needed to build a high-performance law firm where people thrive and stay.

What You’ll Gain:

- A clear roadmap for attracting and retaining top legal talent in a changing market

- Best-practice approaches to reward and recognition beyond salary
- Practical strategies to improve performance and
accountability through effective review conversations
- Insights into what high-performing individuals truly want from their firm, and how to deliver it
- Templates and frameworks you can immediately implement to create a more engaged and aligned team

Workshop 2 - Getting AI Enabled: How to Get the Most Out of GenAI in Your Firm

Presented by Fiona Mclay, Consultant, Mclay Legal Consulting

It’s time to stop experimenting and start building. This interactive workshop will guide participants through the process of designing a realistic, actionable plan to implement GenAI in their firms.

Using The AI-Enabled Law Firm Roadmap, attendees will map out their own AI journey—from education and use case discovery to adoption and long-term support. Learn from the first wave of GenAI experimentation and avoid making the same mistakes.

During the session, participants will be guided through the process of creating a clear blueprint for rolling out GenAI that aligns with their organisation’s needs, resources, and risk appetite.

Workshop 3 - Leading Legal Organisations Through Technological Change

Presented by Dr Felicity Bell, Senior Lecturer and Deputy Director, Centre for the Future of the Legal Profession, UNSW and Vicki McNamara, Senior Research Associate, Centre for the Future of the Legal Profession, UNSW

How do you strike the balance of leading and embracing the new, while also providing the reassurance that your people need? Leadership has always been associated with dynamism and change, perhaps even more so today, yet legal organisations often struggle to know when and how to drive that change.

The model of a single visionary leader has been supplanted by a more collaborative leadership style in the form of leaders whose skill is getting the best out of everyone and creating highly engaged and motivated workforces. We hear a lot in leadership about bringing everyone along on the journey. When it comes to implementing tech, this is more vital than ever, but also more challenging. Yet there is a lot of uncertainty surrounding technology in law, including a sense that developments are occurring too quickly for us to keep up with. At times like this we look to leadership to set parameters, reassure and guide us.

In this interactive workshop, we review current knowledge on leadership in law, but also what we know about leading technological change projects of all kinds. We look at what the research shows us about the most effective leadership styles in both of these contexts. We assist participants to reflect on their own leadership style, what they can build on, and where they should productively seek change. Participants will plan out their own leadership strategy either in relation to a specific project, or more generally in light of their current responsibilities.