Agenda at a Glance

Data is the foundation. Without it, no technology investment will deliver the results it is capable of. Since 2009, Mark Smolik has built the DHL legal department on a P&L model founded on data aggregation and disciplined operations, bringing work in house, expanding into commercial contracts and regulatory operations, and spending the past three years deploying AI tools with IT and partners.

What makes a law firm AI native, and what does it take to design one? The session examines what makes AI native firms different, then turns to creation: entity design, management service organizations (MSO), alternative business structures (ABS), outside capital, non-lawyer ownership restrictions, and professional responsibility considerations on independence, supervision, and fee sharing. It separates what is settled, what is state specific, and what remains open.

With an AI-savvy senior lawyer at the helm, AI now outperforms the median human associate. Michael Showalter started a solo litigation boutique in March 2026 and often charges less than one tenth of what a traditional firm would cost. He shows what an AI-native firm looks like day to day and issues a challenge to every lawyer still waiting.

Using real briefs, Otto Zastrow and Michael Showalter show how Michael conducts legal research by prompting Claude in English with Midpage running underneath, rather than devising boolean searches, and how his AI tools cite-check his own briefs and flag opposing counsel's hallucinations and mischaracterizations.

Corporate legal departments have run on AI-native principles for years: fixed budgets, playbooks, automation, and success measured by outcomes rather than hours. If you designed your department today, how would you build it? In-house leaders share what stays in house, what moves out, what needs to change, and what they now expect from outside counsel and vendors.

Helen Fan gathered 50 people in Silicon Valley to wrestle with one question: what is an AI-native law firm? She shares where that conversation landed and offers her own answer through the Legal AI Value Stack, a framework refined through her hands-on 100-day agent experiment. The one thing that matters most in becoming AI-native is not the tools.

Can AI native firms win the trust, judgment, and relationships incumbents have built over decades? Can traditional firms defend their position against rivals with lower costs, fixed pricing, and capital to spend? The session looks at where AI-native models are gaining ground, where established firms still hold the advantage, and how the market may split, drawing on economics, client demand, regulation, and capital.

Incumbent firms, individual partners, and practices are asking what "AI-native" means for them. Rob Saccone and Jeff Sharer frame the real strategic choices: buy off-the-shelf AI, build your own capability, or rethink the model entirely. They dig into what changes the economics of legal work and what is just an old model with new software.

Legal help has always been rationed by price, and whole categories of legal work never get done because the cost is prohibitive. Ryan Walker built General Legal on a bet that this era is ending. If a high-quality contract review costs $500 and arrives before lunch, what changes for clients, for firms, and for everyone who could never afford a lawyer? He argues the second-order effects will be far bigger than the efficiency gains.

Outside investors are backing AI-native law firms built from scratch, putting hundreds of millions behind a model designed to compete with incumbents on speed and cost. Traditional firms are spending more on AI and R&D than ever, straining a partnership structure never built to fund heavy technology investment. The session examines how outside capital is entering legal services through new ownership structures and how the pressure to fund AI is changing the economics and independence of established firms.

The facilitators set the stage, frame the topics, and surface open questions. Then the room takes over. Attendees bring their ideas, experiences, and conclusions. The AI Native Law Community is still being defined, so every participant has something to add.