Speakers

Discover Our Featured Speakers!

Visit this page regularly to discover new speakers as they are announced over the coming weeks.

Keynote Speakers

The Honourable Pierre J. Dalphond has been a Senator since June 2018. Born in Joliette, Quebec, he holds a degree in law from the University of Montreal and a master’s in philosophy from the University of Oxford. He served as a law clerk at the Supreme Court of Canada, was a partner at the law firm McCarthy Tétrault (1984–1995), and served as a judge on the Superior Court of Quebec (1995–2001) and the Quebec Court of Appeal (2002–2014). He is senior counsel at Stikeman Elliott, a member of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (Geneva), and a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (London). He is recognized by Chambers, Lexpert, and Best Lawyers as a leader in arbitration, mediation, and commercial litigation in Canada and abroad. In the Senate, he has held various leadership positions and sponsored several bills. He serves on the leadership team of the Independent Senators Group, the largest of the Senate caucuses.

Kim Thúy left Vietnam with the boat people at the age of ten and settled with her family in Quebec. With degrees in translation and law, the writer has worked as a seamstress, interpreter, lawyer and restaurant owner. Kim Thúy has received several awards, including the 2010 Governor General’s Literary Award, and was one of four finalists for the Nobel Alternatif in 2018. In 2023, she was named Chevalière de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres de la République Française. Her books, which have sold over 850,000 copies worldwide, have been translated into 31 languages and 43 countries and territories. Kim Thúy lives in Montreal and devotes all her time to writing.

Speakers on October 13

John Kleefeld is a professor and former dean of law at the University of New Brunswick and a member of the Law Society of British Columbia. He previously taught at the University of Saskatchewan, where he received the 2012 Provost’s Award for Outstanding Innovation in Learning and the 2015 Brightspace/STLHE Innovation Award in Teaching and Learning. Before that, he was at the University of British Columbia, where he taught for eight years and directed the Legal Research & Writing Program. He has also held short-term teaching and research positions at other institutions in Canada and abroad. He is the founding director of the Legal Citation Lab, which, among other things, aims to track and analyze all worldwide judicial citations to Donoghue v Stevenson, the case that heralded modern negligence law in much of the common-law world.

Mariya Badeva is a co-founder of Laws.Africa and an open-law expert who has worked to expand free access to African legal information since 2004. She helped build and support a network of open-access law portals across the African continent and has led major initiatives to digitise, consolidate, and publish legislation and case law. Her work bridges law, technology and institutional change, with deep expertise in legal information standards, editorial policy, and practical implementation with public institutions. She holds an LL.M in Law and Information Technology (Stockholm University) and has taught in this field.

Tom Macintosh Zheng is the co-founder of Courtready.ca and is licensed to practise law in Ontario and in England and Wales. Courtready.ca builds practical tools for Canadians who litigate and conducts original research on access to justice issues in Canada. His research on the rise of AI-generated case law in Canadian courts and tribunals, which is available on Courtready.ca, has been cited by Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED), the Court of Appeal of Quebec, Ontario's Law Society Tribunal, The Economist, CBC News, CTV News, and the Toronto Star. Tom is this year's recipient of the Ontario Bar Association's OBA Foundation Award, which recognizes exceptional contributions to the improvement of the justice system. He can be reached at tom@courtready.ca.

Dr. Gideon Christian is an Associate Professor and University Research Chair in AI and Law at the University of Calgary. Prior to joining the University of Calgary, he was a technology lawyer with the federal Department of Justice, where he deployed technology in high-profile litigation involving the Government of Canada. His research interests lie at the intersection of artificial intelligence and law and the legal implications of new and emerging technologies. His work has been cited by the Alberta Court of King’s Bench, the Ontario Court of Appeal, and the Supreme Court of Canada. He was recently the recipient of the 2026 Canadian Bar Association (Alberta) and Law Society of Alberta Distinguished Service Award in Legal Scholarship, the highest honour awarded to a legal academic in the province of Alberta. His work at the intersection of AI and law also earned him recognition by Canadian Lawyer magazine as one of Canada’s Top 25 Most Influential Lawyers. Dr. Christian serves on the boards of the Canadian Legal Information Institute (CanLII) and Lexum.

As Edward Cornell Law Librarian and Professor of the Practice, Kim directs Cornell Law Library and teaches two Cornell Law School courses: an experiential seminar, Critical Evaluation of Legal Information; and a writing seminar, Comparative Copyright Law and Knowledge Protection. She also serves on the Executive Committee of Cornell Law School’s Center for Law and AI. Kim’s research interests include information and algorithmic literacy; access to legal information as access to justice; data appropriation and AI ethics; copyright and licensing in law and scholarship; and information equity and knowledge decolonization. Before entering librarianship, Kim worked as a research lawyer in Canada. Since entering academia, Kim represented library associations in three pro bono interventions before the Supreme Court of Canada and delivered submissions on access to primary law before a parliamentary committee. Kim’s professional service includes work with the American Association of Libraries; the Canadian Association of Law Libraries/l’association canadienne de bibliothèques de droit; the Association of American Law Schools; and the Canadian Bar Association.

Marc van Opijnen (1963) studied administrative, international and European law at the Universities of Groningen and Leiden. Since the early days of the internet, he has been fascinated by its potential to improve access to legal information. He has worked with the Legal Aid Council, the Council for the Judiciary and the Ministry of the Interior’s Publication Office of the Netherlands. In 2014 he earned his PhD at the University of Amsterdam on the online accessibility of court decisions. Marc connects IT professionals, legal experts and policymakers, and has been a driving force behind initiatives such as the European Case Law Identifier (ECLI).

Matt Lynch is the Lawmaker Service Owner at The National Archives in the UK, leading the development and operation of the Lawmaker legislation drafting service since 2017. A former Parliamentary Counsel in the Scottish Government, he has over 20 years' experience working with legislation and is a regular speaker on legislative drafting technology, LegalDocML, rules as code, and AI.

Jim Mangiafico is a software developer and consultant based in Washington DC. A former attorney, he assists governments with the digital representation, organization and publication of legal documents and data. He works regularly with The National Archives of the UK, the Law Reform Commission of Ireland, and the United States House of Representatives.

Valentine Fau holds a PhD in Law from Université de Montréal. As Head of Research at the Institut québécois de réforme du droit et de la justice (IQRDJ), she has contributed to numerous research projects covering a wide range of topics, including children’s rights, mental health interventions, consent to care, legal information and the sociology of law. Her work draws on a range of analytical approaches, including comparative, empirical, legal and sociological research. She coordinates the Simplifier la loi un jeu d’enfant ? project as part of an interdisciplinary research team bringing together expertise in law and education.

A master’s student in law at Université Laval in Quebec City, Élise Cardoso has contributed to the Simplifier la loi un jeu d’enfant ? project since its inception, first as an intern and now as a research assistant at the Institut québécois de réforme du droit et de la justice (IQRDJ). She also contributes to other major research initiatives, including the Lexis project.

Canada Ivan Mokanov is the President of Lexum, an organization wholly owned by CanLII. Lexum offers a complete range of online publishing and research solutions for legal documents. Its SaaS products are designed to serve lawyers, courts and publishers and are used by hundreds of legal institutions to provide quick and efficient access to legal information. Lexum is a founding member of the global free access to law movement. Ivan has 25 years of experience in the area of online legal publishing. He is a graduate of the Sofia University (B.C.L.), the University of Montréal (LL.M.) and HEC Montréal (MBA).

Legislation Data Service Owner
The National Archives (United Kingdom)
United Kingdom Catherine Tabone is the Legislation Data Service Owner at the National Archives in the UK, responsible for the legislation.gov.uk data strategy. She has over 20 years’ experience in online legal data publishing, leads the legislation.gov.uk data service improvement programme and promotes UK legislation data re-use.

Makoto Nakamura is Professor in the Faculty of Engineering at Niigata Institute of Technology, Japan. He received his PhD in Information Science from JAIST in 2004. Before taking up his current position, he worked at the Japan Legal Information Institute (JaLII), Graduate School of Law, Nagoya University, where he was involved in legal information systems, structured legal documents, and the international dissemination of Japanese legal information. His current research focuses on natural language processing and legal informatics, particularly computational methods for comparing and aligning legal information across different jurisdictions and legal traditions. He also conducts research on the simulation of language evolution.

Pénélope Roussel is Team Lead, Special Projects at CanLII. She holds an LL.B. (2015) from the Université de Montréal and has been a member of the Quebec Bar since 2018. At CanLII, Pénélope works on initiatives at the intersection of law and technology, including the development of new legal content collections and training programs. She coordinates CanLII’s initiative to explore integrating Indigenous and Aboriginal legal content on the platform, in collaboration with Indigenous organizations and legal practitioners in Canada. Prior to joining CanLII, Pénélope practiced law with organizations dedicated to strengthening access to justice and empowering individuals and communities to build their legal knowledge and skills.

Aki Shima is a professor in the Faculty of Law and the Graduate School of Law at Asahi University, specializing in basic jurisprudence. She holds master’s degrees in law from the Graduate School of Law, Hokkaido University, and in Criminology and Social Research from the University of York, UK. She previously held academic positions including an assistant professor at the Graduate School of Law, Nagoya University, and an associate professor at Niigata University. She has taught courses including Sociology of Law, Philosophy of Law, Constitutional Law of Japan, Information Literacy, and Academic Writing and Research at these universities. Her areas of expertise are criminology, philosophy of law, and legal informatics. Her recent research interests focus particularly on theories of responsibility and punishment, the role and nature of prisons, and citizen participation in the justice system.

Law Librarian
Univerity of Windsor
Canada Mita Williams is the Law Librarian at the University of Windsor’s Law Library. She frequently speaks and writes about libraries, technology, and how to imagine better futures with others. She blogs at “Librarian of Things,” has a newsletter called The University of Winds, and hosts a weekly programme on CJAM-FM called Field Trip.

Instructor
Criminology Department, Kwantlen Polytechnic University
Canada Originally from Vancouver, Meyers has studied law in Canada and the UK and practiced in Canada and the US. He is most well-known for his research and commentary at the intersection of law and politics domestically and internationally, as well as the creativity, iconoclasm, and insistent interdisciplinarity of his research.

After graduating from McGill Law School in 2004, Professor Meyers was admitted to the Bar of the State of New York and the Law Society of BC. After completing his doctorate at the LSE, Professor Meyers taught across the mandatory first-year JD at UBC’s Allard Hall, Dalhousie’s Schulich School of Law & at Thomson Rivers University. He is currently teaching in Criminology Department at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.

Sarah A. Sutherland is a researcher and consultant specializing in legal informatics, data strategy, and the intersections of law, technology, and information. She is principal consultant at Parallax Information Consulting, where her work focuses on integrating data-driven approaches into legal organizations' planning and operations. Her book, Legal Data and Information in Practice: How Data and the Law Interact (Routledge, 2022), examines the ways data shapes, and is shaped by, legal systems. Previously, she served as President and CEO of the Canadian Legal Information Institute (CanLII), where she oversaw the largest open-access legal information platform in Canada. She has been recognized for her contributions to the field with the Fastcase 50 award (2022) and the Dennis Marshall Award for Excellence in Law Librarianship from the Canadian Association of Law Libraries (2023). She is currently pursuing a PhD in Law at the University of Edinburgh, with an anticipated completion date of 2028.

Amy Salyzyn is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, Common Law Section at the University of Ottawa. Amy is an expert in the area of legal ethics, lawyer regulation, the use of technology in the delivery of legal services and access to justice. At the University of Ottawa, she teaches Torts as well as upper year seminars in legal ethics and the use AI in the legal profession. Amy is called to the bar in Ontario and is currently the Board Chair of the Canadian Association for Legal Ethics. Before coming to the University of Ottawa, Amy served as a judicial law clerk at the Court of Appeal for Ontario and practiced at a Toronto litigation boutique. Her litigation practice included a wide variety of civil and commercial litigation matters including breach of contract, tort, professional negligence, securities litigation and employment law as well as administrative law matters. Amy received her J.S.D. and LL.M. from Yale Law School and her J.D. from the University of Toronto Law School, where she was awarded the Dean’s Key upon graduation. In 2026, Amy received the Law Society Medal from the Law Society of Ontario and was named as a “Changemaker” in the 2026 edition of Canadian Lawyer's Top 25 Most Influential Lawyers.

Speakers on October 14

Nicolas Garneau is AI Lead at CAIJ. Specializing in natural language processing for legal information, he works on the development and integration of AI solutions designed to improve access to legal knowledge and support the work of legal professionals. He plays a key role in the organization’s strategic direction, experimentation, and implementation of AI technologies.

Vincent Gautrais is a full professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Montreal and a researcher at the CRDP, a center he directed for 8 years (2014–2022). Since 2015, he has held the L.R. Wilson Chair in Information Technology and E-Commerce Law. Prior to that, he held the University of Montreal Chair of Excellence in Security and E-Business Law (2003–2015). Since his doctoral work (dissertation completed in 1998, ranked among the top 5% of dissertations), ranging from e-commerce to artificial intelligence, he has been teaching and conducting research on the interactions between law and technology. He is also a member of the Quebec Bar. For more information, visit www.gautrais.com.

Nate Russell, LL.B., CIPP/C, AIGP (he/him), is Legal & Innovation Counsel at Courthouse Libraries BC, where he develops legal resources and programs, manages the Clicklaw Wikibooks publishing platform, and serves as in-house counsel and privacy officer. His work focuses on making legal information more accessible and useful to the public and the legal profession, including through collaborative publishing. A former civil litigator and family lawyer, Nate brings experience in publishing, digital media and communications, with particular interests in privacy, AI governance, and access to justice. He is a graduate of Dalhousie Law School. Outside work, he is a dad of three and an amateur dendrology enthusiast.

Canada Brenda Alm spent a decade as a research librarian at national law firms before joining CanLII in 2023. As Manager, Partnerships and Content, she leads the acquisition of legal commentary for CanLII's open publishing programs, seeking out both original work from Canadian legal professionals and existing commentary that belongs alongside the case law and legislation already on CanLII. That work runs on partnerships and funding in equal measure, built on the premise that legal knowledge pooled across the profession, made accessible and discoverable, benefits everyone.

Canada Pierre-Paul Lemyre is one of the co-founders of Lexum and has spent more than 25 years at the intersection of law, technology and access to legal information. He has played a key role in the development of CanLII and in Lexum’s evolution into a leading provider of legal information technology to courts, tribunals, governments and other legal institutions in Canada and internationally. His work has spanned strategy, business development, legal publishing and, more recently, the opportunities and challenges created by AI for legal information. He now provides strategic consulting services to organizations working in legal technology, publishing and access to law.

Yusufjon Khujanazorov is a lawyer, economist, legal practitioner, and Senior Lecturer at Tashkent State University of Economics, Uzbekistan. He has more than 20 years of experience across law, economics, public administration, and business. He holds degrees in Economics from Tashkent State University of Economics and a Master’s degree in Business Law from Tashkent State University of Law. His professional experience spans public institutions and private practice, and he founded YUBISI Law Office in 2023, where he serves as Director. His academic and professional interests include law and economics, the digital platform economy, AI governance, competition law, access to justice, and adaptive legal institutions. His current research examines how legal institutions can adapt to the digital platform economy through a comparative analysis of Uzbekistan and Canada.

Andrew Mowbray is Professor of Law and Information Technology in the Law Faculty at the University of Technology Sydney and Co-Founder of the Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII). He is Executive Director of the AustLII Foundation Limited which is a charitable public company that operates the AustLII service. Andrew is the principal software author at AustLII and wrote the Sino search engine and LawCite citator. Andrew was awarded the Justice Medal from the NSW Law and Justice Foundation in 2014 and was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in the 2025 Australia Day Honours.

Greg Kempe is the co-founder and CTO of Laws.Africa, where he leads the development of large-scale legal information systems that provide free, structured access to legislation, case law, and government gazettes across multiple African jurisdictions.

A software engineer by background, Greg focuses on the pragmatic application of technology and AI to improve how legal information is created, maintained, and accessed, particularly in resource-constrained environments. His work sits at the intersection of public infrastructure, legal systems, and sustainable business models for open access.

Prior to Laws.Africa, Greg worked at OpenUp, a civic technology organisation, and Amazon Web Services (AWS). He holds an MSc in Computer Science from the University of British Columbia.

Dayna Cornwall, BA, BEd, MLIS, is Project Manager of the National Self-Represented Litigants Project. The NSRLP is a national registered charitable organization that engages in access to justice research, the development of resources for self-represented litigants, and systemic advocacy and civil justice reform. Dayna worked previously in public and academic libraries, education, and research, and brings a passion for information literacy to the NSRLP. She has overseen various initiatives including the Family Law at the Library pilot program; the Virtual Hearings Research Project; and the ongoing and expanding School for Family Litigants.

Canada Jennifer Leitch, JD, LLM, PhD, is the Executive Director of the National Self-Represented Litigants Project. The NSRLP is a national registered charitable organization that engages in access to justice research, the development of resources for self-represented litigants, and systemic advocacy and civil justice reform. Jennifer is also the Associate Director of and Assistant Professor in the Ethics, Society & Law program at Trinity College, University of Toronto. She researches and writes in the fields of access to justice, dispute processes, and legal ethics. She also practiced civil litigation at Goodmans LLP in Toronto for 10 years.

United-States

Philip Chung is Professor at Macquarie Law School and Managing Director of the AustLII Foundation and its associated international legal information projects, including AsianLII, CommonLII and WorldLII. He jointly oversees the strategic and technical development of AustLII's services and research initiatives. His research interests include legal information systems, the computerisation of law, legal research technologies, legal AI, and the policies and technologies that support free access to law. He was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in the 2025 Australia Day Honours.

Gillian practises international arbitration and public international law in Paris. She is the Founding President of Deep Lex, a non-profit initiative that provides information and guidance on AI to the legal community and has built an open-access legal database dedicated to AI. Her work connects AI-related disputes, legislation and professional guidance to make this emerging body of law more accessible. She is currently pursuing AI-related studies at MIT Sloan, she also speaks regularly on the legal implications of AI and is a member of the ICC Task Force on AI in Arbitration.

Melanie leads Legora’s Legal Data function, and previously worked in strategy at RELX. She spent 8 years at McKinsey working across healthcare, government and the private sector; and previously worked as an M&A lawyer and in politics in Australia.

Sylvia Kwakye, PhD, is a Language and Data Scientist at the Legal Information Institute (LII) at Cornell Law School, specializing in legal informatics and language technologies. She builds the features that make the law more discoverable for the public, including citations, definitions, linked entities, and search. She also designs and leads applied graduate research projects in which student teams put new AI tools to work on real LII systems, testing what genuinely advances public access to law before it is adopted for production.

Sara Frug is Co-Director of the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School, where she has been working from time immemorial. She focuses on features which elucidate the connections between the law and the world and projects which use evolving technologies to make the law more understandable.

Dorsaf El Mekki is Director of Product at CAIJ, where she leads the strategy and development of digital solutions aimed at modernizing access to legal information. Specializing in digital strategy and organizational transformation, she works at the intersection of technological innovation and business needs. She is passionate about supporting change within complex organizations and designing tools that provide practical support to the legal community.

David Wasylciw is the founder of OpenNWT, a civic technology project based in the Northwest Territories that makes government and legal information more open, searchable and accessible. OpenNWT's tools cover Hansard debates, bills and voting history, Gazette publications, annual statutes, consolidated legislation and regulations, making complex public records easier to find and use.

David is also a policy consultant and software developer specializing in information management applications for public and private sector clients. He serves on several boards, including the Canadian Open Data Society, and has a particular interest in how structured open data can improve access to trusted legal information in smaller jurisdictions.

Sarah Glassmeyer is Director of Data Curation at Legaltech Hub, where she leads the data collection and research function for the legal technology industry's leading market intelligence platform. A law librarian and legal technologist, Sarah has spent almost two decades working to make legal knowledge more accessible—from creating open-access legal education resources to examining barriers to accessing legal data during a research fellowship at the Harvard Law Library Innovation Lab to her current work structuring how the legal tech market is organized. As an expert in the legal tech market landscape, she now provides support for Legaltech Hub's advisory and content offerings, helping law firms, legal departments, and solution providers make informed decisions. Sarah brings both the strategic perspective of someone who has worked across the legal industry, and the pragmatic hands-on sensibility of a tech builder. Known for intellectual rigor and irreverent candor in conversations about legal tech, she has been named to the Fastcase 50, is an ABA Legal Rebel, and a Fellow of the College of Law Practice Management.

Ana Rogers-Butterworth est bibliothécaire de liaison à la Bibliothèque de droit Nahum Gelber de l’Université McGill, à Montréal, où elle a développé le programme de compétences informationnelles destiné aux étudiants de premier cycle en droit et offre des formations spécialisées en recherche dans divers domaines du droit. Elle enseigne un cours intensif sur la recherche juridique et l’intelligence artificielle et travaille en étroite collaboration avec le corps professoral afin de soutenir les initiatives de recherche et de publication savante. Ses intérêts de recherche portent notamment sur la publication juridique en libre accès, les outils d’intelligence artificielle appliqués au droit et la pédagogie de la recherche juridique. Elle est également cofondatrice de FALLCan (Free Association for Legal Literacy Canada), une organisation ouverte qui vise à mettre en réseau les enseignants en recherche et rédaction juridiques, à favoriser l’entraide entre collègues et à faire progresser les pratiques pédagogiques novatrices au Canada.

Craig Newton is co-Director of the Legal Information Institute. A 2007 graduate of Cornell Law School and a member of the California bar, Craig previously spent six years in the San Diego office of a global law firm. Now, his role at Cornell's LII requires him to keep one eye on LII's original content and the other on placating University bureaucracy.

Miriam Cohen is Director of the Centre de recherche en droit public and a specialist in international human rights law. A graduate of the Université de Montréal Faculty of Law, she holds a doctorate in international law from Leiden University and has also pursued graduate studies in law at Harvard and Cambridge. Before entering academia, she served as a legal officer at the International Court of Justice and previously worked with the Appeals Chamber and Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. A professor and researcher, she currently leads two interdisciplinary research projects in international human rights law and collaborates with several international research teams. She has also served as an expert adviser in international law to the Republic of Panama before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. She is the author of Realizing Reparative Justice for International Crimes: From Theory to Practice, published by Cambridge University Press, and her research has been widely published in Canada and internationally.

Isabela Pocovnicu is product manager at Lexum and a member of the Quebec Bar since 2018. A lawyer by training, she began her career in family and immigration law before moving into legal technology. Since joining Lexum in 2016, she has worked on projects that combine law, technology, and user experience, managing the full product lifecycle and contributing to tools that make legal information more accessible and practical. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Concordia University and a Bachelor of Laws from the Université de Montréal.

Henry Laville is a PhD candidate pursuing a joint doctoral degree at Université de Montréal and Université Sorbonne Paris Nord. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Law and a Master’s degree in General Private Law from Université Paris II Panthéon-Assas. From 2018 to 2020, he served as a judicial assistant in the Office of the First President of the French Court of Cassation, where he worked notably on open data initiatives related to case law. His research focuses on the role of standards, particularly technical standards, in implementing personal data protection. He has received several scholarships, including the Obvia Emerging Scholars Support Scholarship (2023), the L.R. Wilson Chair Excellence Scholarship in Digital Normativities and Digital Law (2022), and the Aubrey-Vincent-Senez Donor Scholarship in Business Law (2022). He is a member of the L.R. Wilson Chair, the Centre de recherche en droit public, and the Obvia Student Community. In these capacities, he has contributed to several research projects, including ADAJ Project No. 27 on participatory governance of digital law (2024) and the STRATÉGIA project on the transformation and enhancement of public transit network integration (2024). He also teaches undergraduate law courses at Université de Montréal.

Luka is Coordinator of the L.R. Wilson Chair. He is currently pursuing a PhD under the supervision of Professor Pierre Noreau, with research focusing on legal education and pedagogy, particularly the influence of legal ideology on approaches to teaching law. Former President of the Graduate Law Students’ Association (2023–2025), he holds a master’s degree in information technology law from Université de Montréal, as well as a dual bachelor’s degree in law and public administration from Aix-Marseille Université. Above all, he is passionate about cinema.

Assistant-Professor in law
La Rochelle Université
France