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

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.

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.

Law Librarian
Univerity of Windsor
Canada

Instructor
Criminology Department, Kwantlen Polytechnic University
Canada

Canada

Speakers on October 14

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.

Joseph Yav Katshung is a Professor of Law at the University of Lubumbashi (Democratic Republic of the Congo), a lawyer in the DRC, and founder of YAV & Associates. He also serves as an arbitrator with the Ouagadougou Arbitration, Mediation and Conciliation Centre (CAMC-O) and is a member of the Artificial Intelligence for Developing Countries Forum (AIFOD). The author of numerous books and articles, his recent work focuses on the impact of artificial intelligence on the legal profession and access to justice in Africa.

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.

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.

Canada

Canada

Assistant-Professor in law
La Rochelle Université
France

Canada

Canada