Professor Daniel Martin Katz and Nicola Shaver headline two days of substantive engagement in Johannesburg, 24–25 June 2026
The conversation has shifted. Across Africa’s boardrooms and legal departments, AI is no longer a horizon item — it is a present investment, a governance obligation, and a question that reaches into how organisations and their people work. How organisations align those three pressures, and lead responsibly through the complexity that follows, is now sitting at executive level.
That complexity lands differently depending on where you sit. For multinationals with significant African operations, it means reconciling group-level AI governance with local regulatory realities and workforce obligations. For growing businesses and emerging legal technology companies, it means building for clients navigating exactly that environment — under their own constraints, and at speed. Legal sits at the centre of all of it: governing, advising and leading simultaneously.
The Legal Innovation Summit 2026, hosted by CatalyNT at Summer Place in Johannesburg on 24 and 25 June, brings that full range of organisations into the same room. Now in its second year, it has established itself as Africa’s leading platform for serious, cross-sector engagement on legal innovation, responsible AI and the future of legal leadership — more valuable precisely because the participants span the ecosystem, from the largest legal and corporate departments on the continent to the founders building the next generation of legal infrastructure.
Professor Daniel Martin Katz of the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Chicago-Kent College of Law is among the world’s foremost authorities on legal AI, its governance and its implementation — with more than two decades shaping how legal services are delivered and transformed across law firms, corporate legal departments, courts and technology companies globally. At the Summit, he addresses the questions executives and innovators are now accountable for: what a credible AI governance framework actually requires, how responsible implementation is measured, and what legal leadership owes the organisations it serves when the standards are still being set.
Nicola Shaver, founder and CEO of Legaltech Hub, provides what internal teams rarely have: a rigorous, independent view of where the legal technology market is actually going. For organisations evaluating existing investments or building the next phase of their technology strategy, her perspective translates global market movement into decisions that can actually be made.
“The sequencing many organisations assumed — adopt first, govern later — is no longer available to them,” says Naomi Thompson, Founder of the Legal Innovation Summit and Managing Director of CatalyNT. “Investment decisions and governance questions are arriving simultaneously, inside organisations also navigating the very real consequences for how organisations and their people work. The executives and innovators who will define what responsible AI leadership looks like on this continent are making those calls right now. The Summit exists to ensure they are making them with the best available thinking — and with each other.”
The two-day programme moves from strategic framing to practical application across AI governance and accountability, digital sovereignty, legal operations transformation, how legal organisations and their people work, responsible innovation and agentic AI workflows — grounded in the regulatory, infrastructure and investment conditions African organisations are actually operating in. Sessions include an opening keynote by Professor Katz, a fireside conversation between Nicola Shaver and Aalia Manie, Partner and Director of Fusion at Webber Wentzel, an in-conversation session between Katz and Ashlin Perumall, Partner at Baker McKenzie, and a series of panels, workshops and masterclasses spanning private practice, corporate legal, technology, policy, academia and legal innovation.
The 2026 Summit introduces the inaugural Legal Innovation & Impact Awards Gala Dinner on 25 June, recognising individuals, teams and organisations — at every scale — delivering measurable innovation across the legal ecosystem, with deliberate focus on Africa’s growing LegalTech community and the founders developing solutions that improve legal service delivery, expand access and strengthen the commercial infrastructure organisations of all sizes depend on.
Delegate registrations and further information: https://legalinnovationsummit.co.za Places are limited.
Event details
Legal Innovation Summit 2026
24–25 June 2026 | Summer Place, Johannesburg, South Africa
Includes: Legal Innovation Summit and inaugural Legal Innovation & Impact Awards Gala Dinner
