AI & the Legal ProfessionCenter on the Legal Profession
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About the project · Project leads

Two readings of the same transformation

This project brings together Anthea Roberts and David B. Wilkins to read how AI is reshaping the legal profession through complementary lenses. One reads AI and complex decision-making; the other reads the legal profession as a century-long institutional system. Together they see things neither sees alone.

David B. Wilkins
Project lead

David B. Wilkins

Lester Kissel Professor of Law · Vice Dean for Global Initiatives on the Legal Profession · Faculty Director, Center on the Legal Profession, Harvard Law School

David B. Wilkins is the Lester Kissel Professor of Law, Vice Dean for Global Initiatives on the Legal Profession, and Faculty Director of the Center on the Legal Profession at Harvard Law School. For decades he has studied the legal profession as a system — who enters it, how careers unfold, how firms make money, and how the profession globalizes and transforms. He has written over 80 articles on the legal profession and directs major studies including Globalization, Lawyers, and Emerging Economies and After the JD, a ten-year longitudinal study of lawyers' careers. In 2007 he co-founded Harvard Law School's Executive Education Program, and in 2012 he was elected a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Harvard Law faculty profile → Center on the Legal Profession →
Anthea Roberts
Project lead

Anthea Roberts

Professor, Australian National University · Visiting Professor, Harvard Law School · Founder, Dragonfly Thinking

Anthea Roberts is a Professor at the Australian National University and a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School. She is an interdisciplinary researcher and legal scholar who focuses on new ways of thinking about complex and evolving global fields. Anthea is also the Founder of Dragonfly Thinking, which develops AI tools and techniques for complex decision-making. The League of Scholars has named Anthea the world's leading international law scholar, Australia's leading international law scholar, and Australia's leading law scholar. Her books Is International Law International? (Oxford University Press, 2017) and Six Faces of Globalization (Harvard University Press, 2021, co-authored with Nicolas Lamp) have won multiple international awards, including being listed on the Best Books of the Year by the Financial Times and Fortune Magazine.

Harvard Law faculty profile → Dragonfly Thinking →

The series pairs each essay with an interactive visualisation, so the argument and the evidence architecture travel together. The lenses are being tested and refined — not finished pronouncements.

Read the series introduction→