From Legal Expertise to Value Creation: Christophe Roquilly’s View of the Profession’s Future
- Cosmonauts Team
- Jun 5
- 3 min read
As legal teams across Europe confront AI, transformation, and growing strategic demands, experience often proves more valuable than prediction.
Few voices bring that perspective with greater authority than Christophe Roquilly, Professor - Director, EDHEC Augmented Law Institute. Across nearly four decades, he has explored how law, technology, management, and strategy converge to create value far beyond legal expertise alone.
Later this month at Legal Innovators Europe – France, Christophe will join our In-House Day panel, ‘’Innovation Readiness: Getting Transformation Right the First Time’’, examining what enables transformation to endure and how organisations create the conditions for innovation to scale.
Ahead of the event, we spoke with him about the decisions that shaped his career, the evolving relationship between law and technology, and the capabilities that will matter most in the years ahead.
Scroll down for the full interview.
You have spent nearly four decades in legal education. What is the single professional decision you look back on as having shaped everything that came after?
In fact, two decisions: the first was to move away from purely legal research and focus on topics that lie at the intersection of law and technology, law and management, and law and strategy. This has opened up new avenues of opportunity for me. It has allowed me to undertake research and projects that have given me a deeper understanding of how the law and its application can influence the lives of businesses and their performance. And, I hope, to help ensure that, in France, the legal dimension is given its rightful place within organizations: namely, the creation of value. The second was taking on management and leadership responsibilities, which gave me a more systemic perspective and allowed me to develop skills I didn't have when I left law school.
After decades in this field, what still genuinely excites you about your work?
Creating and developing new projects with my team and seeing how they can make an impact in the legal and business world. Maintain extensive connections with the legal professions and the legal market, especially in today’s fast-paced environment. Continue to learn new things. And stay in touch with students because it’s always refreshing, and it’s important to support the younger generation as they build their professional futures.
What would you say to a junior lawyer who is uncertain about where the profession is heading?
I would tell him/her to stay confident if he/she’s motivated and wants to join the profession for the right reasons. Not to listen to claims like “tomorrow, we won’t need lawyers anymore—AI will do everything,” because that’s simply not what’s going to happen. But to prepare by understanding that legal expertise alone is no longer enough and that he/she must develop other types of skills: a deep understanding of what AI is and the ability to select and use the right tools; knowing how to work collaboratively (collective intelligence); being customer-centric rather than self-centered; being able to sell a customer sound judgment rather than just production capacity; and remaining constantly curious and open to innovation.
What drew you to the intersection of law and technology specifically, when most of your peers stayed within traditional areas of legal practice?
I have long been interested in and worked on the interactions between law and technology. As early as the 1990s, we had a dedicated research team focused on internet law (which, incidentally, included a colleague who now holds a key position at Google). Then, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, there was the international network of scholars in law and AI (we organized the French-American AI and Law conferences). What has always fascinated me about this interaction between law and technology is how the law, which generally takes a long time to develop, can address technological issues that often evolve very quickly. The famous “law is code / code is law” controversy is more relevant than ever.
What emerges most strikingly from Christophe Roquilly’s reflections is his long-held belief that the future of law belongs to those who cultivate fluency across disciplines. Decades before AI became the profession’s defining preoccupation, he was already recognising that legal expertise reaches its fullest expression when it contributes to the creation of institutional value.
Rather than subscribing to predictions that lawyers will soon be replaced by AI, he argues that the real challenge is learning how human expertise and technology can evolve together.
Innovation, in his view, is ultimately a human endeavour, one that depends as much on curiosity, adaptability and collaboration as it does on technology itself.
Join us in Paris this June as we continue the conversation with one of Europe’s most influential voices at the intersection of legal innovation and strategic leadership.
📅 June 24th - 25th, 2026
📍 Pullman Paris Tour Eiffel, Paris, France
🎟️ 𝗙𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗦𝗲𝗻𝗶𝗼𝗿 𝗟𝗮𝘄 𝗙𝗶𝗿𝗺 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗜𝗻-𝗛𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗲 𝗟𝗲𝗴𝗮𝗹 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗳𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹𝘀:
Comments