WAVE Emerging legal trends in digitalisation

 

Digitalisation is transforming how businesses operate and how they are held to account. As technology becomes increasingly embedded in products and processes, it is changing how businesses operate – often challenging long-held assumptions about responsibility, control and coordination.

 

This shift introduces new forms of risk, ranging from AI tools that act autonomously to user experiences that raise questions about fairness and control. However, not all this risk stems from fast-moving technologies. Some of the most persistent risks arise from structures which businesses rely on every day. In tech supply chains, operational risk can result from contract terms or technical dependencies that need to adapt to this transformation. In regulatory planning, the challenge lies in managing current fragmentation while anticipating how future legal shifts might disrupt business models. Class actions, meanwhile, are increasingly testing how digital businesses operate – targeting both the outcomes they produce and the design of the interfaces and processes behind them.

 

The first edition of WAVE brings together insights from senior legal and business leaders to explore the practical implications of this transformation. It examines the governance demands posed by emerging technologies such as agentic AI and hyper-personalised systems, where decisions are made at speed and scale. It also unpacks how structural exposure accumulates through supply chains, contract frameworks and regulatory divergence – and how business and legal strategies must adapt.