The academic forum organized by the Madrid Bar in collaboration with IE University

This year the Madrid Bar celebrated the 425th anniversary of its foundation during the reign of Philip II of Spain, and in June a series of festivities celebrated the event with intellectual and human enthusiasm: we are talking, for example, about forums of academic, historical debate, but also about plays.

I followed the Dean’s invitation, and participated in the Academic Forum organized in partnership with the prestigious Business Institute, Instituto de Empresa (IE). The agenda was very busy, the working day starting at 09.00 and ending in the evening at 20.00.

The topics were related to legislative changes, but also to how the law practice will be conducted in the future, more precisely, how to adapt to new technologies in order to remain competitive in the new post-pandemic paradigm.

Certainly artificial intelligence will profoundly affect the legal profession, but I think that – although society will change in form – the issues that lawyers will have to find solutions to will be fundamentally the same: people will get divorced, they will want to start firms, legacies will be debated…life will go on with its problems and solutions.

Two debates caught my attention in particular: that of June 16, 2022 on Jurisdiction in insurance and civil liability cases, as well as that of June 17, 2022 on the Rule of Law in the European Union: challenges and future prospects.

Why? Because – in this increasingly less predictable world – it is very important that we, lawyers, know the latest developments in jurisprudential matters in order to defend the rights of the beneficiaries of insurance policies in their unequal struggle as resources with the big companies of insurance in case of litigation, on the one hand.

And on the other hand, the evolution of the concept of the rule of law in a European Union that is at a real inflection point of its own as a project interested me, especially viewed from the perspective of the jurists of Old Europe.