AI Strategy for Legal Leaders
A Practical Guide for Strategic Leadership in the Era of Generative AI
AI Strategy for Legal Leaders is a self-paced online course designed to help legal executives develop the skills to lead on the strategic, technical, and organizational dimensions of generative AI. Participants will gain a deep understanding of generative AI technology and governance principles to evolve their roles from risk managers to strategic partners for the C-Suites in driving responsible AI adoption within their organizations.
Built for legal executives with a basic understanding of generative AI and some prior experience using generative AI tools like ChatGPT, this course offers the frameworks and fluency needed to separate hype from reality—and turn insight into leadership.
New for Cohort 2: Explore Legal Engineering in Practice
In early 2027, participants will receive complimentary access to an optional module on Legal Engineering and Organizational Transformation. Building on the course’s focus on AI technology, governance, and enablement, the module explores how legal professionals can help redesign workflows, services, and teams around AI.
Enrolling your team? Groups of 5+ receive 20% off!
Program Format
Key Dates
Course Opens 11/16/2026
Course Closes 10/31/2027
Program Fee
General Tuition: $1,200
20% discount available for Stanford affiliates, nonprofit, and government employees.
Enrolling your team? Groups of 5+ receive 20% off!*
Contact executive@law.stanford.edu for more information. *Discounts cannot be combined.
Course Duration
Approximately 8 hours, fully online and self-paced.
Certificate of Completion
Issued by Stanford Law School Executive Education
This program has been approved for up to 8 hours of California MCLE credit.
Access to Legal AI Tools
Explore legal AI tools firsthand with access to Harvey for the full course duration and, new for Cohort 2, one month of access to Legora.
Contact Us
Questions? Contact executive@law.stanford.edu.
Program Highlights
Technical Fluency
Learn how Large Language Models (LLMs) work, why they “hallucinate,” and what executives need to know about AI jargon (RAG, reinforcement learning, fine-tuning, agent).
Lead with Strategy
Translate technical and legal insight into practical guidance for executive teams.
Smart Governance
Dive into the legal and regulatory risks of generative AI, including AI safety, security, IP, privacy, and compliance.
Drive Enablement
Equip your team to confidently and responsibly integrate generative AI into everyday workflows.
Learn from the Front Lines
Hear directly from AI leaders across tech, law, and business in exclusive expert interviews.
NEW for Cohort 2!
What does it take to move from experimenting with AI to redesigning how legal work gets done?
In early 2027, Cohort 2 participants will receive access to an optional module on Legal Engineering and Organizational Transformation, exploring how legal professionals can reshape workflows, services, and teams around AI. The module will include:
- A business school–style case study on digital transformation within a legal department.
- A legal engineering demonstration led by an industry expert.
- Live virtual office hours with the professionals featured in the case study and demonstration.
- A virtual practitioner panel featuring members of the Stanford Legal Engineering Academy’s founding advisory board.
Who Should Participate
AI Strategy for Legal Leaders is relevant for all legal professionals, including:
- General Counsel and Chief Legal Officers
- Law Firm Attorneys and Executives
- Nonprofit and Government Leaders
- Heads of Compliance or Privacy
- Legal Operations Leaders
- Professionals who advise executive teams on emerging technologies
Bring Your Team
Build shared AI fluency across your legal team. Develop a common language for evaluating opportunities, navigating risks, and turning AI strategy into coordinated action. Enroll 5+ team members and receive 20% off tuition!
Contact executive@law.stanford.edu for more information.
Note: Participants should have basic knowledge of how generative AI works and some prior experience using generative AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT) to get the most out of the program.
Curriculum
The course is structured around three pillars:
Generative AI Technology
This module unpacks how LLMs and related generative AI technologies actually work—equipping legal leaders with the vocabulary and conceptual grounding needed to engage credibly with technologists and product teams. Topics include:
- Demystifying AI Jargon
- Understanding and reducing hallucinations and other common shortcomings
- Agentic AI, reasoning capabilities, and emerging technical risks
AI Governance
This module explores the legal, regulatory, cybersecurity and ethical challenges surrounding the use of generative AI—giving legal leaders the tools to evaluate risks, draft policy, and guide responsible AI adoption.
- Privacy, IP, and indemnity issues in GenAI
- Legal, compliance and cybersecurity risk frameworks for high-stakes use cases
- LLM terms of use and control over data opt-out decisions
- Compliance with global AI regulations (e.g., GDPR, EDPB)
AI Enablement
This module focuses on how legal leaders can help their teams and organizations confidently adopt generative AI tools—by understanding obstacles, encouraging experimentation, and building trust with AI.
- Leading legal teams in AI adoption
- Hands-on demos of AI features and capabilities
- Metrics for legal innovation and cross-functional impact
- Common barriers to adoption and how to overcome them
- How to speak the language of the CMO, CFO, and CRO
- Interviews with CLOs, GCs, and law firm leaders on real-world strategy
Instructors & Contributors
Wei Chen
Wei Chen is the Chief Legal Officer and EVP, Regulatory Strategy, at Infoblox, where she leads the company’s global legal, regulatory, and public policy strategy. . In this role, Wei and her team partner with governments, standards bodies, and industry coalitions worldwide to help shape cybersecurity policy and regulatory frameworks. Wei has been a driving force behind Infoblox’s engagement in major cybersecurity initiatives, including updates to NIST SP 800-81r3 on secure DNS deployment, the European Union’s NIS2 rules on critical infrastructure security, and the Cyber Pilot Programs strengthening cyber defenses for U.S. K-12 schools. Wei is also responsible for Infoblox's legal, compliance, and governance programs, advising on corporate governance, IP, employment, AI, privacy, and other legal and compliance matters, while driving innovation and scaling operations. Wei is deeply engaged in academia and AI research. As the founder of The Atticus Project, a nonprofit organization advancing AI and legal research, she led the creation of three large-scale, expert-annotated datasets, and co-authored and contributed to academic research papers published at leading machine learning conferences, including NeurIPS, ACL, and MLNLP. Wei is also the course creator and instructor for two executive education courses: AI Strategy for Legal Leaders with Stanford Law School Executive Education, and GenAI for the Legal Profession with Berkeley Law Executive Education. Prior to joining Infoblox in 2022, Wei served as the Senior Vice President and Associate General Counsel, Strategic Transactions, at Salesforce, and Assistant General Counsel at Sun Microsystems, after her private practice at Skadden and Cooley. Wei is the founder of The Atticus Project, a nonprofit advancing AI research in the legal field through expert-annotated training datasets, such as CUAD, MAUD, and ACORD.
Nick Abrahams
Nick Abrahams is a futurist and keynote speaker. He was a partner at the international law firm Norton Rose Fulbright for over twenty years, spending the last ten years in global technology and innovation leadership roles. Nick is a LinkedIn Top Voice in Technology. He is a Professor at Bond University where he researches high performance in legal services and teaches a successful lawyer coaching & innovation program, The Breakthrough Lawyer. Nick co-created the world's first AI-enabled privacy chatbot and won the Financial Times newspaper's Asia Innovator of the Year Award. He is a successful entrepreneur. He is a Co-founder of Lawpath, an AI-enabled online legal solution which has served over 500,000 customers and recently received an investment of $10 Million from a major bank. Nick is on the boards of the Vodafone Foundation and world-leading genetics research organisation, the Garvan Foundation. He is the host of the popular podcast Web3 goes Mainstream and the author of the Amazon best-selling books Big Data, Big Responsibilities and Digital Disruption. Before his legal career, Nick graduated from University of Southern California Film School and was a Creative Executive at Warner Brothers in Los Angeles working on the hit shows ER and The West Wing.
Michael A. Gerstenzang
Michael A. Gerstenzang is Senior Partner at Cleary Gottlieb. Michael maintains an active practice focusing on private investment funds, including forming and advising private equity, credit, growth, special situations and infrastructure funds, as well as other types of "alternative" investment vehicles. Innovation and the integration of technology in legal services have been key initiatives championed by Michael, including the firm's recent acquisition of generative AI solutions company Springbok AI and the creation of ClearyX, which builds bespoke technology solutions, in 2022. Michael joined the firm in 1992 and became a partner in 1999. He was elected Managing Partner in 2017 and served through 2025. From 1994 through 1996, he was resident in the firm's Brussels office.
Avi Gesser
Avi Gesser is Co-Chair of the Data Strategy & Security Group at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP. His practice focuses on advising major companies on a wide range of cybersecurity, privacy and AI matters. Mr. Gesser regularly advises boards and senior executives on governance, risk, and liability issues relating to cybersecurity and AI. Mr. Gesser is also a primary author of the firm’s Data Blog and the architect of the Firm’s Data Portal, an online tool that helps clients quickly assess and comply with their cyber breach notification obligations and tracks AI regulatory developments. Mr. Gesser previously served as Counsel to the Chief of the Fraud Section, Criminal Division at the Department of Justice.
Marie Oh Huber
Marie Oh Huber is an experienced board director of both public and private companies and tech executive. Until 2024, she served as Chief Legal Officer at eBay Inc. (NASDAQ), and prior to that, held the same role at Agilent Technologies (NYSE). Marie serves on the board of Portland General Electric (NYSE), where she chairs the Nominating and Governance Committee and is a member of the Audit and Risk Committee. She previously served on the boards of Adevinta (formerly ADE), the James Campbell Company, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, and the University Council of Yale. She is a Fellow at the Stanford Rock Center on Corporate Governance, a Lecturer at Stanford Law School, and a board member of the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. Marie holds a B.A. from Yale University, a J.D. from Northwestern University, and also studied at the London School of Economics.
Michele Lau
Michele Lau is Executive Vice President and Chief Legal Officer for McKesson Corporation. As a member of the Executive Operating Team, Michele leads McKesson’s General Counsel Organization, which consists of the legal, government affairs, compliance, brand, marketing & communications, enterprise quality management, events and corporate governance functions for the company and its subsidiaries. Michele joined McKesson in 2008 and served in a variety of leadership roles, including as Senior Vice President, Corporate Secretary & Associate General Counsel from 2018 to 2021. From 2021 to 2023, Michele was appointed as Chief Legal Officer & Corporate Secretary for GoDaddy, where she was responsible for the company’s global law, compliance, internal audit, government & industry affairs, corporate sustainability & ESG, and security, safety & resilience functions. Earlier in her career, Michele was a corporate attorney for Morrison & Foerster LLP and served as Coordinator for International Relations for the Foreign Affairs Division of the City of Wakayama, Japan. Michele co-chairs the National Asian Pacific Bar Association's In-House Counsel Network and serves on the board of directors of the Asian Pacific Fund. Michele holds a Bachelor of Arts from Wesleyan University and a Juris Doctor from Cornell Law School.
Irene Liu
Irene Liu is the Executive Director of the Stanford Law School AI Initiative, which serves as a hub for the law school’s interdisciplinary work in artificial intelligence. Liu brings experience across academia, government, and technology to guide the Initiative’s work in teaching, training, research, partnerships, and public engagement in artificial intelligence. Prior to joining Stanford Law, she served as an AI advisor to the California Senate and as an advisor to UC Berkeley School of Law’s AI Institute, where she also taught on emerging topics in generative AI. She is the founder and CEO of Hypergrowth GC, where she advises technology CEOs and executive teams on strategic and legal decisions to support company growth. Through these and other roles, Liu has long focused on the governance, business, and policy implications of technology, with an emphasis on responsible AI development and deployment.
Belinda Luu
Belinda Luu is a Senior Counsel at Kaiser Permanente. Ms. Luu has been a strategic leader of AI and data governance and management with over 20 years of experience in AI, digital transformation, data, complex technology transactions, AI & Data governance & management, and intellectual property. Ms. Luu leads the AI Legislative and Regulatory and Analysis Team at Kaiser, and sits on the State of California Data Exchange Framework Policy and Procedures Committee. She was nominated for the "Women To Watch 2020" Award From Business Insurance By Kaiser Permanente's Chief Data Officer, and received the American Bar Association Outstanding Leadership Award for leading the ABA Copyrights & Emerging Technology Committee.
Saba Legesse
Saba Legesse is Vice President of Legal at Infoblox where she leads the global legal function, including corporate governance, compliance, employment, litigation, legal operations, and commercial strategy. With more than 13 years of experience advising high-growth and multinational companies, she has built legal teams that are agile, business-aligned, and innovation-ready. In addition to her legal leadership, Saba plays a key role in shaping Infoblox’s enterprise AI strategy. As a member of the AI Business Operations Council, she helps evaluate and implement high-impact use cases that drive productivity across the organization. Her team is actively piloting legal AI applications and collaborating across departments to support responsible and scalable technology adoption.
Rob Mobassaly
Rob Mobassaly is Chief Legal and Administrative Officer at Arctic Wolf, where he leads the company's global legal and people functions. He joined Juniper Networks in February 2012 and served as Senior Vice President, General Counsel from July 2021 through 2025. From July 2016 to July 2021, he served as Vice President, Deputy General Counsel where he was responsible for managing a team focused on legal requirements, including those associated with Juniper's corporate securities, mergers and acquisitions, corporate governance, stockholder administration and insurance matters. From May 2015 to July 2016, Mobassaly served as the Associate General Counsel, Senior Director and previously served as Assistant General Counsel, Director. Prior to joining Juniper, Mobassaly was in private practice. He holds bachelor's degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, and a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
William Sawyers
William (Bill) first came to Del Monte Foods between 1993 and 2001 and rejoined the company in 2014 as General Counsel & Chief Compliance Officer. Bill also oversees regulatory affairs and real estate. He holds over 30 years of general counsel experience including time with Shearman & Sterling, Orrick, and the Ernest Gallo Clinic & Research Center. Bill is a graduate of Williams College and holds a law degree from the University of California, Berkeley.
Clint Smith
Clint Smith is the Chief Legal Officer of Discord. Since joining the company in 2020, he has been the company executive responsible for Law, Policy, and Online Safety. Since its founding in 2025, Clint has served as the chair of the board of directors of ROOST (Robust Open Online Safety Tools), a non-profit organization dedicated to building scalable, resilient, and open-source safety tools for the AI era. Clint is a frequent speaker on how online platforms can harness the power of AI to perform effective content moderation and promote online safety. Clint began his career at the law firm Steptoe & Johnson LLP in Washington DC, and has since held leadership positions with various tech companies as well as national trade associations including the Business Software Alliance and the U.S. Internet Service Provider Association. He received his bachelor’s degree from Pomona College in Claremont, California, and his master’s degree and J.D. from UC Berkeley.
Lee Tiedrich
Lee Tiedrich is a widely recognized leader in artificial intelligence, data, and emerging technologies. Lee is President & CEO of Tiedrich Global Strategies, LLC, a strategic advisory firm. As faculty at the University of Maryland and Duke University, she served as a NIST Senior AI Advisor and was an OECD/GPAI consultant. She co-authored the GPAI/OECD's 2025 policy paper titled "Intellectual Property Issues in Artificial Intelligence Trained on Scraped Data," which was approved by more than 40 countries. Ms. Tiedrich serves as a Senior Adviser and contributor to the International Scientific Report on the Safety of Advanced AI, led by Yoshua Bengio. She's also a member of both the OECD and GPAI expert groups and co-chairs both the GPAI Responsible AI Strategy for the Environment (RAISE) committee and the GPAI Intellectual Property Advisory Committee. The EU AI Office appointed her to its working group on AI Codes of Practice. With degrees in both electrical engineering and law, Ms. Tiedrich has over 30 years of private sector experience. She was a partner at the global law firm Covington & Burling LLP, where she led the firm's global, multidisciplinary AI Initiative and counseled organizations on a broad range of IP, corporate, regulatory, and global affairs matters.
Danny Tobey
Danny Tobey is Partner and Global Co-Chair of DLA Piper's AI & Data Analytics practice and Chair of its Americas practice, a successful software founder, and medical doctor. Recognized by the United Nations for his "profound insights on the intersection of AI, law, and ethics," Danny has been named Innovative Lawyer of the Year by the Financial Times and led Business Insider's list of top AI lawyers. Danny has represented several of the major foundation model makers and five of the Fortune 10 on AI business enablement and risk management. His work on red teaming generative AI and proactive compliance was recognized by American Lawyer as the 2024 best use of generative AI and by the Financial Times as the 2024 new service for the management of risk. Danny is a founding member of the United Nations' AI Law & Justice Institute and has helped defend the first litigations involving AI hallucinations. His writing was recognized by the U.S. Library of Congress as "the best of the best in the legal profession." Born in Dallas, Danny is a graduate of Harvard College, Yale Law School, and UT Southwestern Medical School. Born in Dallas, Danny is a graduate of Harvard College, Yale Law School, and UT Southwestern Medical School.
Roy Wang
Roy Wang is the Chief Legal Officer of Applied Intuition. Roy is a seasoned business lawyer as well as an AI expert. He has spent his entire legal career advising technology companies on wide-ranging legal issues, from navigating complex commercial transactions and litigation issues to expanding enterprise value through numerous mergers and acquisitions. Before joining Applied Intuition, Roy served as the Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary of Eightfold and Associate General Counsel at Marvell Technology Group Ltd. Before that, he was a partner of Kirkland & Ellis LLP. He received his J.D. from U.C. Berkeley and his Ph.D. in machine learning from UIUC. Before joining Eightfold, Roy was Associate General Counsel at Marvell Technology Group Ltd. Before that, he was a partner of Kirkland & Ellis LLP. He received his J.D. from U.C. Berkeley and his Ph.D. in machine learning from UIUC.
Adam Sterling
Adam Sterling is Associate Dean of Executive Education and Strategic Partnerships at Stanford Law School. Previously, he was Assistant Dean for Executive Education and Revenue Generation at Berkeley Law. Adam was a startup and venture capital attorney at Gunderson Dettmer and the co-founder and director of the Sudan Divestment Task Force and Conflict Risk Network.
Colleen Honigsberg
Colleen Honigsberg is Associate Dean and Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, where her research is focused on the empirical study of corporate and securities law. Colleen is also Faculty Co-Director of the Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University. She serves as an Associate Editor for Management Science, and her recent papers have examined gaps in the regulatory environment for financial advisors, carbon accounting, human capital accounting, and the incentive structure for auditors. Her research has been featured in major mainstream publications such as the Economist, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times, and her scholarship has been published in leading academic journals such as the Journal of Financial Economics, the Journal of Law & Economics, the Stanford Law Review, and the Journal of Accounting Research. She previously served on the Executive Committee of the Securities and Exchange Commission's Investor Advisory Committee and currently sits on the Standards and Emerging Issues Advisory Group at the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.
Mark Lemley
Mark Lemley is the William H. Neukom Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and the Director of the Stanford Program in Law, Science and Technology. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and is affiliated faculty in the Symbolic Systems program. Mark litigated and counseled clients in all areas of intellectual property, antitrust, and internet law for 35 years at the law firms of Lex Lumina, Durie Tangri, Keker & Van Nest, Fish & Richardson, and Brown & Bain.
David Freeman Engstrom
David Freeman Engstrom is the LSVF Professor in Law and Co-Director of the Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession, the premier academic center working to shape the future of legal services and access to the legal system. A far-ranging scholar of the design and implementation of litigation and regulatory regimes, Engstrom’s expertise runs to civil procedure, administrative law, constitutional law, law and technology, and empirical legal studies.
Megan Ma
Dr. Megan Ma is the Executive Director of the Stanford Legal Innovation through Frontier Technology Lab (liftlab). Her research focuses on the use and integration of generative AI in legal applications and the translation of legal knowledge to code, considering their implications in contexts of human-machine collaboration. Her particular focus is on questions of legal education and the future of practice in light of new technological developments. She also teaches courses in computational law at the Law School and Department of Computer Science.
Alexander Alben
Alex Alben teaches courses in Artificial Intelligence, Internet Law and Privacy at the UCLA School of Law. He has previously taught Internet Law and Privacy courses at both UCLA and the University of Washington law school. For most of his career, Alex served as a senior executive for pioneering Internet companies RealNetworks and Starwave Corporation, where he created digital media products that enabled the distribution of video and music on the Internet and worked with industry groups to devise new content distribution models. From 2015-19 he served as Washington State's first Chief Privacy Officer.
Andreas Plesner
Andreas Plesner is a Ph.D. student in Computer Science at ETH Zürich. His research covers adversarial machine learning, machine intelligence, and GPU-accelerated algorithms. Andreas earned an MSc in Mathematical Modelling and Computing from the Technical University of Denmark and served as a student researcher at Google.
Steven H. Wang
Steven Wang is an ML intern at DeepJudge. Previously, he was a machine learning research engineer at the Center for Human Compatible AI at UC Berkeley, where he received his BSc. Steven earned his Master's in Computer Science at ETH Zürich. Steven's research on legal NLP and reinforcement learning has been published at top machine learning conferences, including NeurIPS and ACL
Kexin Fan
Kexin "Kat" Fan is an AI Solutions Manager at Infoblox. Prior to Infoblox, she worked as a Data Analyst with The Atticus Project, where she co-authored ACORD, an expert-annotated retrieval dataset for legal contract drafting published at ACL 2025. Kat is a graduate of New York University, where she earned a master's degree in Applied Statistics for Social Science Research, building on her undergraduate studies in Philosophy at Barnard College.
Lauren M. Kaplan
Lauren Kaplan is Director of AI Strategy & Programs at The Atticus Project. She previously worked on AI as a UX Researcher at Meta and Google, and at AI infrastructure and B2B SaaS startups. Lauren holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Goethe University Frankfurt am Main and has held academic positions in Public Health and Social Policy & Intervention at the University of Oxford and UC Berkeley. She has published more than 30 peer-reviewed articles in journals including the American Journal of Public Health and The Journal of Pediatrics, and contributed to Fairness and Machine Learning (MIT Press).
Tarunya Dharmarajan
Tarunya Dharmarajan is an undergraduate student at New York University, majoring in technology and policy at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study. She is an intern with The Atticus Project.
Sarah Harrell
Sarah Harrell is a recent graduate of the University of Washington, Seattle, where she received her undergraduate degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering.