Summary

The project addressed a growing challenge: technologies such as AI and generative AI are rapidly changing how professional work is carried out, how decisions are made, and who holds authority, yet society has had limited opportunity to shape these changes. In the legal sector, this is particularly important because law underpins trust, accountability, rights, and social order. If legal systems and legal professionals are transformed by automation, data-driven systems, or platform governance without careful reflection, there is a risk that trust, fairness, privacy and resilience could be weakened.

Lex Lata 2075 was designed to explore how the legal profession might need to adapt over the next 50 years to remain a trusted and effective part of future governance. The project also addressed a second challenge, traditional consultation methods often struggle to engage people with complex, long-term technological issues. We therefore tested a more creative and accessible approach, using future scenarios and co-creation workshops to help participants imagine possible futures, identify risks and opportunities, and consider what new skills, values and safeguards may be needed.

Objectives

1. To develop and pilot an innovative research methodology that combines science fiction futures thinking, speculative scenarios and co-creation workshops to explore how emerging technologies may reshape the legal profession and wider governance systems.

2. To examine how legal professional identities may need to evolve by 2075 in response to AI and automation, with particular attention to trust, privacy, security, accountability and societal resilience.

3. To create practical outputs and a scalable foundation for future research, including scenarios, “Job Ads from 2075,” teaching/CPD resources, and a prototype framework that can be expanded into a larger cross-sector study involving areas such as policy-making, healthcare, software development and higher education.

Activities

1. Method design and preparation – We developed the project’s co-creation methodology, combining futures thinking, speculative scenario design and participatory workshop techniques. This included creating workshop materials, prompt cards and facilitation guides.

2. World building workshops – We designed and tested a set of fictional but plausible 2075 futures exploring how AI and emerging technologies could transform law and governance. Through three research workshops, participants co-created narrative and visual worlds, producing a creative artefact / map including items such as sketches, written thoughts and future concerns.

3. Professional identity co-creation workshops – Three workshops were delivered using the scenarios as prompts, participants explored how legal roles, responsibilities and skills might change over the next 50 years. These sessions culminated in the creation of “Job Ads from 2075,” which described future legal roles, competencies and ethical expectations.

4. Analysis and synthesis of outputs – Workshop discussions and artefacts were analysed to identify recurring themes relating to trust, privacy, security, accountability and resilience, as well as emerging future skills needs.

5. Dissemination and future work planning – We began translating outputs into reusable resources for teaching, professional development and policy engagement, and a variety of academic outputs.

Outputs

Current outputs:

1. Attended the 2026 UKAIS conference and presented our work.

2. Submitted a paper on the project to the 2026 UKAIS conference proceedings.

3. Wrote a longform blog on the project for the Durham Law School Blog.

4. Converted the workshop design and activities into an open access education resource, shared through the Open Educational Resources (OER) platform.

Upcoming outputs:

1. Journal paper of methodology design and initial findings to be submitted to the Law, Technology and Humans open access journal. Law, Technology and Humans

2. An artist commissioned artwork to represent the workshop findings and be used as a foundation for future work is in development.

Impact

Lex Lata 2075 generated impact by developing and testing a new way of involving people in debates about how AI and emerging technologies may reshape professional sectors and governance. Rather than relying on traditional consultation methods, the project used creative futures workshops to help 27 participants engage with complex long-term issues such as trust, privacy, accountability and resilience. Early findings show that this approach enabled participants to move quickly from abstract concerns about AI to detailed reflections on everyday life, institutions and power in possible futures.

Workshop outputs demonstrated that participants were highly attuned to the systemic vulnerabilities of AI-dependent societies. Across scenarios, they identified risks linked to infrastructure failure, supply-chain fragility, dependence on datacentres, and reliance on technologies or governance systems controlled beyond national borders. These findings matter because they highlight that future trust in AI systems is inseparable from resilience, security and sovereignty.

Participants also explored narratives of technological inevitability, often framed through dystopian imaginaries, including environmental collapse, surveillance, behavioural control and the erosion of privacy, freedom of speech and physical courts. However, these concerns were balanced by repeated expressions of faith in human rights, public resistance and the possibility of reclaiming democratic control. Participants imagined protest movements, reassertions of autonomy and consent, and humans “taking back the rule of law.” This suggests futures methods can productively surface both fears and sources of hope.

Importantly, through imagining future professional roles, participants felt a stronger sense of agency over technological change. Rather than seeing AI disruption as inevitable, it gave them tools to consider how future systems could be shaped through decisions made today in education, governance and regulation.

The project therefore has clear future impact potential:

• Social: increasing public inclusion, confidence and agency in AI debates.

• Organisational: helping universities and professions plan future skills and workforce resilience.

• Economic: supporting proactive adaptation rather than costly reactive responses to disruption.

The pilot has also created strategic impact by establishing a tested methodology that can now be scaled into a larger cross-sector programme spanning professions such as policy-making, healthcare, higher education and software engineering.

Future work

Building on the success of Lex Lata 2075, the next phase of work would ideally focus on securing follow-on funding to formalise, scale and extend the methodology into a larger cross-sector research programme. This future project will refine the co-creation approach into a robust, transferable framework that can be applied across professions experiencing significant technological disruption.

The programme will replicate and adapt the existing workshop model across multiple sectors, these could include architecture, higher education, software development and policy-making, enabling comparative insights into how different professional identities, governance structures and trust relationships may evolve in response to AI. This cross-sector approach will allow us to identify both shared vulnerabilities and sector-specific challenges, supporting more resilient and coordinated responses to technological change.

A deeper, dedicated strand will focus on the legal profession, extending the current work by introducing advanced co-creation workshops where participants (e.g. legal professionals and law school educators) collaboratively develop theoretical future legislation aligned to the 2075 scenarios. This will provide a novel way of exploring anticipatory governance, testing how legal frameworks themselves may need to evolve to remain effective, legitimate and resilient.

To enhance public engagement and dissemination, the programme will also involve commissioning science fiction authors to translate co-created scenarios into richly imagined narrative worlds. These outputs will be published and shared widely as accessible artefacts that communicate complex socio-technical issues in compelling ways. By bringing these futures to life, the project aims to highlight the importance of early engagement, participation and agency in shaping AI-enabled societies.

Overall, this future work will transform an initial methodological prototype into a larger scalable research project and engagement activities, supporting interdisciplinary collaboration, informing policy and education, and enabling broader societal participation in shaping long-term technological futures.