Legaltech momentum in Italy

Lukas Plattner reflects on LEGALTECH IN SCENA: Bringing the legaltech community together in Milan and Bologna.

What struck me most today was not a single idea, but the overall tone, which I would describe — in a single word — as honest.

Honest because no one played the part of the uncritical enthusiast, nor that of the nostalgic Luddite. You all brought something far more valuable to the table: the real complexity of those who work with these tools every day, or who are wondering whether and how to do so.

Let me try to bring it all together.

The first thread is that needs come before technology. The real issue — as many have said, in different words — is the analysis of needs. Before choosing a tool, you need to understand which need you want to address. It was put quite clearly: need → informed investment → training → adoption. It is a sequence, not a leap.

The second thread is the centrality of people, as a concrete theme of internal governance. People have different attitudes towards technology. Some embrace it naturally. Others resist. What is needed is an open, ongoing dialogue within the workplace.

The third thread is the economic one, which affects me closely as a lawyer. Time is ceasing to be the metric. Billable hours as a unit of measurement are in conceptual crisis, and AI is an accelerator. The issue of remuneration policies and client services has rightly been raised. There is no answer yet, but it is the right question. And asking the right questions — as someone pointed out — is already half the answer.

The fourth thread is the cultural transformation. Building a common language is not easy, but it is necessary. And it brings with it a new role: the legal engineer — neither solely a lawyer nor solely a technician, but someone who knows how to operate at the boundary. That boundary is precisely where value is created.

And then there is the thread that strikes me as the most subtle yet the most important: the courage to make mistakes. As Churchill said, "Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm." In a context of rapid transformation, a mistake is not a moral failing; it is a signal. A signal that something new is being tried. The problem is not making mistakes; it is failing to learn from them.

Allow me to close with Popper — because this event, in both tone and content, reminded me of precisely what he meant by an open society: not a society without conflict, but a society in which ideas are debated without dogma, in which no one holds the definitive truth, and in which a willingness to reconsider one's positions is a virtue, not a weakness.

What we have experienced today is exactly that: law firms and in-house teams, generalists and specialists, enthusiasts and sceptics, all gathered around the same table, asking difficult questions without seeking easy answers.

This is a time of ferment. Not yet of maturity, not yet of certainties. But ferment is the moment when something new is taking shape.

About the author

Lukas Plattner is a Partner at ADVANT Nctm and a highly experienced legal professional with a strong focus on capital markets, M&A, corporate governance and securities regulation. Throughout his career, he has advised companies, banks, financial institutions and investors on equity and debt transactions, IPOs, public and private M&A, post-listing matters and regulatory issues. With deep expertise in supporting businesses through complex financial and corporate operations, he brings a strategic legal perspective to the evolving relationship between law, markets and innovation.