The 3rd ICAM-ICAB In-House Lawyers Meeting will bring together corporate counsel on 22-23 October in Madrid

Spain's in-house lawyers have an appointment this week in Madrid. The Madrid Bar Association (ICAM) and the Barcelona Bar Association (ICAB) hold on 22 and 23 October the 3rd In-House Lawyers Meeting, organised by ICAM's In-House Section and ICAB's Corporate Counsel Commission, both institutions announced on 20 October.

The meeting, now in its third edition, will bring together corporate counsel around the great challenges that mark companies' course and strategies, with an open-panel format aimed at contrasting experiences among professionals working inside companies, law firms and other areas of the sector.

Eight panels on AI, LegalTech and geopolitics

The programme revolves around eight panels addressing the artificial intelligence revolution in legal departments, the internal influence of the in-house lawyer, corporate governance and sustainability, professional development and growth, the impact of geopolitics on the company and the role of the legal team, and strategic supplier management.

According to ICAM, the incorporation of AI into company activity coincides with an increasingly complex regulatory environment and with geopolitical factors that directly affect supply chains, cybersecurity and corporate governance. For legal departments, this scenario widens the risks to anticipate and reinforces the importance of integrating legal judgement from the earliest stages of decision-making.

The 'Legal Minority Report' challenge

The practical component will come with 'Legal Minority Report', a team challenge placing participants in a crisis scenario they must solve with the support of artificial intelligence tools. The exercise will bring to practical ground one of the meeting's cross-cutting themes: how to take advantage of these technologies without losing sight of risk management and professional judgement.

Institutional opening and closing

The opening ceremony will take place on Thursday 22 October at 3:00 pm, with the participation of the ICAM dean, Eugenio Ribón; the member of the Bar's Governing Board Ana Buitrago, and CEOE's legal director, José María Campos.

The closing will be led by the Madrid region's Minister of Economy, Finance and Employment, Rocío Albert López-Ibor, and by the president of CEOE's Legal Commission and board member, Valentín Pich Rosell, together with the ICAB dean, Cristina Vallejo Ros; dean Eugenio Ribón and the secretary of ICAM's Governing Board, José Ignacio Monedero.

What attendees can expect

Beyond the panels' content, the meeting is designed as a community space for a collective that usually works in small structures within their organisations. The programme combines debate panels, conversations between professionals and networking spaces, with the idea of sharing experiences and anticipating the challenges and opportunities of an increasingly strategic legal function.

The joint organisation by ICAM and ICAB, Spain's two largest bar associations, also consolidates the event as one of the reference annual meeting points for in-house lawyers across the country, with a third edition that confirms the project's continuity.

The meeting lands at a moment when legal departments are renegotiating their relationship with external firms and with technology providers, two of the threads running through the programme. For many attendees, the value will lie as much in the hallway conversations as in the panels themselves.

An increasingly strategic function

The organisers start from a core idea: in-house lawyers no longer perform a merely advisory or support function, but participate in strategy, risk prevention, digital transformation, sustainability, regulatory compliance, corporate reputation and decision-making.

It is the same line that marked the Aranzadi in-house lawyers congress we covered this year and that runs through much of our Legal AI coverage. The sector's full agenda, in our Events section.