TR Future of AI & Technology Forum 2026 — Chicago

The 2026 Future of AI & Technology Forum, organized by the Thomson Reuters Institute, is a one-day, single-track gathering held Thursday, September 17, 2026 (9:00am to 4:00pm, with reception to 5:00pm) at Loft on Lake in Chicago's Fulton Market / West Loop. Unlike a broad technology trade show, this is a tightly curated forum built for legal and professional-services leaders, and its program is organized around real decisions practitioners are making about AI adoption rather than vendor demos. The framing is deliberately pragmatic: where AI genuinely fits into a firm's strategy and where it does not. The day opens with a presentation of the Institute's 2026 AI in Professional Services Report, establishing a shared, data-grounded baseline before moving into discussion. A flagship panel, Separating signal from noise: The state of AI and emerging technology, examines which technological shifts will meaningfully reshape client value, operating models and risk versus which will fade as hype, with attention to regulation, platform consolidation and accountability.

A standout interactive session, Gamifying your AI strategy, puts attendees through realistic professional-services scenarios to estimate time saved, value created and risk introduced across automation, agents and AI assistants - pressure-testing where human judgment must stay in the loop. A client-side fireside, Through the client lens, brings in buyers of legal and professional services to describe what they actually value and will pay for in an AI-enabled market. The day closes with an open fishbowl Q&A shaped by audience-submitted questions on operating models, talent, ethics and vendor strategy, plus a keynote and a closing reception. This matters now because professional-services firms - law firms in particular - are moving from AI experimentation into measurable deployment, confronting governance choices, talent questions and economic trade-offs that have no settled answers; the forum's value is honest peer dialogue among people facing the same decisions. The confirmed faculty are senior practitioners and operators, including Rawia Ashraf (Head of Product, CoCounsel Transactional & GCO, Thomson Reuters), Brooke Daniels (SVP, Market Lead, Harbor), Bryce Engelland (Content Lead, Innovation & Technology, Thomson Reuters Institute), Thom Hutchison (Director of Data Science & AI, Husch Blackwell LLP), Johanna Kalb (Dean, School of Law, University of San Francisco), Ray Meiring (CEO and Co-Founder, QorusDocs), and Jennifer Reeves (VP, AI Governance and Integration Lead, American Arbitration Association).

The forum is recommended for C-level strategy and decision-makers, managing partners and principals, directors, and technology/AI professionals in legal and professional services. It is an invited-faculty event with no public call for speakers; the registration fee is $495, and the attendee registration deadline is Friday, September 4, 2026. Attendees should expect a high-signal, conversation-led day designed to cut through noise and clarify where AI investment actually pays off.