Despite a gloomy, rainy day to kick off Legalweek New York, nearly 100 guests gathered for a spot of warmth and light: our fourth-annual AI Visionaries dinner.
This year we recognized 24 exceptional leaders in legal tech for their efforts to advance the responsible adoption of generative AI into their practices. Under the gothic spires of St. Pat’s and a Gotham-esque evening fog, Relativity’s senior leaders, AI Visionaries alumni, and our honored guests connected in a garden-themed rooftop hall, sharing stories—AI and otherwise—of how the future is happening right now, and what that means for their businesses.
Reflecting on Wild Growth
The themes for this year's celebration were reflection and growth. It was about reflection in the sense of constant self-examination and betterment, but reflection, also, in the sense of holding a mirror up to their peers and the industry to encourage others to do the same—to see themselves in a workplace where AI tools help increase the flow of our work.
And growth. The debut of tools like Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini have done nothing if not unleash a period of wild growth. Our AI Visionaries in 2025 shared a common trait: a consistent focus on learning in times of dramatic change, thriving in uncertainty, and bringing others along on their journey. This group embodies a desire to learn and share, elevating others around them as they educate themselves. They are growing responsibly, understanding that unchecked growth has its own risks. They are stewards of progress, cultivating, nurturing their teams, their organizations, themselves.
To reflect this thinking, we designed an evening to celebrate the organic, essential, human ways our AI Visionaries are blossoming. A celebratory portrait hall, a mixture of traditional portraiture and AI-generated flora, greeted our guests, showing them literally going native and blending into the landscape they tend to. A jungly tangle of flowers, ferns, and other plants decorated our tables, providing an organic frame to convivial conversations about work, life, and, of course, artificial intelligence.
Just Look Around
But perhaps our biggest inspiration was seeing and hearing everyone seated in that room, enlivening the space and bringing meaning to our metaphors. Every year of AI Visionaries, from 2022 through the present moment, was well represented. Community has always been core to our culture at Relativity, and it was heartening to see this program thriving—AI Visionaries from all years being introduced, reconnecting, sharing a meal and a laugh.
At Relativity, we’re honored to learn from our users to help us build better products and share their stories of empowerment and success. We learn so much from folks like Jon Chan, senior managing director at FTI, who chatted about the role of diversity and curiosity in building strong teams; Erika Hawthorne, e-discovery manager at Salesforce, and Léo Murgel, SVP, Office of Legal and Corporate Affairs Tech, Data, Ops Innovation, & Enablement at Salesforce, who emphasized the role trust plays in operational excellence and innovation overall; E.J. Bastien, the director of discovery programs at Microsoft, who showed me what Copilot can really do; and the amazing team at Bayer, Tracey Vinson, senior assistant general counsel, Andrew Myers, discovery counsel, and Michallynn Demiter, 2024 AI Visionary and Relativity Master—and so many more—who have shared so much of their time, energy, and expertise in making our aiR products meaningful, powerful, and impactful.
The AI Visionaries are the people leading the charge in adopting—and adapting—AI into our practices for the best outcomes. We can’t wait to see where their growing goes.
An Organic Tradition
Over the years, a tradition of gift-giving has developed at the AI Visionaries dinner—a memento to recognize our AI community’s efforts and capture the moment. In the past, when gen AI was a novelty, our gifts poked and prodded at the limits of the LLMs to create new and interesting things. As we grew as a company, developing our aiR products, and reflected on what “growth” meant for our newest AI Visionaries, we realized we needed something that reflects and honors the person behind the tool.
So we partnered with Jill Birschbach, a ceramicist based in Evanston, Illinois, to create hand-built vessels. Jill’s work explores the creation process; she learns by doing and edits her way to unexpected yet satisfying places. We thought her process was a fitting metaphor for the grace with which our AI Visionaries navigate new and uncertain terrain, arriving at new and helpful solutions.
The vessel was accompanied by the night’s menu, printed on craft paper embedded with seeds. Our guests were encouraged to take the menu home. Plant it. In a couple of weeks, their tabletop garden will serve as a reminder of the fertile ground our AI Visionaries are sowing and the vessel a symbol of Relativity’s support.
Browse the full list of 2025 AI Visionaries here; we’ll continue sharing their insights here on the blog throughout the coming year.
Congratulations to our 2025 honorees, and to all of our AI Visionaries—a vibrant and growing part of the Relativity community showing us how to thrive by cultivating the power of generative AI to solve our legal technology challenges.
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