The Innovators – ‘Conference’

Recap: After the summer break, Katie’s adventures as head of innovation at Smyth & Marmalade continue. Project Rubicon – to build their own AI system – was a PR disaster, with Katie now stumbling into the middle of a civil war between the partners that has set Head of Property, Sara Keating, against weakened managing partner, Timothy Marks. Which side will Katie pick? And will trouble shooter Harry Harmer end her career before anything happens?

–

After the invitation to join the coup against managing partner Tim, Katie’s life returned to a strange quietness. She didn’t dare reach out to Sara, as she assumed – correctly – that Harmer had her under surveillance. Meanwhile, everyone seemed to be busy and absorbed in their work. Life, despite everything that had happened recently, seemed to just carry on.

One morning, just when she was starting to believe that the world was once again ‘normal’, there was a knock on the door of her new and far larger office. A smart young man, sporting a yellow tie and slicked back hair, let himself in. Katie eyed her diary and saw an entry that simply said: ‘Marketing strategy meeting’.

She had expected the usual internal team to show up, but not so. This was Freddy Freeman, co-founder of ‘The Spot’ agency, which was apparently the new, cool, PR outfit in the City of London that all the top firms were turning to.

He made his introductions, complimented her on the view from her corner office, and explained that managing partner Tim had given him great leeway to help with the new AI strategy. He then proceeded to tell her what would be happening next.

‘Fundamentally, all this AI stuff is a marketing exercise. After the…er….how can we say….recent challenges around Project Rubicon, the rather unfair characterisation of you as a member of the living puppet realm, and the hard work done to smooth things over with the press and your clients…..it’s been decided that The Spot will be looking after things now,’ he explained with an overly-assured tone that grated painfully.

‘From our perspective, AI is simply a PR message. A means to gain client attention and remain in the conversation. But, when people take it too seriously things go astray, as demonstrated recently.’

‘The goal is to gain as much kudos as possible while not actually changing anything substantive at all. Are you with me?’

Katie nodded unwillingly. She already hated him.

‘So, this is the plan. We restart Rubicon, but we do it in a way that it will have maximum PR value, but won’t upset anyone.’

‘We will?’

‘Yes, and I should remind you, I have the full confidence of the managing partner in this operation.’

‘OK. So, you want us to do innovation theatre?’

‘Exactly. Tim said you’d understand. Now, what would be something very, very…how can we say….harmless, that we could do?’

‘Like Rubicon, but minuscule? Well, I guess we could pick a very narrow area of work, maybe like fund formation, and build something around that, take an open weights model, build something we can show off, I suppose. If that’s what you mean?’

‘Excellent. And how much would it cost?’

‘It depends,’ Katie replied with a hard smile.

‘Well, the budget for this has to come out of whatever The Spot and the firm have agreed for our remuneration for this engagement. So, what’s the absolute minimum spend?’

‘The AI project is coming out of your PR budget?’ Katie asked in shock, sitting back.

‘Indeed. I was thinking maybe £5,000? How about that?’

‘I don’t know. But, if we keep things very, very small. Barely a wireframe, really.’

‘Perfect, if you can get it all done in about a month, with something nice to show off just before awards season, that would be perfect,’ Freddy stated. ‘I’ll tell my admin team to release the funds.’

‘I look forward to working with you,’ he concluded without a shred of sincerity, and then departed as smoothly as he had arrived. 

—

Katie was still fuming days later as she boarded the flight to California to attend the Legal AI Summit in San Francisco. What was worse, they’d only given her Premium Economy on what was an 11-hour flight. She knew she would not sleep a wink.

She dragged out her laptop ready to do some non-sensitive work, just as a couple with two screaming babies arrived and sat directly behind her.

It was getting dark outside and an attendant on the British Airways flight was making her way down the aisle suggesting that people close their blinds and prepare for the lights to go off. As she reached Katie’s row the attendant leaned over and asked her name. Apparently there was a seat free ahead in First Class and she was welcome to an upgrade if she wanted it.

You bet she wanted it, she replied, and didn’t wait to hear a reason for why this was happening.

She’d never flown First and the spacious cubicle with lie-flat bed looked great. As she was arranging her things, she couldn’t help but have a look around – hoping to perhaps see someone famous. Who she saw though was not a tech bro, or a pop star, but Sara Keating grinning right back at her, sitting in the adjoining cubicle, a glass of champagne in her hand.

‘Sorry, thought this was the best way to have a little chat.’

Katie gulped.

‘So, have you decided yet? You with us or against us?’

–

After landing at SFO, Katie did as she had been advised and pretended she didn’t know who Sara was. In any case, Sara zoomed through a fast-track doorway and was gone. Katie remained with the rest of the flight and stood for about an hour, then managed to get a taxi to a place a little bit too close to the Tenderloin for her liking. The slightly dilapidated hotel had been chosen by the firm.

It was late afternoon in California, but deep into the night for her body clock. She really needed some sleep, not the least because she was sitting on one of the first panels of the morning at the conference tomorrow and needed to get her head clear. But, that was not going to happen, not tonight. Not after her ‘chat’ with Sara about the planned palace coup.

She showered quickly, grabbed some fresh – but crumpled – clothes and rushed out again, leaving her phone on the bed. Katie took a self-driving Waymo to a much fancier hotel called The Battery about a mile away, closer to Embarcadero.

Inside it looked like an artists’ collective, with a super-cool vibe that was a huge change from the rather shabby place she was in. As set out by Sara, Katie went to reception, and told them she was meeting a ‘Mr Smith’.

She couldn’t decide if Sara’s cloak and dagger act was a bit too much, or in fact rather exciting. Katie concluded that as long as it involved cool hotels and better plane seats, then she could put up with it.

The receptionist led her up a flight of stairs and to a long corridor of plush meeting rooms. At door 23 she was left on her own. Inside she could hear Sara’s laughter and a deep booming voice. She knocked with trepidation.

–

She was introduced to the Chairman of Spender & Blume, one of the leading West Coast law firms. Katie had heard of them, they were big in the tech and VC world. The Chairman, Cornelius Strang, introduced her in turn to Zack Petulis, head of innovation. They all shook hands and left her with Zack.

As she was departing, Sara paused and whispered in her ear: ‘Remember, you’re my human lie detector.’

Zack was friendly, but seemed quite tense. He poured a glass of wine for her from an open bottle on the table, which she drank down way too quickly.

‘So,’ he began hesitantly, ‘apparently we’re in merger talks.’

‘Yes, so I’ve been told.’

‘And you’re here to grill me?’ he added, the nervous smile now fading from his angular face.

‘Also apparently,’ Katie replied. ‘Shall we begin?’

Zack laid it all out. Strang and team were ‘believers’. The partners spent most of their time advising companies on the cutting edge of the AI boom. What might seem like normality to most of Big Law, now looked like something out of a history book to them, he explained. The clients were ready to get behind a law firm that truly changed.

A great shift was coming, that was Strang’s prediction and they wanted to be at the ‘tip of the spear’. They wanted to really get ahead of the pack. They’d built the financial models to support radical redesign and through testing had found that PEP went up, not down, based on the new AI-driven approach. The next step was to then expand like crazy, to build a global winner and reshape the Big Law world.

Katie was impressed. They seemed to be travelling down the same road her firm had been trying to traverse…but had then suddenly abandoned. The key difference was that they knew what they were doing. They also sounded like they had the confidence to see things through.

They then shared war stories about the legal AI world and discussed how they were approaching things like open weights, picking platforms, and how to hire the best staff. Zack impressed her on every aspect of the discussion.

She had another glass of wine, which she drank more slowly, and they moved to softer subjects: how they arrived in legal tech, families, a shared love of California’s wilder spaces. She looked at her watch just as they were on the topic of Death Valley and realised that for her it was 5AM London time.

Katie excused herself and headed out. To her lack of surprise, Sara was waiting for her downstairs. She was just formulating in her mind how to suggest that they talk later as she really needed to get some sleep, at least two hours if possible, when Katie saw a fiercely focused bald man marching towards them across the lobby.

‘Oh no!’ Katie uttered out loud and froze in her tracks.

‘Hello, Katherine,’ said Harry Harmer, as he stopped abruptly in front of her, then turned to give an unsettling wink to Sara. ‘Welcome to the team.’

–

Previous Chapters of ‘The Innovators’

Part 4 – ‘Civil War’

Part 3 – ‘Press Conference’

Part 2 – ‘Project Rubicon’

Part 1 – Introduction

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[ Copyright © 2026, Richard Tromans, Published by Artificial Lawyer Limited in the U.K. All rights reserved. This work of fiction may not be republished or reproduced without permission. The moral right of the author has been asserted. All characters are fictitious and any resemblance to any persons living, dead, or virtual, is purely coincidental. ]