Why Generative Legal?

We created Generative Legal for the legal leaders who are shaping their organization’s response to AI—and who recognize they’ll make better decisions by learning from each other.

AI is transforming how legal work is conceived, delivered, and valued, and the pace of change shows no sign of slowing. New capabilities emerge monthly. Yesterday’s pilot is today’s workflow. What seemed speculative a year ago is now operational at leading firms and legal departments around the world.

The relationship between the legal profession and this technology is too important to be shaped by any single perspective, and too fast-moving to navigate alone. Responding well requires more than technical literacy. It requires judgment—about organizational readiness, about client expectations, about talent, about risk. And that kind of judgment develops best in dialogue with peers who are working through the same questions.

That is what Generative Legal is: an intimate, curated gathering where decision-makers come together to learn from one another. We bring together voices from every corner of the profession because the challenges of AI adoption don’t respect the traditional boundaries between them. The general counsel evaluating a new tool, the partner rethinking a practice model, the technologist building the next platform, the academic studying its implications—each holds a piece of the picture. The full image only comes into focus when they’re in the same room.

We are intentionally independent and vendor-neutral. Our commitment is to the quality of the dialogue, not to any particular technology or provider. Discussions run under the Chatham House Rule, so participants can speak openly about what’s working, what isn’t, and what they’re grappling with behind closed doors.

The best thinking about AI in law will come from legal leaders learning together. That’s the conversation we’re building.

Hugh Carlson and Robert Mahari

Co-Founders, Generative Legal

Generative Legal’s Co-Founders

Hugh Carlson

CEO, Three Crowns LLP

Hugh Carlson is the CEO and General Counsel of Three Crowns LLP. Since joining at the firm’s launch in 2014, he has helped build Three Crowns from a start-up boutique into one of the world’s premier dispute resolution practices.

A former software engineer, Hugh has made innovation a defining feature of the firm. Under his leadership, Three Crowns has become a recognized leader in legal AI. The Financial Times has repeatedly honored the firm’s AI innovations, including its deployment of Claude Code and ChatGPT Codex to build enterprise-grade software tailored to its practice. Microsoft has called Three Crowns an “AI-powered company … bending the curve on innovation.” With Stanford’s Legal Innovation through Frontier Technology Lab (liftlab), Hugh co-led the development of Atelier, an AI-powered cross-examination training platform that won the Financial Times Innovative Lawyers award for best training innovation in 2025.

Hugh has represented large multinationals and sovereigns in their most complex, high-stakes disputes. Clients and peers in Lexology Index describe him as “absolutely phenomenal,” “a great strategist,” and “integral to the success of Three Crowns,” and he has repeatedly been named a leading litigator by Lawdragon’s Global Litigation 500 and Super Lawyers. He also counsels clients on the deployment, governance, and regulatory compliance of AI systems, drawing on his combination of legal and engineering expertise.

Hugh has lectured at Harvard Law School since 2019. He is admitted to practice in New York and the District of Columbia, and holds the leading credential in information security, the Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP).

hugh.carlson@threecrownsllp.com

Robert Mahari

Founder, Akiva AI

Robert Mahari is the founder of Akiva AI, a company that develops bespoke AI solutions for law firms and in-house legal teams seeking to use artificial intelligence as a durable competitive advantage. His work focuses on translating cutting-edge AI research into systems that are legally grounded, operationally deployable, and aligned with professional and regulatory obligations.

Previously, Robert served as Associate Director of Stanford CodeX—the Stanford Center for Legal Informatics—where he led practice-oriented, interdisciplinary research at the intersection of AI and law. He holds a JD-PhD in Legal Artificial Intelligence from Harvard Law School and the MIT Media Lab, training that anchors his dual fluency in computer science and legal doctrine.

Robert works with legal leaders, technologists, and policymakers to design AI systems that improve legal practice, surface new institutional insights, and embed governance into technology by design. His work has been published across disciplines, including in Science and Nature Machine Intelligence, and is regularly featured in outlets such as The New York Times and The Washington Post.

rmahari@stanford.edu