Congress theme

In an increasingly changing world, our clients face new challenges and legal issues every day. Lawyers are often called in after the fact, and their role is then limited to reacting to these issues, either by mitigating damages or by finding legal solutions to address the impacts on clients’ business models.

How about changing perspective and acting instead of reacting? Let’s embark on a journey where our brain will be our time machine to predict the challenges to be faced by our clients and their businesses in five years’ time, and to develop the legal solutions to meet them in a world where stability is no longer the norm. Because everything we encounter today, found its origin in someone’s mind yesterday.

To achieve this purpose, we would like to introduce the concept of ‘four-dimensional thinking’. We invite participants to the Annual Congress to apply this concept, in order to form our thought processes not just around what is currently there but make use of the fourth dimension: time.

Three dimensions appear to be enough for a lawyer to be precisely located in space. With our legal expertise, experience, and skills, we go a long way in advising our clients on their current issues. But we ask you to take a step further, and pro-actively anticipate and devise the legal solutions to clients’ challenges of tomorrow. To think in 4D is to move through space and time to approach an issue not only from all possible angles, but also from all possible time perspectives. It is more than thinking out-of-the-box. It is getting out of that box and crushing it by rethinking issues in light of the past and the present. By thinking in 4D, we can shape tomorrow’s legal reality with our predictions.

This is a call to action. In Zurich, we explored the potential of technology innovation; in Singapore we discussed the future of our legal profession. Now the time has come to fast-forward and consider how to change the rules of the game. In Rio de Janeiro, AIJA will come together as one giant legal think-tank. The Annual Congress will be truly Commission-led. The Commissions are invited to anticipate legal issues that are likely to dominate or impact their specific practice area in the years to come, be it from an economic, financial, regulatory, humanitarian, environmental, or any other relevant perspective. In any event, an issue that is expected to have direct consequences for clients and their businesses. The challenge: to predict or provide a pro-active legal solution for this issue either in terms of strategy or potential legislation.

In interactive sessions, workshops and speeches, the Commissions will be asked to harness their collective thinking power, to think in 4D and contribute their visionary legal insights to today’s society. At the Congress’ conclusion, these predictions and solutions will be stored in a time capsule, to be opened at the 66 Congress in 2028. The future delegates of 2028 will then learn how accurate the foresight of the young lawyers of 2022 was.

Young lawyers of the world, what will your contribution be? Come to Rio de Janeiro in 2023 and shape your legal legacy!

61st International Young Lawyers’ Congress – Academic Coordinators 

Anouk Rosielle, Dentons Europe LLP, Netherlands

Sophie Lens, ALTIUS, Belgium

Paulo Nasser, M Nasser Dispute Resolution, Brasil

Armando Perna, Pozzi&Partners, Italy