Conference Schedule
Monday, February 1st 2027
12:00pm - 12:45pm
Registration & Lunch
12:45pm - 1:00pm
Welcome Remarks
Sang J. Lee
1:00pm - 2:30pm
Plenary
2:30pm - 3:00pm
Courtesy of our Platinum Sponsor, White & Case LLP.
Networking Break
3:00pm - 4:15pm
The 167-Hour Opportunity
Jarrett Green and Dr. Patrick Egbunonu
Every coach has experienced the Between-Session Coaching Gap: a client leaves a powerful session with new insights and intentions, but life intervenes -- momentum fades, commitments go unpracticed, accountability weakens, or the client faces the exact difficult situation they'd been preparing for with no coach there to help. Of the week's 168 hours, even a full coaching hour leaves 167 in which insights must survive real life and intentions must become behavior.
This program explores an emerging model for using personalized AI not to replace the human coach, but to extend coaching's impact into those between-session hours -- reinforcing insights, supporting follow-through, facilitating practice and rehearsal, and offering in-the-moment support when it matters. Participants will learn a practical framework for configuring AI so its support complements the human coaching process, while keeping the coach as the primary architect of the client's development.
Coaching Lawyers Through Change: A Human-Centered Design Framework with Global Perspectives
3:00pm - 4:15pm
Sharon Brooks, Nankhonde, Kasonde van den Broek, and Sibo Mabuza
Lawyer coaches are increasingly asked to support clients through complexity and constant change, which invites us to confront our own coaching blind spots. As Western-trained coaches, we often assume things about the perspectives and values our global clients bring, whether a CEO in Peru, a partner in a merged Munich office, or a London-trained associate in Beijing. This workshop introduces a framework inspired by Human-Centered Design Thinking, grounded in humility and curiosity about clients' lived experiences. Participants practice a four-stage framework: Empathize, Define, Ideate, and Prototype, reframing challenges and designing experiments for change. Drawing on our collective experience across legal practice, global executive coaching, organizational transformation, public sector leadership, and international development, in this interactive session, we will explore how global perspectives and cross-disciplinary thinking can broaden coaching practice while remaining grounded in the realities of the legal profession.
3:00pm - 4:15pm
Same Competencies, Different Altitude
Michelle Nash, Sang J. Lee, and Tina Chandna
Ask a coach who works across an organization's ranks whether coaching a 5th-year associate is different from coaching an equity partner, and you'll elicit a knowing glance. Push for specifics and the answer is murky — what's different? Is it content, the client's attitude toward coaching, the coach's confidence, the contract behind the engagement... what else?
The ICF Core Competencies are agnostic to both industry and seniority, but in high-stakes law practices, the Competencies get pressure-tested, and predictably so. With partners, the pull toward advice-giving intensifies, accountability feels more fraught, and the coaching agreement can feel more politically loaded. With associates, it can be difficult to resist the pull of mentoring on one end of the spectrum and being a proxy for the firm's expectations on the other end.
In this workshop, participants will work through case studies to locate where competency slippage happens at each level, and what it means to "hold the line."
4:15pm - 4:30pm
Courtesy of our Platinum Sponsor, White & Case LLP.
Networking Break
When Silence Speaks: Exploring the Power of the Unspoken in Coaching Supervision
4:30pm - 5:30pm
Sarah Olin
ICF Enhanced Mentor Coaching: Understanding the New Mentor Coaching Qualifications and Requirements
4:30pm - 5:30pm
Closing Remarks
5:30pm - 5:45pm
Sang J. Lee
Tuesday, February 2nd 2027
8:00am - 9:00am
Registration and Breakfast
9:00am - 9:30am
Opening Remarks
Sang J. Lee and Hedieh Fakhriyazdi
Day Two of the conference will kick off with a few words from Volta CEO and Founder, Sang J. Lee, and Hedieh Fakhriyazdi from our Platinum Sponsor, White & Case LLP.
9:30am - 10:30am
Plenary
10:30am - 10:45am
Courtesy of our Platinum Sponsor, White & Case LLP.
Coffee Break
10:45am - 12:00pm
Who Owns Culture?
Whittney Beard and Rich Smith
All over every law firm, there are clients that almost universally go without coaching: the firm's teams. We propose that the access to coaching teams is through working with their culture. Team culture is created at the top by the leaders of the team. Like it or not, leaders cannot delegate this responsibility. Every team already has a culture - the only question is whether the leader chose it or fell into it. The workings, impact and norms of the culture is what can be coached. This session shows lawyer coaches how to coach the being of the team as an entity, to spot when a client needs team coaching, to identify where a leader has relinquished responsibility for the culture, and how to help them take it back.
The Coach’s Role in Responsible AI: Applying the CHAIR Framework in Law Firms
10:45am - 12:00pm
Lisa Ann Edwards, Donna Branca, and Sheri Zachary
People are already using AI as a thought partner, trusted confidant and personal or professional coach, often without clear guidance about where it adds value, where it falls short, or what should never be delegated to it. For coaches, this creates a new responsibility. Used well, AI can deepen reflection, strengthen practice between sessions, and help lawyers turn feedback into focused action. Used poorly, it can weaken judgment, blur accountability, and undermine the trust that effective coaching is meant to build. In this interactive workshop, participants will apply the CHAIR model for responsible AI-enabled coaching to real-world lawyer development scenarios and explore three practical applications of AI in lawyer development.
Coaches working with junior lawyers are noticing a pattern. Today's law students and young attorneys often need more support with emotional maturity and regulation than prior cohorts. These capacities underlie real professional readiness. We will introduce Emerging Adulthood (ages 18-28), the developmental stage first identified by psychologist Jeffrey Arnett. We will also cover the compounding factors that have shifted this generation's developmental timeline: digital life, the pandemic, the mental health crisis, and neurodivergence. As a licensed clinical social worker, legal educator, and expert on Gen Z, we will help coaches understand the connection between emotional maturity, development, and workplace readiness. Participants will work in small groups to explore what this connection means for their own coaching practice.
10:45am - 12:00pm
Emerging Adulthood: The Missing Lens for Understanding Today's Law Students and Junior Lawyers
Diana Hortsch and Sophie Riegel
Lunch
12:00pm - 1:00pm
Courtesy of our Platinum Sponsor, White & Case LLP.
1:00pm - 2:00pm
Coaching Partners on Purpose and Stewardship
Matthias Birk and Greg Starner
When Everything Changes: Supporting Neurodivergent Lawyers Through Transition, and Knowing When Coaching Isn't Enough
1:00pm - 2:00pm
Transitions hit neurodivergent lawyers hard. A new role, a merger, a late-in-life diagnosis can unravel the routines and workarounds that once kept everything together, often while a client is still expected to perform at a high level. This session looks at how coaches can support clients through these moments, from rebuilding executive function scaffolding to navigating disclosure decisions with a new supervisor. We'll also tackle the harder question: how do you know when a client's needs have moved past coaching? We'll cover the signs that point toward burnout, mental health crisis, or a need for clinical referral, plus how to have that conversation without it feeling like rejection. You'll leave with a clearer sense of where coaching ends and referral begins, and language to use with clients when that line gets crossed.
Nicole Llorenz, Carrie Marker, and Julie Remer
From Idea to Infrastructure: Launching a Parental Leave Coaching Program for Lawyers
1:00pm - 2:00pm
Lindsay Aggarwal, Kathryn Marquez, and Elena Arecco Bridgmon
Parental leave is one of the most pivotal transitions in a legal career, with a return to practice defined by continuous change, as professionals navigate evolving ways of working alongside the shifting demands of both their role and a growing child. Despite these challenges, few firms offer structured coaching support. This session provides a behind-the-scenes look at building a parental leave coaching program from initial concept to firmwide launch. We will walk through program design, stakeholder engagement, implementation challenges, and measured impact, with particular focus on how collaboration between a practicing lawyer and a learning and development leader accelerated the program’s success. Attendees will leave with a practical roadmap and key considerations to design and implement similar programs within their own organizations.
2:00pm - 2:15pm
Courtesy of our Platinum Sponsor, White & Case LLP.
Networking Break
Cultivating Cultural Competence: Identity, Belonging, and the Practice of Coaching Lawyers Through Times of Change
2:15pm - 3:15pm
Sarah Alsaidi, Toya Gavin, and Maja Hazell
Demonstrating cultural competence when coaching lawyers requires more than good intentions. It is cultivated and demonstrated through a working knowledge of identity development, the lived reality of bias and othering, and how imposter syndrome shows up across race, gender, and other intersections of identity. Drawing on racial identity development theory, microaggression research, and current research on belonging in the workplace, this session equips coaches, consultants, and DEI professionals with frameworks to support the development of a culturally competent coaching practice. Presenters bring different vantage points—clinical psychology, former practicing attorney and coach, and law firm leadership—to offer a grounded, practice-ready approach. Attendees will leave with concrete tools for building cultural competence into their coaching practice and organizational strategy alike.
Beyond Lawyers: Coaching the Business Professionals Driving Law Firm Success
2:15pm - 3:15pm
Law firms face rapid change driven by AI, evolving client expectations, operational transformation, and pressure to deliver services more efficiently. Business Services professionals are central to navigating this change, yet they often have limited access to coaching that supports their development and leadership. Certified coaches and Learning & Development leaders Alvin Rosser and Jennifer Tsang will share two practical approaches used in global law firms to coach Business Services professionals through growth, transition, and change. Through real-world examples, reflection, and discussion, participants will examine who receives coaching, broaden traditional views of its purpose, and consider it as a proactive investment in people and performance. Attendees will leave with practical strategies for strengthening resilience, adaptability, leadership, engagement, and retention.
Jennifer Tsang and Alvin Rosser
Embodied Presence in the Age of Algorithms: Bringing Contemplative Practice to Lawyer Coaching
2:15pm - 3:15pm
Shannon Roberts George and Andrea Yang
Coaching and mindfulness share a common foundation: curiosity, presence, nonjudgment, and deep listening. As coaches, we are already practicing contemplative capacities every time we hold space for a client—yet we rarely name this intersection or develop it intentionally. Two internal coaches embedded within AmLaw 100 firms will explore how mindfulness serves as both a natural extension of the coaching disposition and a powerful modality for accessing humanity in an AI-accelerated profession. Grounded in neuroscience - drawn from real coaching engagements -this experiential workshop invites lawyer coaches to deepen the contemplative capacities they already possess and discover how to bring them more deliberately into corporate law environments. Participants will leave with evidence-based frameworks and a renewed sense of what is possible when coaching and contemplative practice converge.
3:15pm - 3:45pm
Courtesy of our Platinum Sponsor, White & Case LLP.
Networking Break
3:45pm - 4:45pm
Building Bridges: Coaching as the Connector in Times of Change
Change is inevitable. Whether it leads to growth or resistance depends largely on trust, communication, and relationships. Coaches (internal or external) have the potential to occupy a unique position within law firms, building trust with lawyers while partnering across talent, learning, career development, wellness, and leadership. As organizational translators and change partners, coaches bridge strategy and execution by helping lawyers understand the rationale behind change, reinforcing learning, surfacing challenges, supporting leaders, and connecting people to the resources they need to succeed.
This session explores how coaches can position coaching with key stakeholders, identify opportunities to support change, and demonstrate impact. Participants will gain practical strategies to build partnerships, overcome resistance, and increase coaching's visibility and value.
Amanda Lui and Jordana Confino
3:45pm - 4:45pm
Coaching for Judgment: The Future of Lawyer Development
For generations, law firms relied on the work itself to develop lawyers. Exposure, observation, and timely feedback produced judgment over time. AI and hybrid practice have made that assumption unreliable, raising a question for coaches: what deliberately develops judgment when the work alone no longer does? This session introduces Coaching for Judgment and the J.U.D.G.E. Model™, a framework for coaching partners and senior lawyers overseeing work to develop judgment in the lawyers they lead. Co-presenter Jennifer Rakstad, head of White & Case’s global Coaching Office, grounds the framework throughout in what firms are experiencing, and how AI is changing practice management, delegation and feedback, and lawyer development. Participants practice one of five structured Coaching Conversations and leave with the complete set, ready for immediate use with partner and senior lawyer clients.
Julia Mercier and Jennifer Rakstad
4:45pm - 5:15pm
Closing Remarks
Sang J. Lee
5:15pm - 6:30pm
Courtesy of our Platinum Sponsor, White & Case LLP.