eDiscovery Daily Blog

• July 30, 2025

Masters Conference: NYC, 2025 |  Article by Rick Clark

On July 22–23, 2025, The Masters Conference returned to New York City with a bold theme: “Welcome to the Masters 2035.” Hosted at the offices of Morgan Lewis, this two-day event gathered legal professionals, technologists, investigators, and industry thought leaders to explore how emerging technologies and workplace changes will reshape eDiscovery, investigations, and information governance over the next decade.

Forecasting the Legal Landscape of 2035

The session “Welcome to the Masters 2035” sponsored by Morgan Lewis, featured a lively and forward-thinking panel:

• Elizabeth Marie Gary – Sr. Associate, eData Practice Group, Morgan Lewis
• Bansri M. McCarthy – Associate, Morgan Lewis
• Babette Orenstein – Associate Counsel, Con Edison
• Salomon Louis – Program Owner, eDiscovery, MassMutual Financial Group

This thought-provoking session pushed attendees to imagine what legal discovery and team dynamics could look like in 2035 with just the right blend of realism and science fiction.

2035: Rethinking Workplace Communication and Discovery

The panelists acknowledged the rapid evolution in workplace communication tools and what that means for discovery. Traditional emails are already being replaced by chat platforms like Microsoft Teams, Slack, and embedded comments within live documents that continue conversations that could be linked to Microsoft Teams or email. Salomon Louis noted that “mediums are becoming more fluid,” requiring legal professionals to navigate cross-channel communication in many different ways while in discovery.

Bansri McCarthy pointed to how document hyperlinks and comment trails are reshaping the way we communicate in real time via the content in the hyperlinks themselves.

With a nod to virtual reality, Elizabeth Gary joked that we’d all be wearing headsets and communicating via brain chips, but then seriously predicted that VR-powered collaboration could become normal by 2035. “Gen Z is already pushing us toward more streamlined, tech-first ways of working,” she said.

Babette Orenstein summarized the current pain point: “It’s difficult to remember where a conversation happened. Was it in a comment, Teams message, or email?” As transcription tools become more integrated into our workflows, these ambiguities may fade, but only if legal teams can keep pace with tech.

AI on the Legal Team: The Rise of Legal Tech Agents

One of the most exciting discussions revolved around the evolution of legal teams to include AI engineers and researchers. Louis emphasized that these roles will be essential to help teams properly prompt large language models (LLMs) and mine insights from massive client datasets.

Elizabeth Gary pushed the boundary further: “Will we even consider AI agents as part of the legal team? Will we one day take testimony from an AI Agent?” While the courtroom may not be ready for that just yet, it’s clear that AI is becoming more than just a tool, it’s a teammate.

Gary also highlighted that her practice already integrates technologists with attorneys, stressing the growing importance of tech fluency within legal teams.

The New eDiscovery Stack: Streamlined, Unified, AI-Driven

The next ten years will see significant simplification and unification of eDiscovery tools. According to Louis, standardization across toolsets will normalize how data is exported and interpreted, making cross-channel communications easier to review.

McCarthy projected that firms will finally break down data silos, bringing together privacy, compliance, disposition and litigation considerations to determine how to best handle company data throughout its lifecycle. In the future, eDiscovery will be an element in the overall health and maintenance of data necessary for business operations.

From the audience, Cat Casey of Reveal delivered a compelling insight: “Ten years from now we will have full-fledged AI agents on case teams that will put the pieces together faster and more efficiently than humans.” In this future, technical analysis will happen before a human even lays eyes on the data.

What We Leave Behind. And What Stays the Same

Some predictions bordered on the radical. The Bates label? “Gone,” said Gary. Even the concept of a “document” might disappear as communication shifts from static files to fluid, embedded conversations.

Cat Casey affirmed this, declaring that documents, as we know them, have already started to die off.

Yet, the panel agreed: the human element won’t go away. In Gary’s words, “People will always have to take responsibility for the end result. They will still need to put their stamp of approval on it.” This reminder grounded the discussion in a legal truth: accountability cannot be automated.

Bold Predictions for 2035

The panel closed with some of their boldest predictions:

• Everything is discoverable! Even whispers. “Nothing is deleted and we just keep it all,” said Gary.
• Virtual courtroom reenactments could allow jurors to experience the scene in VR based on evidence.
• And perhaps most provocatively: AI agents as de facto case team members.

Final Thoughts: The Masters of the Next Decade

The Masters Conference NYC didn’t just forecast where legal tech is going it painted a vision of how attorneys, investigators, and eDiscovery professionals must evolve alongside it. The future of law is not about replacing people with machines, but about using machines to amplify human judgment, creativity, and ethics.

In 2035, we may no longer recognize today’s inbox or review platform, but we’ll still recognize the core of legal practice: trust, accountability, and thoughtful advocacy.

Welcome to the future. Welcome to the Masters 2035.