Law Spring. Summary of the REVERA law group’s participation
REVERA experts spoke at the LAWSPRING 2026 Congress
On 16–17 April, the LAWSPRING 2026 legal congress took place in Minsk, bringing together more than 300 participants. REVERA law group experts spoke on both days of the event as part of several panel and case-study discussions.
Day One: Legal Operations and Business Legal
On 16 April, the congress was held in two parallel formats: Legal Operations Day, for in-house lawyers and heads of legal functions, and Business Legal Day, for lawyers working at the intersection of law and business.
Sergey Suschenya, Head of the Industry Projects Sub-Practice, acted as moderator and speaker at the expert panel “In-house lawyer, consultant, advocate and mediator: how to work together to solve business issues without unnecessary conflicts” as part of Legal Operations Day.
| “We discussed how to build effective cooperation between in-house lawyers and external advisers when completing complex projects and disputes: when to involve external resources, how to define the scope of work, budget and deadlines, and how to make sure that the outcome protects the company’s interests,” comments Sergey Suschenya. |
Day Two: Cases and Practice
17 April, the main day of the congress, was devoted to the analysis of specific cases and practical situations. Alina Marchik, a lawyer in the arbitration practice, spoke in a case-study panel on the recovery of distressed debt. Participants did not merely identify issues, but examined real tactics and specific examples from practice: working with debtors, tools for monitoring potentially problematic counterparties, issues of subsidiary liability, and practical aspects of insolvency procedures.
| “This year, the organisers prepared a competition among legal departments, which became one of the highlights of the congress. Notably, colleagues from the logistics sector — an industry that is currently responding particularly actively to new legal challenges — were clear winners in several categories. The use of artificial intelligence became a separate topic in informal discussions: colleagues from various companies are already using AI tools in their work, and this is becoming a noticeable trend both in corporate legal departments and in consulting,” notes Alina Marchik. |
An Inside View: AI and Digitalisation of the Legal Function
As noted above, a separate area of the congress was the nomination “Leader in Innovation and Digitalisation of Legal Work”. The projects were assessed by Hanna Zakharchanka, Internal Project Manager at REVERA law group.
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“Assessing this nomination was genuinely interesting — and not easy. The projects were very different in terms of scale and tools, but they were united by one common idea: the legal function must work faster, more accurately and with measurable value for the business. That in itself is already a major step. It is clear that the teams put in real effort — they did not simply describe processes, but changed them. Some automated contract work, some built a template architecture from scratch, and others integrated legal processes into the company’s operational systems. The maturity levels of the projects varied, but the direction was right for all of them. This is exactly what made the assessment difficult: when projects are aimed at the same goal — reducing labour costs and achieving a real business effect — the difference between them is measured not by the idea, but by the depth of implementation and the honesty of the figures.” |
As for the implementation of AI, most of the submissions were more about high-quality automation and Legal Tech solutions without AI in the generally accepted sense, and there is nothing wrong with that. Legal departments are currently exactly where they should be at this stage: they are bringing order to processes, building workflows and learning to measure their work in business metrics. This is the foundation without which any AI would be a superstructure built on chaos — so standard tasks are first structured and automated.
At REVERA, we are already moving beyond this foundation.
We are implementing AI into real workflows and developing bots, including internal bots with search across the company’s knowledge bases. This enables lawyers to find the necessary templates and internal regulations instantly, without spending time on manual searches. These are precisely the tools that represent the next step after bringing order to processes.
| “The main conclusion I am taking away is that the legal function has ceased to be a thing in itself. It is becoming part of the business — and the projects I assessed confirm this,” concludes Anya Zakharchenko. |
If you would like to discuss the issues raised at the congress, please contact our experts.