Navigating the AI Ecosystem, Ethics, and the Future of Law with Cristiano Therrien

Welcome to Studying Law Around the World. I'm Claudio Claus. In each episode, I talk with lawyers, law students, and professors from different parts of the world to talk about legal education, careers, and what the profession looks like in real life. We talk about the hard parts, the surprises, and the decisions that shaped their paths. Whether you're planning to study abroad, thinking about working in another legal system, or just curious about how law works around the world, this podcast is for you. Hello, everybody, Hello everybody, Welcome to another episode of studying Law around the world. Today I'm receiving here in hosting Christiano Terrian. He has an incredible story and an incredible career. He has over 25 years of experience at intersection of law, technology and governance. He's currently based in Toronto and is completing the Global Professional LLM at the University of Toronto. And he brings lots of very, very incredible experiences through his career, but also should this podcast today. So I wanted to thank you so much for making the time to come and share a few insights with us today. Cristiano. Hi. Hello there. Happy to be here. Thank you for inviting me. Absolutely. And to start off our podcast, I'd, I'd love for you to tell us a little more about you know, yourself. I know you teaching multiple law schools and you've done quite, quite incredibly well. You know, in, in different programs as well, both academically and in your own law firm as well. Can can you tell us a little bit about your story? By national citizens from childhood because I'm my mother's Brazilian, my father's Quebecois from he's a Canadian from Quebec and I grew up in this by national bilingual biracial family and and I did my Munder grad in Brazil in law. Then I had a post I did my master degree in Spain in law and technology. At the time I was an intern in the national data protect, personal data protection protection agency and they came back to Brazil to be a lawyer again. Then to be a lawyer. I was spent 1213 years. He was a lawyer in only in the IT area field. I that's what I did, but also the time saw at the same time I was a law professor and and I thought in some different adversities at least. 4 or. Five different conversations there and coming to Canada, I came to for Apple doctorate and I plan to come back to Brazil, but I no plans, right? So they change. So I stayed in Canada where I have most of my family here, especially in the Quebec region. And after my doctorate I went to a for a post doc and University of Ottawa and it was in the area of AI and regulation. It was the time a few months later this new thing came up. It was called Chattahoochee by the way. And things changed since then. Then I went to work for the city Of Montreal. I was working the data governance for the city Of Montreal for 30 months and I was teaching University Of Montreal, was teaching Ottawa. I was teaching diverse Brazilian universities online most of the time, unfortunately to Brazil, but here I'm here in Toronto now I'm teaching at the Toronto Metropolitan University as well. I'm teaching contract law at ATMUH, Cyberspace Law at University Of Montreal, and I teach legal research as well and. No, that's much appreciated. Thank you so much for for making the time to share a little bit more of that. I wanted to ask you, you know, you, you've moved then between Brazil and Canada, practice, academia, public sector, private work as you just outlined. And looking back, what are some of the key decisions that shaped your path? And maybe if you were, you know, talking to young lawyers today, you know, in, in any country that they choose to practice, what are, you know, a few things that maybe you would do differently if it was, you know, in 2026. Well, well, yeah, of course, because how people have to know that I study law in the last century, right of very fact last millennia. But some things change in meanwhile, when I started law, we were writing with typing machines at the time in law firms. And for example, I have I have to use carbon copy paper to have copies when local working in as an intern in law firms even if I had a computer at home and well, only the lawyer had a computer then and the and the law firm. But what I can say from them then for now is because I think we are talking to many people who are very different careers, right. So I think this is way to understand Mcbath is to say didn't looks nonlinear, but for me never felt disconnected as I well, I had this because also because of my ex personal experience that comes between places in Brazil. In in Brazil, by the way, I was called Canadians by my friends and here I was always in the Brazilian for my family. I came back family, but so I always had the experience of seeing things from more than one perspective. I was never 11 place, just one vision. So, So what they stayed with me, it was was it made me very attentive to how different cultures and institutions understand the same realities in different ways. And that connects my work today. I never saw technology or something outside society. I see it as part of our culture. It changes how we think we how we decide how to organize ourselves. My work has been to understand what it means, what that means for law or but what limits for society. I went to law because I wanted to work in government. By the way, I want to say fix things different at the time in society. And then for that law is very useful, but what I do differently? Oh, I wish I I kept programming when I when I got to law school because I stopped there programming in the middle of like school. So because things would be easy now, but now I'm back to programming because programming came became so easy now again. So it's fun. You can finish one night you had you do 3-4 different things. It's ready already. So much is that have never been fun. More fun than now. Programming more accessible, so. Amazing. Oh, thank you for sharing that. I feel like many early career lawyers feel that pressure to follow a straight path. So I really appreciate you sharing a little bit more of your career as you described it, not as linear. And I'm curious, you know, what helped you to stay confident while taking this less traditional steps as you went about your your career? No, I have also never saw something linear really because also because when I was in law school I was, I had already spent some years, some years out of Brazil and King Canada. I decided to do law in Brazil when I was in Canada, by the way, it was A at the time decided what to do, I was not even there. So many people see laws as structure like a tree or the juice positivism view sees law as a pyramid and the pyramid play with many pyramids inside of this pyramid. Different areas of law doesn't as a trees that many branches of different areas of law. Just start somewhere and move up. That's what people teach you at law school. I always saw it more like a network. And then one of my decisions to do law in, in Canada, it was because of this vision of laws can all network in a network, seeing laws, a network, you move between nodes, different roles, different country, different institutions, but it's still inside the same system and and you communicate with different parts of the system. So and that helped me a lot the what might see some of deviation from an outside from the outside field from the inside is you can't you is more like exploration and talking about myself. I too feel confident also about this. I enter law school early, more than 30 years ago, and I never really felt a left OK. I was always in the class, law classroom in the front and the back in the side, something I never left. I really never left, even though I was working on the things. I was still in the law school and somewhere so and I never saw a lost theory. I wanna see if things happen. That's why also I was never fully only in academia. That's also so I moved into practice. Bill. I build small a small legal tech tools. I at the time he didn't call this startup, right. We I have this this company. Of course, it it didn't succeed, but exceed to teach me right. So and then I then moved to into government in, in the yeah, the thing that hit me confident is that technology is always brings us so many solutions. And when it comes with solutions, it always brings us new problems. And it's never boring. And sometimes you want it to be boring, but it's never boring. And there's no one week that I don't have a, a new AI faint. Oh no, I have to study this thing. So that's it. Amazing. No, I love that. It's, it's interesting. I was just listening to a podcast earlier this week and they they made a funny comment. They said that you probably would need to be unemployed to be able to keep up with all the AI news. And I'm like, well, that sounds about right. That sounds about right. Dollars a day maybe. Absolutely, absolutely. And now that you're, you know, for quite, quite some time, you know, teaching in law school and just like you said, you never left, you know, being a student, being a professor in so many different roles based on what you see, you know, and what you experience with your students up until this day. What are some of the the biggest blind spots you think you see for for lawyers who are either, you know, entering or re entering the profession? Yeah, of course. Um, yeah, after our discussion here, I have to come back to grading students for them. And then tomorrow I have to OK, have my start risk restarting for the weekend because I, I have this very different life now. I'm a part of the time I'm in class, worried about students and a part of my time I'm in class again, but worry about the professors, right? So it I'm learning about this, this, this, this practice also, um, yeah, law gave me agency. You helped to understand systems. You have learned to act within them. But teaching gave me rigor. If you have to teach something, you have to understand it properly so you can answer the questions, right? And the government changed everything for me when I went to the government, because I started reviewing contracts with the city was problematic. I had to understand it. That's not fully understood. I hadn't moved. So I did so many things there and and one of the reasons I went to a doctorate was solved. Some problems were side of my head after eight years in in in the in law government. And it's very interesting because for me at least, because so many ethical conflicts that you can live in a government and that's known thing, right. It's better not to know how laws are sausages and laws are made right. Let's us that's why how what people say. So I'll bring to why. And the first thing I started teaching in Canada was ethics and professionalism. And on the biggest blind spots I see young lawyers is how they understand ethics. They think that is ethical judgments, intuitive, that it will recognize it what is right when the moment comes and there's a gut feeling, but it's not. Ethics is a process. It requires slowing down, thinking carefully, sometimes resisting pressure. And there is this distinction from this guy, Daniel Canham, Canham Kinneman. Yeah, between first, first thinking in slow Frank, the legal practice push you towards fast thinking many times. So yeah, you have to do things fast and work and legal reflex, but ethical decisions usually require a slow thinking and early careers. Lawyers are under a lot of pressure here in Canada. Uh, they work long, long hours. Expectations do not, not always much support and that's where shortcuts can happen. And I have seen the consequences, not always dramatic, but people losing confidence or even leaving the profession, feeling bad about it, about it. So the blind spot is thinking ethics as flexible or intuitive. It is not it. It has to be built in a deliberate way. I appreciate you bringing that up. I think sometimes we'll, we'll get caught up in, in different things. And, and I also really appreciate you mentioning this whole thing of, you know, it's, it's easy to say that there's no necessary like a, a procedure, that there's a gut feeling and all of that. But if there's something that you learned working with people from different cultures, different age groups and all of that, or whatever people consider to be obvious, it, it can really vary from person to person from, you know, upbringing, cultural and all of that. And thinking about all of this, you do work in teaching and research in AI and technology and the intersection of that with law. So I'm, I'm sure there's lots to speak on that. You know, we do, we do see that every 3rd 1 is about something on AI, right? We just said how the day would have to have 36 hours to keep up with that. But if, if you know, if a well-intentioned junior lawyer wants to start using AI today in a responsible way and, and maybe in a, in an environment where there's no, no way eye policy or there's no necessarily an incentive or guidance, what are maybe some of the, the simple use cases that they should focus on in their daily work? Of course, of course. And one of the major misunderstanding is to treat AI as a single tool that you can quickly master. Or you should do this in over the weekend or OK, let me spend one week doing this. And in reality is is it is an ecosystem. There's so many things when we say artificial intelligence, which is a bad, very bad name, by the way, but in in reality is ecosystem. For example, it is machine learning. Yes, it is, but is big data. It is cloud computing. It is Internet of Things, it is telecommunications. So many elements are there. So and now it's pre Co AI is magic dust. We sprinkle over fangs to say that it's technological. I can say that I have seen moments before with computer happen like this. I was in law school when computers got into the life of law professors and lawyers. They didn't know what to do with the time my I started teaching technology. When was it law school? Each time people either underestimate ohi don't need that, You don't have to jump in this oh, wait, wait. Or they think that they understood it too quickly, and it's even worse now because this one is more difficult. So the real adjustment is more intellectual than of knowledge itself. You have to stay open. You have to stay humble. We and the and and many people are calling themselves AI specialists, but just remember chapter was launched in 2022 November 2022. So become a specialist so fast. It's not easy. I don't say them a specialist and I have been this my first publication on AI was in 2019. So maybe having cheating this from 2004. Sometimes I still have to because it doesn't never stops right? So but stay open, stay humble. I have 3 practical uses 1st 1012 hours, 15 hours. Try to try to to experiment with this because it's not a good tool that you can learn in an hour or two hours. Not it's it's worse than learning to drive a car, right? In many ways because have because also there's so many tools. Don't don't if you go to work strategies one way, so you have to spend time trying different things and seeing what it goes and you have to challenge a challenge, your reasoning. You have to ask for trying alternatives ways. Don't just look for answers. That's the first thing I can think is use AI to structure your work. So you you treat AI like a assistant. OK, so that's the second one. And the third one would be work with context because it's no longer for just about using clever prompts. In the past it was so I taught many courses in the prompt engineering. But now from 2005, 2626, now it is about giving better information and building better workflows. You build your library around, you have your information, AI tools get to know you and you, you, you get a better frame, what kind of output, what is good for you, You. You have your methods, but your methods also include providing better inputs. So and and also one important thing, do not rely on a single tool. Please. No different system behave differently and that's part of the learning. You don't have to be team Chatterjee or Team Claw or or change something because they can change a lot. 1 year ago, Jim and I was ridiculous. Now, I worked with this for many things every day, and Claude was something extra. And now I that's my favorite, right? Such a cheese better is many things too. Depends on what you need, right? Amazing, fantastic. Well, thank you so much. And, and I'm curious now on more of a somebody who's, you know, thinking about policy and, and working with in this intersection. I'm curious, how do you see AI changing the row of lawyers know both in the public ending the private sector over the next, you know, 5-10 years. If just, you know, since Chachi has been launched, so much more is possible. Even though there is a lot of people who do implement AI in their workflows. I don't know if you can say yes, that, you know, there is a change in the role that lawyers play or there is, you know, a substantial change in how the profession is practiced. Yeah, yeah, I have to avoid being very futurist here, even if I love it, because I'm a huge science fiction geek and who? Who I know no one that read more science fiction than me maybe. But I can say some things that I think are the tendency anyway for, for example, in the public sector I that I know a little bit more because it was closer to them for a while. But also private sector AI changes where lawyers add value because much of the legal work involves what we call pattern recognition and law. We have many patterns and we have a lot of the hecks and the stacks have many patterns. That's what lawyers do very well. These are what we call complicated problems. OK, Yeah, they're complicated of course, but it's structure. They are rule based and AI is very good at that. To to deal with this to you're going to treat information this way. If then this, if then this and AI is great for that. But The thing is, law also deals with complex problems, and complex problems is another thing. It has to do with judgment, with values, with the certainty, competing interests, and for that there is no simple workflow for that. So what happens at Shift here? So AI can support the structured work, so lawyers can spend more time on the complex parts of the work. And in the for the public sector, you mentioning it is critical because decision affects rights and trust people. And in the private sector is also critical because many things we have to do, we deal with very competing interests as well and they can become very conflictive. So that's why also becoming remember the ethical part that is some more getting closer to lawyers than before. Yes, we can do more, but at one time one thing I need to leave it clear my for everyone it is that you're not going to work less. OK, so no technology came ever to help you toward less. Don't don't be hopeful you have extra hours in the day. Nope. You might get more productive, but yeah, performance, more performance would be expected from you. Yes. And if you are not using AI properly, you have to compete in the ones that are being guided in their performance enhanced. Look at the good sway, the boring many boring parts of the work can be sent to AI to help you do right. And, and the role becomes less about processing information and more about responsibility and people. And lawyers are supposed to be people who are good with people. So that's my hint for the very near future. Amazing, I really appreciate you bringing those up and and to wrap up today's conversation, you know, we're looking at now imagining, you know, young lawyers, early curb professionals, maybe people who are knowing their trail. You're wrapping up law school. We're thinking about building that career in technology, law, AI, regulation. All of these intersections of law technology are really, you know, being able to use it to advance in their careers. What what skills should they prioritize right now? I love that you just said, you know, lawyers are supposed to be good with people, but what should they, you know, ignore despite the hype as well? OK, first, strong human skills, so so communication, judgment, working with people, right? Second, please keep reading or don't give U and reading and social media doesn't count as reading by the way. So not only do we go and and just legal tax, they don't count too. OK, you need to read out also outside of law. So of course I would recommend science fiction. It helps you think about possible futures. We we use future scenarios to discuss questions of today. So but The thing is, I when I came to choose a reference something you'd be between science fiction fantasy. So when I started law and technology, this scholarship was like the Tatooine planet. You see, it was just a desert with a few oases. 1 sage wise, well, wise men here and there saying strange things, you know, and and some young running free and and doing stupid things. So anyways, now the field of law and technology seems more like Coruscant Chorus one. It is a plant city planet right there, said the capital of the Galaxy. The the, the, the public and the because this whole planet is a city, right? So you see, there's so many people, so many layers and and that's that's why not that many people, many fancy. So one very strong thing about technology is that we treat law as risk management in many ways, OK, We are always talking about risk here with their things you need is an exercise of pessimism, OK, law and technology in many ways. And the European law is very good. They even mention risk, levels of risk and AI, for example. And we have been working for this, but also in the last 10 years having saying a lot about governance. This word is new in law many ways. In 15 years ago, we even say that some more often now it says all the time. Both are important, but they are not enough because the law for the classical approach of law, law was about conflict resolution. When we went to law school, for example, civil law, we were discussing this have a have a conflict, we need to solve it, but also maybe we can prevent it. But also see criminal law in other areas would say law as social control. In many ways, law is also about social control and how we can make people behave better in society. So many people in criminal law and constitutional law view talk about law as social solidarity. We have this society want to make to work together. People should be happy and have full lives. So we have to deal with this other perspective or but there's so many inequalities. There's it is unfair in so many ways. Law is also about power relations with this. So there are many ways that we see law and if you're working in the corporate, working with companies and working with law and technology law, you see also need to see laws again, right. I cannot just try to regulate AI only with risk and governance when I when we know that law is so much more and has so many other pressures. So, uh, we, we, we cannot ignore that we cause if you reduce our perspective, you miss what matters. So the, the challenge is not simply to follow technology. It is try to to understand what it's doing to the way you organize our society and what, when and where you want to go. Want to just are we going just accept for, for example, right now that every near future movie it is this topic, it is every new. Do you know any near future movie that doesn't say there's something very apocalyptic in the near future? We have done that in the near future. They didn't have lawyers anymore. So yeah, they're they're just the system was a was able to to detain and capture it and sent to prison for hours because they cut the large. I don't think that is a very optimistic way of thinking the future either. OK so I I don't think I want to see lawyers in the future too. So restart thinking about more positive ways of for about our future and that has to do with technology. By way to discuss this was using public policy and smart cities. Amazing. No, I really appreciate you making the time to come on the show to share a little bit about your perspective, you're experience and your advice. So thank you for for really making the time. I appreciate it. Christiano, thank you all for tuning into today's episode.