Arrow keys or scroll to navigate
Legal Foresight Workshop / Munich 2026

Futures of Law:
A Battle of Narratives

Johannes Kleske
5 March 2026
01
Johannes Kleske
Critical Futurist, Foresight Consultant
20+
years in futures & strategy
100+
clients across industries
MA
Futures Studies
Former Managing Director of Third Wave (12 years). Senior Foresight Director at Edenspiekermann. Keynote speaker, podcast host, lecturer.
02
How we relate to the future
Pull of the Future Weight of the Past Push of the Present Sohail Inayatullah, Futures Triangle
Read more: Futures Garden
03
What is the future?
Present Futures
Stories we tell today about the future. They exist in the present. They serve present agendas.
Future Presents
Actual moments in the future. They don't exist yet. We cannot know them.

"You can learn a lot about the present from listening to stories about the future."

Read more: Futures Garden
04

"Fictional expectations help actors coordinate their decisions in the context of great uncertainty. Shared expectations allow for joint action. The more actors adopt a certain image of the future, the greater their influence on development."

Jens Beckert, Imagined Futures (2016)

Read more: Futures Garden
05
Part Two

Deconstruct

06

AI and its battle of narratives.

07
The next level of GenAI

From tool to agent.

08
Matt Shumer, February 2026

"Something Big Is Happening"

100 million views. CNN. One person's coding experience with Claude Code, extrapolated to the future of all work.

A present future par excellence: it tells you about his present, not about the future.

Read more: Futures Lens Newsletter
09
Citrini Research, February 2026

"The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis"

"The moment a concrete scenario lands in an environment of anxiety, it stops being a scenario and becomes a prediction."

Read more: Futures Lens Newsletter
10
The bridge to your world

Anthropic launches Claude Legal Plugin

11

Is this a signal that your industry is being disrupted?

Or is this a narrative translating anxiety into market movements?

12
Part Three

Reconstruct

13
Headlines from the future
How do these futures make you feel?
Spiegel International, 2033
"Who Do I Sue?" — The Question Defining a Generation of Legal Helplessness
When algorithms make the decisions that govern your life and no human ever reviews them.
The Guardian, 2033
Two-Tier Justice: How Germany's Courts Became a Service for Those Who Can Afford to Wait
Average civil case duration: 3.5 years. Private arbitration: weeks.
TechCrunch, 2033
German Legal Tech Startups Relocate to Singapore — "We Love Germany, But We Can't Wait Another Decade"
14 of 20 most-funded legal tech companies now operate outside the EU.

Based on scenarios developed at the LLI Legal Foresight Workshop, November 2025

14

Your foresight practice.

Identify the future narratives in your head.
Which dominant stories are you following without questioning them? AGI, disruption, regulation catching up?
Update your mental models of the world.
Constantly. Outdated maps lead to outdated responses. The world has changed. Has your picture of it?
Make your scenarios concrete.
Abstract scenarios stay abstract. Turn them into stories, headlines, everyday situations. The more tangible, the stronger the pull.
15
From your scenarios
A day in the life of Dr. Katja Bergmann, 2033.
07:15 — The Dashboard
Overnight, the Legal OS processed 14 of her standard cases. Three tenancy disputes resolved. Two contract disputes settled. Resolved in hours what used to take weeks.
10:30 — The Biotech Case
A gene therapy clashes with three EU jurisdictions. The Legal OS identified the contradiction. But it cannot decide which argument is right. She solves one case and creates law that applies to thousands.
14:00 — The AI Case
An agency uses AI to create marketing. A competitor feeds it into their own AI. Who owns the derivative works? The Legal OS flags it as "Novel Legal Territory." No precedent. No statute. Her job.

Based on Scenario 2: "Justice Powered by a Dynamic & Intuitive Legal OS" — LLI Workshop, November 2025

16

What story do you want to tell about the future of law?

What role do you want to play in that future?

17

"If we don't invent the future, someone else will do it for us — and it will be their future, not ours."

Duncan D. Bruce & Geoff Crook, The Dream Café

18

Go deeper.

garden.johanneskleske.com/legal-foresight

Legal Foresight

The systematic anticipation of legal challenges through structured futures research. A fundamental shift in how legal systems engage with time.

The Collingridge Dilemma Three Strands of Legal Foresight Methods and Tools
garden.johanneskleske.com/the-l-in-steeple

The L in STEEPLE

Why the Legal dimension deserves separate analysis from the Political in strategic foresight.

The Pacing Problem The Brussels Effect Legal Foresight as Emerging Discipline
garden.johanneskleske.com
19
I asked my OpenClaw agent.
What does the future of law look like?
Parkabot
Future of law: less marble courtroom drama, more invisible infrastructure.

Law becomes embedded in products, platforms, and workflows, not just documents. AI handles legal production (drafting, review, research), while humans focus on judgment, negotiation, and legitimacy. Regulation turns continuous with real-time audits and machine-readable compliance. Legal strategy shifts left from post-crisis litigation to pre-crisis system design.

Big tension: efficiency vs justice. Faster legal systems are useless if they become less transparent or less fair.

So the real competitive edge is not "who uses AI," but who can prove traceability, accountability, and trust at scale.
20

Johannes Kleske

johanneskleske.com linkedin.com/in/jkleske
21