Nick Flynn, Head of Legal, Avaaz, discusses how technological development, climate change and AI are reshaping society, and why lawyers have an increasingly important role to play in corporate governance, risk management and protecting the public interest.
“Technological development and climate change are driving profound upheaval across society. We are experiencing rapid changes on a massive scale, which are reshaping political, environmental and technological structures. Lawyers today have the opportunity to play a more human-centred role, and help companies avoid corporate governance mistakes that could have even more devastating consequences than the scandals of recent years,” says Nick Flynn, Head of Legal, Avaaz.
Flynn is taking part in a fireside discussion at the Marcus Evans European Corporate Counsel Summit 2026.
Every organisation is navigating unchartered territory ever faster, with more uncertainty and volatility than ever before. The old model of focusing on the bottom line is too risky now. Lawyers need to be more engaged, offer wise counsel and different perspectives.
Businesses will always make mistakes, but people have to think about the consequences of getting things wrong.
The Post Office scandal in the UK was a massive corporate governance scandal because the legal function didn’t push back on the business decisions being made. That leap to a new and flawed accounting system resulted in over 250 innocent postmasters going to jail, over a dozen suicides and hundreds more people losing their livelihoods.
There have also been other corporate governance scandals around the world, including the VioGen scandal in Spain, where police used AI to assess the risk of domestic violence with disastrous results.
It showed us what’s at stake with technological change and disruption. Yes, it was a piece of software that malfunctioned, but the organisation defended the system and ignored the consequences on the people.
It failed to see the human dimension. The legal function of the Post Office failed dramatically. It should have taken a step back, and seen the risks to personal reputations, the organisation, the people and the wider community.
In response to public outrage, professional standards for lawyers have been revised. Their duty now is more explicitly to defend the public interest rather than their client’s interest.
I want to encourage lawyers to see the influence they have in society, to wield that power and influence. To look at how their organisation engages with the world, what the risks are, and advise from that basis, putting real people, customers, colleagues, and other stakeholders, ahead of systems and structures.
They need to start engaging with and learning about the technology’s limitations. Look at what the legal function at the Post Office failed to do. It failed to see the human side of it. That was a fundamental error.
Focusing on the bottom line and doing the minimum required for compliance or to defend the system’s interests carries significant risk professionally and organisationally.
There are many examples of how that approach fails. They need to offer wise counsel about the implications and consequences of business decisions. Ultimately, their reputation could be on the line.
With AI taking over so many functions, there is scope for a much bigger version of the Post Office scandal. There’s lots of literature out there on how biased and hallucinatory AI can be and what real-world harms it can produce.
Environmental destruction and a descent into political chaos are also risks. We’re on the cusp of transformational change and big mistakes will be made.
The legal function has to make sure it doesn’t go along or collude with these disasters. There needs to be people in every organisation looking at mitigating potential risks and downsides, and challenging siloed groupthink.
That’s the lesson from the Post Office and VioGen. Advice should be human-centred, putting people over and above any AI system.
There’s a real opportunity for people to show up authentically, as leaders, as wise counsel. That will be a distinguishing feature in the career path in the future.
AI can do a lot of the legal work at the moment, but it doesn’t provide judgement, wisdom, instinct, imagination, empathy or human authenticity.
There’s always a temptation to deliver the advice the CEO or board want to hear, not what they need. I do appreciate that it is contextual and the circumstances are different in each case, but being curious and authentic, and aiming to offer wise counsel in a human-centred context, are good habits to develop.
They will lead to more success, satisfaction and opportunities over a lawyer’s career. The ordinary vanilla skills will be outsourced to the technology.
AI is just one example of the rapid changes we’re experiencing. It’s also happening in politics and lawyers have some interesting choices to make, whether to collude or oppose the collapse of the rule of law.
We should not assume that what is happening in America will not happen across Europe. What do we do with an assault on the law here, rising demagoguery and populism?
Lawyers should not underestimate their influence and role as architects of society and upholders of the rule of law.
"The old model of focusing on the bottom line is too risky now" - Nick Flynn
View Nick Flynn on Linkedin here.
Find out more about the next edition of the European Corporate Counsel Summit here.
For more information, please contact: Kyriakos Xenophontos, kyriakosx@marcusevanscy.com