The Bots are Coming: Kapil Kirpalani Challenges Students to Build Uniquely Human Leadership Skills

3 December 2025

On the 22nd October 2025, Gayatri Singh, Chair of the Durham Law student Society (“DLS”), welcomed Kapil Kirpalani, Global Chief Compliance at Reinsurance Group of America and Durham Law alumnus, to deliver a captivating talk titled “The Bots are coming - Leadership in Law: tips for acquiring the skills for a successful legal career.”

Mr. Kirpalani framed the conversation around how Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) is reshaping the legal workplace, emphasising that AI is a tool that should be leveraged rather than despised, a friend and not a foe. AI is starting to disrupt the legal landscape, changing the ways lawyers tackle legal issues and subsequently affects the way AI is deployed. His talk drew on practical frameworks for leading people and deploying AI responsibly, emphasising coaching, creativity, agility, connectivity and sense-making as the five core leadership capabilities that law students and junior lawyers must cultivate.

Key Takeaways:

Important to shift from oversight to capability-building: leaders must coach, create psychological safety for experimentation, and set agents (human or machine) up to succeed symbiotically.
Creativity and curiosity - reframing problems, small-scale experimentation and asking better questions - remain core human advantages that AI cannot simply replicate.
Optimise human–agent collaboration: define tasks with exceptional clarity, create iterative feedback loops, and operationalise monitoring to detect and correct model drift or hallucinations.

Observations from the Event:

Reflecting on the event, Mr. Kirpalani said:

“Lawyers and the law are perpetually having to evolve by necessity to keep pace with rapidly evolving aspects of technology. AI is no different”

Tristan Tham, one of the fellow attendees and Vice President of DLS, observed that Mr. Kirpalani’s talk carried a pragmatic message: future lawyers must pair technical diligence with human connection. He commented:

“What struck me the most was the emphasis on honing commercial acumen and people skills. An element that will always separate us from the machines is our human touch. I’ve now realised the importance of building value in ways AI can't - through experience, storytelling, and relationships. But this also means leveraging AI as a tool to prioritise workstreams requiring sound judgement and focusing on solving problems instead of perfecting administrative tasks associated with them.”

This talk was another example of a collaboration between the Durham Law School, its alumni, and one of its law-related student societies (DLS); with thanks to Bryce Tay, one of the DLS Events Officers, and to Jiya Bhatia, the DLS Mentoring Scheme Coordinator, for their support for the event. Such initiatives are all part of the ‘Durham Difference’.