USC Gould School of Law will host the inaugural USC Gould Law and AI Summit on February 26, 2027, at USC’s University Park Campus. The Summit joins USC Gould’s roster of long-running institutes in entertainment, tax, and intellectual property — the first new addition in more than two decades — and is built to reach well beyond the legal profession.
“The inaugural USC Gould Law and AI Summit brings together leaders in energy, entertainment, transportation, and beyond to reflect the full scope of AI’s reach and to help shape it responsibly,” said USC Gould School of Law Dean Franita Tolson. “For more than 125 years, USC Gould has prepared lawyers and leaders who work at the forefront of innovation. We are excited to carry on this legacy through the AI Summit.”
The Summit is built for the leaders navigating AI’s consequences — C-suite executives, board members, general counsel, members of the bench, and the investors deciding where AI capital flows — alongside the practitioners and technologists advising them, reaching across fields and sectors.
Built from experts, built for the moment
The Summit’s programming is shaped by a planning committee of practitioners who are leading AI conversations in their respective industries.
“Southern California runs on entertainment, aerospace, energy, trade, healthcare, real estate, and finance — and every one of those industries is past the ‘what is AI’ stage, deep into impact, accountability, and talent,” said Germaine Gurr, planning committee chair and Partner at Sidley Austin LLP. “This Summit is about implementation, not theory: standing up real AI projects with a clear line to ROI, readying your people and governance before these systems are live at scale, and understanding where capital is moving next.”
Tim Fox (JD ’11), committee member and Chief Data and AI Officer at Ogletree Deakins added that the Summit’s reach is set to be expansive.
“The caliber and diversity of the planning committee, spanning law firms, in-house legal departments, academia, and technology companies, has shaped a program that reflects the full range of perspectives grappling with AI across industries,” said Fox. “Having attended numerous AI conferences, this Summit will become the leading gathering point for that conversation.”
What to expect
The one-day, in-person program will bring together executives, board members, investors, technologists, policymakers, judges, and lawyers for sessions examining AI’s impact across sectors, from regulation and liability to where capital is investing and the ethical questions shaping responsible adoption. Leaders will leave with concrete takeaways: implementation playbooks, governance models, and ROI benchmarks drawn from organizations already running AI at scale. As with Gould’s other institutes, attendees in the legal profession will have the opportunity to earn continuing legal education credit while building relationships with peers navigating the same questions from different industries.
“The program is built to be immediately useful to anyone putting AI to work, from executives standing up their first deployments to litigators tracking new trends in discovery,” said Jeff Schneider, Executive Director of the USC Gould Center for Sports, Entertainment, Media and Technology Law (SEMT) and Summit planning committee member.
The Summit joins a roster of long-running institutes that includes the Institute on Entertainment Law and Business, the Trust and Estate Conference, the Tax Institute, the Intellectual Property Institute and the Real Estate Law and Business Forum, each drawing the biggest names in their respective industries. The Law and AI Summit is designed to bring together leaders and investors from entertainment, energy, aerospace, healthcare, real estate, transportation, finance and beyond to examine how artificial intelligence is reshaping business, capital, governance, and law across every sector.
Marquee speakers will be announced in the coming weeks — those who sign up at the USC Gould Law and AI Summit page can receive the speaker announcement before it is public. Registration and program details will also be released in the coming months.
Beyond the Summit
The Summit represents the newest signature program strengthening USC Gould’s growing efforts to lead, innovate, and train at the intersection of law and AI.
The law school recently launched the Law+AI Initiative alongside Am Law 100 firm Akerman LLP, with senior partner Bill Heller serving as Academic Director; the Initiative pairs legal scholars with practicing attorneys to facilitate global knowledge sharing and help shape standards for AI adoption. USC Gould’s SEMT recently co-curated the Copyforward symposium on AI and creative rights with the Mozilla Foundation, along with the USC School of Cinematic Arts and USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism — a first-of-its-kind legal event examining generative AI from the artists’ perspective. In addition, Gould offers a dedicated LLM in Artificial Intelligence and Technology Law, along with an Executive Education certificate course built to give working professionals a practical grounding in generative AI tools and risk.
For Schneider, the through-line is investing in people’s talent. “What’s often missed is that this revolution isn’t about writing a better memo or doing faster research — it’s about people,” he said. “From students to professionals, it’s essential to gain the preparation to redefine their roles around this technology, and to recognize that it’s not here to replace them.”
USC Gould School of Law offers continuing legal education opportunities for professionals who want to learn and network with leading experts in their industries. A fixture of the Los Angeles legal community since 1948, USC Gould Continuing Legal Education hosts six annual conferences for professionals at every level to learn from, and network with, the biggest players in entertainment, estate planning, business, tax and intellectual property. To learn more, visit or subscribe at gould.usc.edu/cle – and follow on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn.
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