Keynotes for Legal Professionals

Strategy and Leadership for Legal Chiefs

In today’s complex legal landscape, the role of the C-Suite legal executive is more than operational — it’s deeply strategic. In this dynamic and empowering keynote, Professor Alex Carter will reframe what it means to lead from the legal executive function and give participants ways to use the latest data in negotiation and leadership research to achieve collaboration that drives superior results. Designed specifically for law firms’ C-Suite, this keynote will explore how legal chiefs can step fully into their power,not as support staff, but as strategic partners shaping firm-wide success.

Through a blend of negotiation frameworks, leadership insights, and real-world strategy mapping, Professor Carter will guide attendees in aligning their team’s goals with firm-wide objectives, building internal cohesion across departments, and developing a shared language of leadership. Learn how to advocate for your value, engage partners as collaborators, and lead with clarity, confidence, and purpose. This keynote isn’t about doing more — it’s about asking for more, expecting more, and delivering more as an indispensable force in your firm’s future.

Strategic Negotiation for New Partners: Negotiating Beyond the Contract

Professor Carter has substantial experience speaking to the highest levels of law firm management and C-suite executives across industries. Negotiating contracts is important for Firm leadership, but it’s only half the story of your success. Instead, Professor Carter shares strategies for nailing the critical, everyday negotiations – for business development, boundaries, information, space, or time – that move the needle for high-level professionals. Whether you’re learning how to claim your expertise and develop business as a partner, working toward leading a practice area, or just advancing in your leadership skills, you’ll learn how to drive major results and prevent unnecessary loss by advocating beyond the contract for everything you need to succeed and thrive.

Strategic Negotiation for Senior Associates: Leading Deals, Driving Outcomes

As you advance into the senior associate role, the stakes rise. You’re not just supporting the matter—you’re helping drive it. Clients expect more, firm leadership is watching, and key performance indicators shift from technical execution to leadership and strategic impact. This targeted training is designed to meet you at this critical inflection point. In this interactive keynote plus skills lab, we’ll dig into the skills that matter most when the pressure is on: navigating complex negotiations, managing competing interests, and owning your value in the room. Whether it’s a high-stakes settlement or a critical deal, you’ll gain tools to lead with credibility, agility, and strategic intent.

This talk includes a Skills Lab tailored to your day-to-day reality. Working through live hypotheticals based on actual challenges senior associates face, you’ll sharpen your judgment, test new approaches, and get real-time feedback in a supportive, high-impact environment.

Ask for More: Strategic Negotiation for New Lawyers

In this experiential talk, Professor Carter gives new Firm professionals, from first to third-year associates, tools designed to help them negotiate their way to success.

• For the first hour, Professor Carter gives newer legal professionals powerful tools – including asking the right questions and framing proposals – to achieve immediate results in their negotiations, whether within the Firm or with clients. Participants learn the theory and practice behind Professor Carter’s bestselling new book, Ask for More: 10 Questions to Negotiate Anything, which includes an emphasis on proactively steering relationships. The presentation offers specific applications for women generally, women of color, and time for Q&A.
• In the second hour, participants will put their knowledge into practice by working on hypotheticals that Professor Carter will design in consultation with the Firm – for example, negotiating a deadline with a client or negotiating over workload with a partner. Participants would work on the hypothetical(s) in groups and then come together in a “fishbowl” where Professor Carter would play the client or partner to exercise specific skills in real time and provide feedback.