A year ago, attendees of ALM Global's General Counsel Conference East were wringing their hands over whether to adopt artificial intelligence, a question that most now have answered with a resounding "yes." So, at this year's confab, which ran Monday and Tuesday at the Marriott Marquis in New York City, the conversation had largely shifted to how to pull off a smooth, successful AI implementation.

Anyone who's been in the workforce a few years has seen for themselves that shifting to new software platforms rarely goes exactly as planned. So, given general counsel's penchant for assessing, and obsessing about, risk, it would be no surprise if more than a few of the 350 attendees had nightmare scenarios swirling through their heads.