SPEAKER

Bridget M. McCormack is the President and CEO of the American Arbitration Association-International Centre for Dispute Resolution® (AAA-ICDR®), the preeminent global provider of alternative dispute resolution services (www.adr.org). She assumed this role in February 2023, bringing an extensive background in judicial service, court administration and scholarship and a track record of advocacy for innovation and technology in dispute resolution. 

McCormack has distinguished herself as an educator, advisor and influential member of prestigious legal organizations. She is Strategic Advisor to the Future of the Profession Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School where she also teaches courses on generative artificial intelligence (AI) and its implications for the legal profession and civil justice. She is a founding steering committee member of Duke Center on Law & Tech’s Responsible AI in Legal Services (RAILS) initiative (www.rails.legal). She is the chair of the American Bar Association’s (ABA) Section on Legal Education and Admission to the Bar. She also serves on the Conference of Chief Justices and the Conference of State Court Administrators’ Committee on Legal Education and Admissions Reform. McCormack is a special advisor to the ABA Taskforce on AI, a fellow of the College of Law Practice Management and a member of the Council of the American Law Institute. She serves on the Governing Board of the ABA Center for Innovation. She is also a senior arbitration board member of the American Review of International Arbitration and is on the Board of Trustees for the Foundation for International Arbitration Advocacy. In her current role as AAA-ICDR President and CEO, McCormack continues to speak and write frequently about access to justice, alternative dispute resolution, innovation, technology and artificial intelligence in the legal profession. She authored an article in the ABA’s upcoming Book on AI: Who’s Law is it Anyway: A GenAI Optimist has Thoughts. She has presented to courts, law firms, arbitration stakeholders, and law schools about the impact of Generative AI on the business and practice of law in the last year, including: The Conference of Chief Justices and State Court Administrators; the New York Bar Association’s Annual Meeting 2024: Presidential Summit on AI; the College of Law Practice Management’s Transformative Networks: 2024 Futures Conference; the 12th ITA-IEL-ICC Joint Conference on International Energy Arbitration; Jones Day’s 2024 Women in IP Speaker Series: IP, Advocacy, and Dispute Resolution in the Age of Artificial Intelligence; Keynote Speaker at Suffolk University Law School’s Clinical Programs and Legal Innovation and Technology (LIT) Institute’s 2024 legal tech conference. Before her tenure with the AAA-ICDR, McCormack was Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, a position her peers selected her for in January 2019 after she served for six years as an associate justice. While on the Court, she championed innovation and the use of technology to improve access to justice, including launching the first statewide online dispute resolution platform and a statewide eviction diversion program during the COVID-19 pandemic. She also co-chaired the Technology and Rapid Response Committees for the Conference of Chief Justices and the Conference of State Court Administrators during this time. 

A graduate of New York University Law School, McCormack started her legal career in New York City, joining the Yale Law School faculty in 1996. She then joined the University of Michigan Law School faculty in 1998, where she taught criminal law, legal ethics, and numerous clinics. She was Associate Dean for Clinical Affairs from 2002 until 2012.