Written by: Gloria Kosir
Iowa Law professors Joseph Yockey, who holds the F. Arnold Daum Chair in Corporate Law, and Diane Lourdes Dick, the Charles E. Floete Distinguished Professor of Law, are co-organizing a symposium at Harvard Law School on agentic artificial intelligence (AI). The event “When AI Acts: Law for the Agentic Future” will take place March 27-28, 2026.
Agentic AI furthers generative AI's capabilities by acting as a decision-maker capable of autonomous action. As its capabilities expand, the systems present a watershed moment, placing accountability, risk, and agency on a knife’s edge in law, industry, and markets.
“We’re at an inflection point. AI is no longer just assisting us; it is beginning to act autonomously alongside us. By convening this symposium now, we are creating space for the serious, necessary work of developing the legal doctrines and governance mechanisms we will need for the agentic future,” Yockey said.
The symposium will host an interdisciplinary forum to address the systems’ strain on legal frameworks built for human decision-makers, examining how agentic AI reshapes legal doctrine. The symposium will also consider how society can proactively design responses that champion both innovation and accountability.
15 symposiasts will present and publish papers, including four Iowa Law professors: Yockey; Dick; Mihailis Diamantis, the Ben V. Willie Professor in Excellence; and James Toomey, associate professor. Other participants come from institutions around the country and world.
As AI is rapidly integrated into various sectors of business, academia, and life, Iowa Law provides opportunities to study AI's impacts, such as through the Technology Law Clinic; Innovation, Business & Law (IBL) Center; Iowa Law Review; and several courses.
The IBL Center and the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology are co-sponsoring the event. It will be held both in person in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and via a Zoom livestream. There will also be a designated viewing area in Room 115 of the Boyd Law Building.
Register online through the symposium website or at this link.