December 2025
Interview by Nexus, University of Toronto Magazine
“We have a duty as scholars and practitioners at the precipice of new advancements to examine closely the impact of new trends on education, the legal profession and society and to prepare law students for the future.” says Dobrev, who, in collaboration with U of T Law’s Future of Law Lab, hosted two webinars on AI and the Law earlier this year. This timely series attracted over 700 registrations across 36 different countries and can be viewed on the Faculty’s Youtube Channel. In fact, this was the best attended online webinar at U of T Law in 2023.
August 2025
International AI in Financial Services Review
Publication by Beaumont Capital Markets
Recent technological developments have been exponential. At the center of the technological vortex is AI. Socio-economic affairs are entering the realm where machines, through the use of AI, are not merely tools, but entities that can create new tools themselves. As a broad, general-purpose technology, AI promises to have transformative implications for a wide range of areas and its rapid advancement presents diverse challenges. The field of financial services is not impervious and will not be immune to this development. In this context, the delivery of financial services will dramatically change over the foreseeable time horizon. This publication summarizes the present state of affairs by focusing on the two key prongs of any AI analytical framework, namely the use cases of AI in the area of financial services and the potential benefits that flow from them, as well as the potential risks associated with them.
July 2025 – Present
Member of the Committee on Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technologies of the New York State Bar Association.
The AI & Emerging Technologies Committee (AIETC) will examine the legal, social, and ethical impact of artificial intelligence (AI), generative AI, agentic AI, and other emerging technologies on the legal profession and global community. While exploring the positive and negative implications of AI use by the legal community and the public, the AIETC will focus on access to justice, legal regulations, and privacy preservation. The AIETC will also review AI-based software, generative AI technology, and other machine-learning tools that may enhance the profession and access to justice while analyzing those tools that pose societal and ethical risks.
March 2024
Speaker: Full-Day AI Seminar at the Ontario Securities Commission, Toronto
Dessislav presented to an audience at the OSC on recent developments of AI and the law of importance to policy-makers, government agencies and other stakeholders. The event was organized through Osgoode Professional Development at York University in Toronto.
February and April 2023
Dessislav made a series of presentations organized by the Future of Law Lab at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law. The presentations explored specific examples of machine learning applications in the provision of legal services, such as adapting AI NLP to legal language; using AI models built on case datasets in the prediction of legal outcomes (such as through judicial analytics and substantive judicial prediction); employing AI in contract review, issue-spotting, and other due diligence tasks; and use of AI in adjudication. The sessions also sketched the lines between what AI can do and the areas of AI limitations where the competitive advantages of the human lawyer will likely persist. Further, the presentations examined how the law as a governance tool does, can, and should set the parameters around the use of AI in the wider society given AI’s broad ethical, legal, political, and socio-economic implications. It also reviewed the key areas of AI governance (such as AI in decision-making; AI implications for human autonomy, privacy, and surveillance; Legal responsibility and personhood)
January 2023
Dessislav made a presentation to the New York State Bar Association. The presentation was entitled “Artificial Intelligence and The Law: Overview, Key Issues and Practice Trends”. Some of the main topics covered during the presentation included: a foundational understanding of AI (e.g., machine learning and deep learning) and its essential taxonomy; practical demos of the current and foreseeable technical capabilities of AI in the legal field; given these technical capabilities, understanding of AI’s impact on the legal profession as well as its broader ethical implications; and the key areas of legal regulation in the United States regarding the use of AI
