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Barclay Blair

Senior Managing Director

AI Innovation Lead

About

As Sr. Managing Director of DLA Piper's AI Innovation Team, Barclay advises both the firm and its clients on the applications of artificial intelligence while driving the innovative use of emerging technologies. Barclay is a trusted advisor to Fortune 500 companies, software and hardware vendors, and government institutions, and is an author, speaker, and internationally recognized authority on the broad range of issues that emerge at the intersection of law, technology, and business.

Barclay has led several high-profile consulting engagements at the world's leading institutions to help them globally transform the way they manage information. He is the founder and president of ViaLumina LLC and the founder and executive director of the Information Governance Initiative.

Barclay is the award-winning author of the books Information Nation: Seven Keys to Information Management Compliance, Information Nation Warrior, and Privacy Nation; and has contributed to and edited dozens of additional books and publications including: eDiscovery for Corporate Counsel, Safeguarding Critical E-Documents, Email Rules, Secure Electronic Commerce, and Professional XML.

Barclay speaks internationally and has instructed at George Washington University. He has presented to industry groups such as the American Bar Association, the American Council of Life Insurers, Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, Options Clearing Corporation, the BNA Litigation Forum, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), ARMA International, AIIM International, the Society of Quality Assurance, the MER Conference, and many others.

Barclay led a best practices project for the Financial Services Roundtable, led an international standards group on cloud computing, and is frequently interviewed by media outlets on issues relevant to his expertise. In 2013, Barclay was granted an Extraordinary Ability EB-1 green card (the so-called "Einstein Visa") by the U.S. federal government.

Barclay's notable recent work includes working with enterprises to design custom AI solutions, with a particular focus on creatively utilizing prompt engineering and retrieval-augmented generation to increase the usefulness and veracity of LLM outputs. Barclay has also spoken about responsible use of AI models and enhancement techniques (e.g. prompt engineering) to ensure alignment with organizations' goals and values.

Barclay is not a lawyer.

EXPERIENCE

Selected Consulting Clients 

Financial Services 

  • UBS, Morgan Stanley, AXA Equitable, Mutual of Omaha, Prudential Financial, Ameritrade, Sun Life Financial, Old Republic, American National Bank

Commercial

  • NBCUniversal, McCormick Inc., Altria Group, Inc., Time Warner, Union Pacific, Chevron, Creative Artists Agency, Eversource, Charter Communications, Quest Communications, AT&T, Philip Morris USA, Energen, Pioneer Resources, Cinergy, Graham Inc., Heico Corp., SaskPower, Rockwood Industries, Performance Food Group, Raytheon

Tech

  • Verizon, Hewlett-Packard, EMC Corp., Sun Microsystems, Rambus, Inc., ePlus, IBM, OpenText, Oracle, Iron Mountain, Orange Business Services, RSD, Arrow Electronics, Avnet, Inc., Kroll, Nuix, Preservica, Veritas, Viewpointe, Equivio, Xerox, Zylab, Relativity, Exterro, ActiveNav

Life Sciences

  • United Health Group, Takeda Pharmaceuticals, Nura, Inc., Forest Laboratories, GSK, AHIMA, Boehringer Ingelheim

Government

  • Texas State Archives, State of Missouri, State of Texas, Pennsylvania Infrastructure Investment Authority (PENNVEST), Southwest Florida Water Management District
Education
  • B.F.A., University of Victoria

Publications and media

Seminars

  • Presenter, "Current State of AI and What It Means to the Legal World," Association of Corporate Counsel — Dallas, October 10, 2024
  • Presenter, "Addressing Legal Risks in GenAI: The Importance of Legal Red Teaming," July 25, 2024

Notables

Information Governance Initiative

  • Executive Director & Founder 

ViaLumina

  • President & Founder

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