What a Conductor Does
A Human Conductor is not a manager of technology — they are the professional at the centre of the practice's value delivery. The conductor model takes the highest-value human capacities — judgment, ethics, strategy, and accountability — and makes them the irreducible core of practice, while freeing practitioners from the volume work that AI handles better.
Every conductor leads one of the 8 Areas of Focus. They hold a KERI AID with an ACDC role credential issued by the practice entity, and they exercise their authority via FIDO2 passkey signing. When a conductor signs an output, that action creates a KERI interaction event — a permanent, cryptographically verifiable record of professional accountability.
The inversion: In traditional practice, senior practitioners spend significant time on tasks agents now do better. In the conductor model, that capacity is entirely freed for the work only a licensed, experienced human can do — and must be accountable for.
Focus Distribution
Each conductor dedicates their professional energy across a structured distribution — deep expertise in their primary Area of Focus, with purposeful contribution across supporting areas to maintain organisational coherence.
Primary Area Duties (70%)
Deep strategic leadership, agent orchestration, conductor-level review of all agent outputs, client relationship management for matters in scope, regulatory positioning, and professional accountability for area outcomes.
Supporting Area Contribution (30%)
Cross-area input on governance decisions, participation in the full conductor team, coverage during transitions, and contribution to practice-wide improvement initiatives — particularly around AI performance and ethics.
Areas of Focus
The 8 Areas of Focus each require a dedicated conductor. The role adapts to the domain — a Processes conductor has different primary duties than a Direction conductor — but the model is consistent: human judgment + AI execution + cryptographic accountability.
Strategy & Governance Conductor
Owns the practice's regulatory roadmap, AI ethics policy, jurisdictional licensing, and strategic direction. Chairs conductor team sessions. Issues the practice's governance credentials.
Client & Community Conductor
Leads client relationships, community legal partnerships, and referral ecosystem. Approves all client-facing communications from engagement agents. Sets intake triage criteria.
Education & Skills Conductor
Owns practitioner development, AI literacy programs, and the prompt library. Ensures all practitioners can supervise agents effectively. Manages research quality standards.
Identity & Standards Conductor
Owns the KERI/ACDC identity infrastructure, credential schema registry, witness node operations, and integration standards. The root of trust for all technical identity decisions.
Revenue & Viability Conductor
Owns pricing models, resource stewardship, AI cost management, and practice economics. Approves scope estimates and fee arrangements. Reports to the practice entity on financial viability.
Operations & Delivery Conductor
Owns matter workflows, drafting pipelines, discovery operations, and service delivery. The primary signing conductor for most client-facing legal instruments. Manages matter throughput.
Compliance & Audit Conductor
Owns professional conduct compliance, AI output review standards, audit trail integrity, and regulatory reporting. The last line of defence before any agent output reaches a client or court.
Structure & Culture Conductor
Owns conductor appointments, team design, culture, and decentralised operations. Maintains the conductor registry. Leads on practice values and the human dimension of AI-native working.
Identity & Credentials
Every conductor holds a KERI Autonomous Identifier (AID) and an ACDC conductor role credential issued by the practice entity. Their appointment is recorded in the entity's Key Event Log — making the conductor's authority independently verifiable by any party, including courts and regulators.
Conductors authenticate exclusively via FIDO2 passkey — biometric or device-bound, phishing-resistant, and linked to their KERI AID. Every material action (signing a document, delegating an agent, filing with a court) requires a fresh WebAuthn assertion, creating a specific KERI interaction event in the conductor's KEL.
Core Responsibilities
Review & Sign All Consequential Outputs
Every legal instrument, court filing, formal opinion, and client advice generated by agents is reviewed and signed by the conductor before dispatch. The conductor's passkey assertion is the legal act — not the agent's draft.
Issue & Manage Agent Delegations
Conductors create delegated AIDs for their agents via KERI dip events, issue ACDC delegation credentials scoping agent authority, and revoke delegations when matters close or scope changes.
Maintain Client Relationships
Conductors are the human face of the practice for clients — handling strategic conversations, managing expectations, and ensuring the AI-native delivery model translates into a genuinely superior client experience.
Hold Professional Accountability
The conductor is the named professional responsible for all work product in their area. AI agents have no professional standing — the conductor's ACDC credential and signed KERI events are the record of accountability.
Monitor Agent Performance
Conductors review agent quality metrics, identify systematic errors or drift, update delegation scopes in response to performance, and escalate concerns to the Accountability conductor for audit.
Maintain Legal Knowledge Currency
Conductors are the practice's subject matter experts in their domain. They are responsible for keeping the agent prompt libraries, research frameworks, and compliance checklists current as law and regulation evolves.
Conductor Registry
All eight conductor positions and their current appointment status. Appointments are recorded in the practice entity's Key Event Log — verifiable by any party without contacting the practice.
| Area AID | Area of Focus | Role | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| sd-director.aid | 01 · Direction | Strategy & Governance Conductor | Open |
| sd-engagement.aid | 02 · Engagement | Client & Community Conductor | Open |
| sd-enablement.aid | 03 · Enablement | Education & Skills Conductor | Open |
| sd-protocols.aid | 04 · Protocols | Identity & Standards Conductor | Open |
| sd-sustainability.aid | 05 · Sustainability | Revenue & Viability Conductor | Open |
| sd-processes.aid | 06 · Processes | Operations & Delivery Conductor | Open |
| sd-accountability.aid | 07 · Accountability | Compliance & Audit Conductor | Open |
| sd-organisational.aid | 08 · Organisational | Structure & Culture Conductor | Open |
Founding Cohort: All 8 conductor positions are currently open to founding practitioners. Conductors receive a KERI AID, ACDC role credential, and full access to the agent registry and credential infrastructure. Apply for a founding conductor position →