About
We help boards, senior leadership teams, and professionals govern well when the risks are complex.
The practice
Thinklab Governance is a governance advisory and education practice. We work with boards, senior leadership teams, and professionals, and we have a specialty in the oversight of artificial intelligence.
We were founded in 2008 and are based in Victoria, British Columbia. Our clients include corporate and non-profit boards, public bodies, professional regulators, and professional associations.
We are a small practice by design. Michael Litchfield leads every engagement, and we build a team around larger projects as needed.
Michael Litchfield is a governance advisor, lawyer, and educator. He advises and trains boards, senior leadership teams, and professionals on governance and risk, with a specialty in artificial intelligence.
Michael began his career at Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP and as a judicial law clerk at the Supreme Court of British Columbia. He founded Thinklab in 2008.
He has served on non-profit boards, public tribunals, and advisory committees, and currently sits on the Senate of the University of Victoria and the Island Health Research Ethics Board.
Michael has taught at the University of Victoria Faculty of Law since 2011, where he directs the Business Law Clinic and founded the AI Risk and Regulation Lab.
He speaks and writes regularly on AI risk, regulation, and governance. His talks, for boards, professional bodies, and the justice sector, focus on how existing legal duties apply to AI, who owns the risk inside an organization, and what proportionate oversight looks like in practice. He also writes a regular column for Slaw, Canada's online legal magazine.
Michael is also the founder of the Canadian Centre for Responsible AI Governance, an independent, non-partisan national not-for-profit that operates separately from Thinklab Governance.
Background
- Education
- Master of Laws, University of Victoria
Juris Doctor, University of British Columbia
Bachelor of Arts, University of British Columbia - Current appointments
- Member, Senate, University of Victoria
Member, Health Research Ethics Board, Island Health - Past appointments
- Member, Property Assessment Appeal Board of British Columbia
Member, Civil Resolution Tribunal of British Columbia
Member, Technology, Remoteness, Disability and Evidence Advisory Committee, British Columbia Law Institute
Member, Data Stewardship Committee, Province of British Columbia
Panel member, Property Assessment Review Panel, Province of British Columbia
Chair, Commercial and Real Estate Section, and member, Provincial Council, Canadian Bar Association, BC Branch
Chair, Board of Directors, Habitat for Humanity Society of Greater Vancouver
Director and Secretary, Red Door Housing Society
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