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Entrepreneurship

Eileen Kessel

CEO &. Co-Founder,Entrust GC & Make Law Simple

UK

Bio

Eileen is the Co-Founder & CEO of Entrust GC and its new product Make Law Simple. She has a history of innovation and working in partnership with others.  When she was at Credit Suisse, she was COO of the General Counsel Division EMEA, where she drove digital transformation in procurement and billing through e-billing solution together with law firm partners.

Contribution to Legal Tech

Most recently she co-Founded Entrust GC and launched Make Law Simple which aims to use technology and new business models to make it easy for lawyers to access their next career opportunity and for organisations to be able to find the best legal talent in the most efficient manner.

Other Nominees

Entrepreneurship

Pilar Vila

Digital Forensic Analyst and Expert Witness

Entrepreneurship

Lea Bötticher

Founder and COO, LAWIO GmbH

Germany

Bio

During her Master studies in Business Law, Lea founded the Legal Tech Startup, LAWIO. The idea behind the company originated from the heating and hot water being out of order in her student accommodation. As a law student, Lea knew it was possible to help herself and applied for a reduction in rent. But she realized that this requires lots of effort and is a complicated process. Together with her roommate and co-founder, she developed a simple way to report damages in rented accommodation to receive a rent reduction. 

Contribution to Legal Tech

The technology behind LAWIO evaluates user-inputted information and compares it with previous case-law. By means of the extensive database of reference judgements, the system returns a comprehensible and fair result regarding rent reduction rates. 

Since its foundation, Lea’s team has grown considerably and the startup is rapidly bringing new services to the market. Among other things, it now helps tenants who do not get their deposit back.

LAWIO’s vision is to lower the access to justice with the help of technology, because they believe that an initial check to a legal claim is possible without expensive consultation.

Other Winners

Entrepreneurship

Anna de Stefano

Legal Innovation Hacker, Start Up Advisor & Mentor, Business Angel

Entrepreneurship

Caroline O’Grady

Partner, Coote O'Grady Ltd.

UK

Bio

Following qualification as a UK Solicitor and several years as a Law Firm Panel Director at AIG, Caroline has spent the last 10 years working in legal operations and legal technology. She has worked to build a bespoke services package specific to the European market, while still servicing global clients in all areas of legal spend. Her focus in recent years has been the development of proprietary legal technology, bringing her knowledge of the market into the tech she designs.  

Along with her co-founder, she has built a legal services business, whose client list includes global insurers, banks, one of the largest global automotive companies, as well as public sector organisations. These clients were all attracted to the unique tech / services combination offered by Coote O’Grady – the products bring the best of technological capability coupled with Caroline’s comprehensive knowledge of the markets she works in.

Before developing her own technology, Caroline helped to design and implement various legal tech products for global organisations.

Contribution to Legal Tech

Caroline has designed a bespoke invoice review technology, delivering legal invoice review, savings tracking and customer dashboard services (coupled with the services element of the Coote O’Grady invoice review team) – this gives the end-to-end service of data collection, human-led legal invoice review, and savings tracking. She also designed an insurance-specific portal for collection of key insurance law firm metrics, allowing insurers to performance manage their law firms, as well as use the data to drive general efficiencies and savings. This is a first-in-market product and supports a state-of-the-art performance management programme.

These products are in use within global Fortune 500 companies, saving their clients millions in legal spend.

In creating these products, Caroline and her co-founder have ensured they build a diverse and inclusive business, passionate about bringing women into the legal operations and technology space. She has coached and mentored women stepping into this sector, and ensured the business is constantly opening doors to those who have struggled in the past, most commonly working mothers. Gender diversity and equality is a cornerstone of Coote O’Grady, with over 80% of the staff being female. The company allow full flexibility in working patterns, remote working since its creation, and brings an open, family-friendly policy to working life, all while delivering a comprehensive and first-class service to global organisations.              

Coote O’Grady has grown over 60% this year alone, as a result of the services and products delivered by Caroline and the team.

Before this, Caroline was instrumental in the roll-out of various eBilling technology solutions both within the insurance and other sectors. She has niche experience in ensuring these products are tailored to the non-US market particularly.

Other Winners

Entrepreneurship

Pilar Vila

Digital Forensic Analyst and Expert Witness

Spain

Bio

Pilar is the CEO and co-founder of Forensic & Security, a company focused on digital Forensic analysis for court cases and cybersecurity. She is also CEO and co-founder of Developers Forensics Tools (DFTools), a company set up for the development of hardware and software solutions for digital forensics to maintain the chain of custody regarding evidence in court cases. Pilar is one of the Chief Security Envoys for ElevenPaths(Telefonica), a recognition to her professional career and helping her to promote cybersecurity and forensics in Spain as an expert witness. 

Contribution to Legal Tech

Pilar is the author of the book “Computer Forensic Analysis Techniques for Professional Judicial Experts” by the 0xWORD publishing house and currently preparing the doctoral thesis in Computer Forensics. Her main contribution is in the investigation of different ways and researching best practices in digital Forensics investigations. Always looking for the preservation and non-manipulation of digital evidence in court cases. Another large contribution of hers is shedding light and divulging know-how in relation to digital Forensic analysis and best practices in the legal sphere through cybersecurity courses and events. 

Her startup DFTools won different awards regarding the research, development and innovation in hardware and software for the digital forensic analyst with guarantees always looking for best practices. 

She teaches classes in different cybersecurity masters`s degrees and also to law enforcement agencies in digital forensics for judicial cases with an expert witness

Other Nominees

Entrepreneurship

Kamila Kurkowska

President of Women in Law Foundation & Polish Ambassador of ELTA

Entrepreneurship

Laia Moncosí 

Co-Founder, Lawyers for Projects

Spain

Bio

Laia is the Co-Founder in 2017 of the alternative legal services provider Lawyers for Projects. Lawyers for Projects helps companies optimize and reduce their legal costs with independent top-tier lawyers and technology. She’s specialized in Competition Law and Commercial Law with a Law degree from the University of Navarra and Executive MBA from ESADE. Laia has developed her professional career during 18 years at PwC. She has extensive in-house experience acquired during a secondment in one of the world leaders in the automotive industry. Firm advocate that the legal sector needs to innovate in order to evolve.

Contribution to Legal Tech

For the past three years Laia has been preaching about legal tech solutions to a wide array of audiences contributing to the implementation and promotion of legal tech amongst in house legal departments.

She has participated as a keynote speaker in legal innovation and legal tech issues in various academic and legal events. She has an extensive knowledge of legal tech solutions in business law and she has been a pioneer in the legal tech and legal ops consultancy in Spain, helping in house legal departments of multinational companies move forward in their digital transformation strategies.

Other Nominees

Entrepreneurship

Laura Fauqueur

(Freelance) Design Thinking Facilitator, Director of Masters in Legaltech at CEU IAM

Entrepreneurship

Carina Smolik-Fischer

Director Product Management, BusyLamp

Germany

Bio

Carina has graduated in business informatics and was a partner and sales manager for the software company AF Software GmbH in Hamburg for more than 19 years, which developed and sold the “winra” software.  After selling her company to Wolters Kluwer, she worked for 4.5 years as the product manager of the “winra” software at Wolters Kluwer. She now works at BusyLamp as Director of Product Management and is responsible for the matter management software matter.space and the BL Legal Spend Management Software.

She has more than 20 years of experience in Sales, Product and Project Management for legal process management software in commercial law firms and legal departments. She is passionate about Legal Tech and committed to succeed the transformation of the legal sector. For Carina, it is a real privilege bringing Legal Tech closer to lawyers. She is married and has a 13-year-old daughter. A Spanish water dog completes the family and as a North German she loves to go to the sea and enjoy the nature.

Contribution to Legal Tech

Since Carina studied information technology in the 1990s, she was always fascinated about the impact modern and intuitive software has. At that time, the focus of software was only to automate processes, but she felt very passionate about designing and developing software for users to streamline their daily work – intuitive, easy to use, quickly at the goal.   Carina and her father, who started with IT technology in the early 70s, were always fascinated about the fast and evolutionary development in the IT technology branch. Driven by a befriended law firm they started their own company “AF Software GmbH” in 1996 and developed the first software program specialized for commercial law firms and legal departments. They created a totally new software based on the latest Technology at that time and – and this is the revolutionary part of it – with open interfaces to Microsoft Office for Windows and Borland Word Perfect, networked and with a clear focus on Document Management, Fulltext Search and Daily Work Dashboard.  

She became Sales Director and had a massive influence on the strategy and development of their “winra” Software: customer-centric, based on the latest legal design and legal tech development. The company grew rapidly, attracting the best commercial Law firms in Germany and then began expanding into the Legal Departments.   Over the years, “winra” was always at the forefront in modern technology and legal innovation for Matter and Case Management. In 2015 their company was sold to Wolters Kluwer and founded the new Legal Department Business Unit. Carina became the Product Manager for “winra” for more than 4 years. In September 2019 she started in a new challenge with BusyLamp: Development of a new Matter Management Software from the scratch based on the latest technology: modern Cloud software combined with more than 24 years of experience in Legal Tech. The first release started in September this year and as Director for Product Management she is responsible for the scope, design and strategy of the new Software called matter.space.

Other Nominees

Entrepreneurship

Anna Agu

Co-Founder, Lex Law Office

Estonia

Bio

Anna Agu is a co-founder of Lex Law Office in Estonia. Lex Law Office is a leading law firm that specializes in legal assistance for Fintech, blockchain and crypto projects. Anna is a great lawyer and advises companies in the field of finance, cryptocurrency and compliance regulation. Moreover, she is an excellent expert and public international speaker (presentations at TerraCrypto (Nur-Sultan), TerraCrypto Forum (Moscow), CryptoFin (Tallinn), FinadTech (Barcelona)). Even during the pandemic, Anna has managed to give presentations as a speaker at Blockconf Digital 2020 and Women Tech Global Conference.

Contribution to Legal Tech

She has extensive experience working for tax authorities and government working groups. Anna had also participated in the governmental working exchange visits in different EU countries. During her career, she has taken part in the development of changes in regulation and cooperation between the public authorities of Estonia. Due to this experience, Anna considers vital the cooperation between innovations start-ups, government authorities and legal experts to provide the elaboration of innovational technology and a supportive business environment.

In 2019 Anna was a co-organizer of CryptoFin Conference in Tallinn. The conference was dedicated to the recent innovations and current development in blockchain technology, as well as in alternative opportunities for financial instruments and the future of the banking sector. At the two-day CryptoFin conference, more than 30 speakers from all around the world presented their speeches and participated in the discussion panels. More than 300 participants attended the event to know the market trends in blockchain and cryptocurrency industries. 

Other Nominees

Entrepreneurship

Anna Murk

annamurk.de, Founder LEGAL LAYMAN

Entrepreneurship

Kamila Kurkowska

President of Women in Law Foundation & Polish Ambassador of ELTA

Poland

Bio

Kamila is an expert in implementing and executing marketing strategies and innovation within businesses, with previous experience gained in market-leading advisory companies on the Polish market.

A trailblazer of LegalTech initiatives in Poland, Kamila is the creator and President of The Women in Law Foundation, aiming at promoting the role of women in the legal industry, particularly in new technologies. Initiatives of the Foundation include meetups on trending topics within technology, a competition for the best master’s thesis joining law and technology for female students: “Law with a Technology Background”, and hosting webinars in cooperation with ELSA (European Law Students Association) on topics such as Artificial Intelligence or Blockchain. The Foundation also hosts a unique mentoring program for young women lawyers. 

Contribution to Legal Tech

Outside of her activities as President of the Foundation, Kamila takes part in and leads a variety of initiatives to highlight the importance of legal technology in the legal business. In 2020, these initiatives have included acting as a mentor and juror of the Global Legal Hackathon, teaching classes on LegalTech for attorney trainees at the Warsaw Bar Association, and conducting a webinar on PR in legal technology, with the participation of well-known journalists and legal disruptors.

In the upcoming 2020/2021 period, Kamila’s initiatives will also include acting as the Director of “LegalTech and Innovation in the Legal Industry” studies at SWPS University and launching a CEE LegalTech Hub, while continuing her activities as an ambassador of ELTA (European Legal Tech Association) for Poland. 

Other Nominees

Entrepreneurship

Angelina Zinchenko

Chief Product Officer, Trood Legal

Russia

Bio

Angelina graduated from the Moscow State Technical University named after N.E. Bauman with a degree in Robotics and Integrated Automation.  
For more than 5 years she has been helping technology startups to go through the full cycle of forming a vision of their product before launching an MVP (minimum viable product) on the market.

Angelina is contributing to the popularization of modern IT professions in Russia, the application of product approaches in the work of organizations and the digitalization of processes. She has an international certification in project management (ICA-APM) and acts as a mentor and career coach for specialists starting their careers in the direction of project management, product management and analytics in IT.

She also gives lectures and practical webinars on Product and Project Management topics at ProductStar Russia. She is a community member and a contributor at ProductCamp Russia conferences.
She is one of the top 10 authors of the Product Management hub on habr.com, Europe’s largest resource for IT professionals.

Contribution to Legal Tech

Angelina has launched a technology platform for the implementation of digital products and business automation tasks with a low-code approach called Trood.

Trood Legal product is LegalTech startup was created as a collaboration between tech company Trood and leading Baker McKenzie experts.
Angelina as a Trood Legal CPO is responsible for the technical implementation of the product, monitors its quality and compliance with the needs of clients and leads the development team. A design engineer solution has been developed for the needs of specialists, managers and managing partners of law firms to maximize focus on their main goals in their daily work.

Also together with Max Gutbrod (ex-Managing Partner Baker McKenzie) and Holger Zscheige(organizer of the Moscow Legal Tech conferences), she is actively promoting the value of automation of operational processes to Russian law firms as well as the digitalization culture of legal processes in Russia.

Other Nominees

Entrepreneurship

Dorothea Teichmann

Senior Privacy Tech Manager, Proliance GmbH (datenschutzexperte.de)

Germany

Bio

Dorothea is an alumnus of the University of Speyer. She has been working as a lawyer and data protection officer in Munich since 2017. Since April she is working as an in-house lawyer at Proliance GmbH (datenschutzexperte.de), specializing in data protection, where she has obtained an internationally recognized certificate (CIPP/E from IAPP).

Contribution to Legal Tech

As Senior Privacy Tech Manager at Proliance, Dorothea develops with the help of her team technical solutions in the form of an intelligent software. This software called Proliance 360 is a data privacy SaaS-Solution that helps to automate recurring tasks within the data privacy management in small and medium enterprises and guides even non-experts from initial audit to final compliance. Besides that, Dorothea had helped the initiative #gesundzusammen with the Privacy-first Corona-Warning App.

Other Nominees