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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

Ramona Weber

Member of the Board/Director of Events, recode.law

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

Birte Gall

Managing Partner der Heritas GmbH, Erblotse.de

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

Anna Murk

annamurk.de, Founder LEGAL LAYMAN

Germany

Bio

Anna is a business lawyer, Legal Designer and lives in Würzburg, Germany. Her areas of expertise are Compliance and European business law. She’s passionate about creating an easy, efficient and comprehensible access to law for non-lawyers.

Contribution to Legal Tech

Anna has designed a central reporting platform for medical institutions such as university hospitals, that provides anuser-centered, fast and easy way to report any kind of critical incidents, i.e. data protection violation, staff overloads, needs for repair, corruption and many more.  Above that, she adapts technological communication processes in companies according to the relevance of legal contents. She restructures flows of information to guarantee a target group specific communication, where less is always more.

Other Nominees

Entrepreneurship

Hanny Vonderstein

Global Product Manager- Document Application, Wolters Kluwer Deutschland GmbH

Entrepreneurship

Jennifer Paybody

Head of Commercial, Clifford Chance Applied Solutions

UK

Bio

Jennifer Paybody is Head of Commercial at Clifford Chance Applied Solutions (CCAS), a legal tech subsidiary of Clifford Chance.

Jennifer joined CCAS in 2018 just as it was being formed. Over the last 18 months, Jennifer has set up the sales and marketing function of CCAS. This has included building a sales and marketing team, creating a go-to-market strategy for CCAS and its products, selecting and onboarding sales and marketing technology, and designing and embedding sales processes. This is an innovative set-up for a law firm that sees Clifford Chance embracing a product sales and marketing strategy (vis a vis traditional services sales and marketing from a law firm).

Contribution to Legal Tech

Jennifer is also part of the Senior Leadership Team and Product Steering Group at CCAS, through these roles she helps to inform the wider CCAS business strategy and which ideas are developed into products.

CCAS is one of the first of its kind within the legal sector; a legal tech start-up wholly owned by a law firm. Her role therefore involves her being a key champion for legal tech both within Clifford Chance and in the wider external market. Over the last year, this has seen her speaking at various conferences, organizing legal tech events, and blogging through the CCAS Insights blog. An example of this is a ‘She Shares’ event she organized with She Breaks the Law in New York, encouraging women to share their personal career stories and champion each other.

Other Nominees

Entrepreneurship

Dr. Elena Mechik

COO & Co-Founder, INHUBBER

Germany

Bio

•Elena Mechik is the CEO and co-founder of the INHUBBER, a Contract Lifecycle Management Platform. At INHUBBER she leads the development of the trusted, transparent and affordable Legal Tech software. In 2009, she founded the Non-Governmental Organization “umWELTweit” where she empowers the timber supply chain transparency based on the blockchain-based contract management. She is a guest lecturer for strategic management at the Touro College Berlin, holds a bachelor’s degree in International Business from Touro College Berlin (2008), master’s degree in engineering and economics from the Technical University of Berlin (2011), and a doctorate in earth sciences from the University of Hamburg (2017). At the London School of Economics, she has acquired her expertise in Development Economics (2014).

Contribution to Legal Tech

Elena got her legal background from her studies in Industrial Engineering and Business Administration where she has received a deep understanding of business law. During her Ph.D. studies, she has analyzed how legal rights contribute to a transparent timber supply chain, can reduce the illegal logging of tropical forests, and mitigate climate change.
Her deep understanding of Legal Tech she has received as the COO and later CEO of INHUBBER. Under her leadership, INHUBBER developed from an R&D project at the Humboldt University in Berlin to one of the fastest growing Blockchain and AI-based contract management platforms in Germany. By combining the methods of legal design thinking and the philosophy of access to justice, Elena and her team create Legal Tech solutions that are intuitive, transparent, and affordable. Her work has and will continue having a major impact on Legal Tech especially in the field of contract automation through Blockchain-based smart contracts. 

Other Nominees

Entrepreneurship

Ramona Weber

Member of the Board/Director of Events, recode.law

Entrepreneurship

Birte Gall

Managing Partner der Heritas GmbH, Erblotse.de

Germany

Bio

Birte helped companies to understand and take action in the digitizing economy. With lectures and (online)workshops on digital business transformation, agile working methodologies and leadership in digital change, she has shown law firms and legal departments the opportunities that lie in digitization. Furthermore, she has initiated projects to change the firm’s and law departments way of working and leading in a digital world. 

In 2017 she co-founded asgaro GmbH to identify and validate projects at the interface of digitization and law. This is where the idea of the Erblotse was born.

Contribution to Legal Tech

The Erblotse aims at simplifying the inheritance process for heirs. For this purpose, Birte and her team have developed a user-friendly application that helps heirs to get an individualized overview over the legal and organizational tasks that they need to take care of. Additionally, the app guides heirs through the difficult process of listing and valuating the assets of their inheritance. To this end, the team has developed, among other things, Germany’s first digital estate register for heirs. 

The Erblotse’s purpose it to improve the inheritance culture in Germany by offering easy access to legal help in a digitally untapped area relevant to a broad spectrum of the society. The team’s vision is to have a positive impact on the development of society and to provide a stimulus for further legal tech initiatives aiming for social impact.

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

Entrepreneurship

Anna de Stefano

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