Bio

With a strong history spanning over two decades as a thought leader and doer in the ALSP market, Sinead continues to successfully push the role of technology in innovation and transformation of large highly regulated corporate legal functions. Her leadership on advisory projects at some of the largest and most complex European financial institutions has seen her introduce technology-enabled managed services initiatives, technology-enabled legal spend transformation initiatives, technology-enabled self-service models, and more. Sinead is an achiever that any team would fight tooth and nail to have access to.

Contribution to Legal Tech

Sinéad is an Industry Expert at Morae, providing consulting services around the strategic planning, implementation and delivery of large-scale transformational projects. Sinead also provides coaching/mentoring services to leaders of the legal sector.  
 
Prior to joining Morae, Sinéad was a key player in initiating and developing Herbert Smith Freehills’ Alternative Legal Services Group. In her role as Director of the APAC region, Sinéad was responsible for teams in Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, Shanghai and Sydney, and for the delivery of these services to the firm’s clients globally. This included services around commercial litigation, class actions, arbitrations and regulatory investigations across a range of highly regulated sectors. Sinéad also provided non-contentious services to the financial and corporate sectors, utilising a range of applied legal technologies and resourcing models for the delivery of large projects within M&A, Capital Markets and Contract Review. In 2017, Sinéad was honoured to accept, a FT Innovative Lawyers Award for Innovation in New Business and Delivery Models in the Innovation in the Business of Law category on behalf of Herbert Smith Freehills for the opening of the Shanghai and Melbourne hubs in 2016.
 
Sinéad was Associate Director at Janders Dean International. During this time, Sinéad worked with a range of clients in private practice as well as in-house legal teams on a number of strategic projects from designing a new fee-earning practice group for litigation services within a global law firm to advising a global bank’s inhouse team on strategic transformation (including structural, technology and cost-management initiatives). 
 
Sinéad holds Bachelors and Masters degrees from University College Dublin (French & German). She was called to the Bar of England & Wales in 2005 and is a member of the Honourable Society of Gray’s Inn. Sinéad was admitted to practice in Australia by the Supreme Court of New South Wales and held an Australian practicing certificate for 7 years. Most recently Sinéad completed a Diploma in Personal & Business Coaching at the Irish Lifecoach Institute. She is currently based in Ireland.

Bio

Uzunma leads data privacy projects at several multinational clients, providing advise on European and cross-border data privacy compliance and on wider regulatory matters governing the use of personal information. Uzunma is admitted to the bar in three jurisdictions; New York, Nigeria and is on the Roll of solicitors in the United Kingdom. She advises clients on behavioral advertising, digital analytics, and cookie preference management. Her experience includes leading international data privacy compliance reviews and audits; developing and coordinating rolling privacy compliance programs. 

Uzunma partners with product development and business divisions to craft and implement the privacy design and policies of AI mobile applications in the health, fitness and gaming industry; 

Prior to her work in data privacy, Uzunma worked as an IP attorney, providing advise in the US and Germany with a focus on information technology, e-commerce, licensing and distribution transactions. In her role at a fast-paced tech startup, she created and negotiated software development and licensing agreements for company transactions in the United States and Asia. 

Contribution to Legal Tech

Uzunma is fascinated by mobile app technology and works extensively with businesses in assessing their apps for data protection compliance. She leads data privacy design, implementation and audit projects for several mobile apps in the gaming, nutrition and entertainment industry. 

While she has supported established mobile app providers, Uzunma believes that personal data privacy in technology should not be limited to large scale operations but considered at all levels of the ecosystem. Through her work with small, innovative tech startups and SMEs, she delivers scalable privacy solutions and supports in ongoing compliance of several AI apps, some dealing with children’s data and other special categories of personal data. 

Uzunma spearheaded the European privacy compliance program for a leading data analytics nutrition insights platform. She also supports privacy by design with apps implementing advanced augmented reality, machine learning and Internet of Things. She is currently guiding several mobile app clients through appropriate design and transparency changes in light of the UK Age Appropriate Design Code. 

Uzunma is working on a series of guidelines and workshops targeted at providing women app developers and other typically disadvantaged business owners within the app development landscape with free, practical and easily implementable support required to design and deliver privacy compliant mobile applications to the market. Her vision includes matching these developers and businesses with privacy advisors equipped to provide the needed support in terms of practice experience, language and an understanding of their unique business challenges.

Bio

Larissa is a marketing professional from Germany. She studied Political Science at University of Pisa in Italy with a focus on Anthropology. Currently she is enrolled in a User Experience Design Professional Diploma course and working for a Germany based legal service company specialized in family law.

Contribution to Legal Tech

Larissa is the initiator of Skillerator. Skillerator is the winning solution of 2020 Global Legal Hackathon in Cologne, Germany and currently in the global finals. Solving a major gap in migration law and access to justice, Skillerator proposes a holistic approach to workforce migration allowing small to medium sized businesses and start-ups to recruit internationally easily and reliably. The legally compliant process is mapped out logically and transparently to both applicants and employers. Making the process easy and accessible for everyone is crucial for economic growth in our cosmopolitan society.

Bio

Maraja started her career in a law firm in Frankfurt, parallel to her studies of business administration in Mannheim and Bogotá. She became managing director of an European alliance of law firms and was responsible for marketing and project management in all legal areas for Germany and Europe. Passionate about digitalization, she graduated her MBA in Digital Transformation Management, focusing on the success of business model innovation in Legal Tech companies. Afterwards she co-founded LegalTegrity, the digital whistleblowing solution for small and medium-sized companies and their trusted advisors.

Contribution to Legal Tech

With more than 7 years of working in a law firm and managing cross-border initiatives on a daily basis, Maraja got to know both – the classic and the digital legal services. She is convinced that Legal Tech is crucial for answering clients’ needs efficiently and enables lawyers to focus on their core expertise of excellent legal advice. LegalTegrity reflects the combination of benefits from digital transformation for lawyers and companies alike. The digital system is specifically designed for the needs and requirements of small- and medium-sized companies to provide their employees with a channel to report breaches of law anonymously. Lawyers benefit from a solution that enables them to scale their compliance services and manage many clients and incidents simultaneously.

Bio

Panagiota is the managing director of FIRST PRIVACY BV, a legal data protection consultancy established in Amsterdam. She is a lawyer admitted to the Athens Bar Association and specialized in data protection with a Master’s Degree in Law and Technology of Tilburg University (TILT). Panagiota has been always inspired by new technologies and their interlink with law. 

Contribution to Legal Tech

Her daily work focuses on supporting and advising international group of companies in smart mobility and cities sector, fintech and medical technology. She also acts as an external data protection officer. 

In her role, she is actively involved in discussions with organizations worldwide on how to interpret technology law and apply it in the most efficient way. She is engaging with stakeholders and legal tech advocates in order to promote and develop legal thinking in a technocratic society. 

Bio

Cristina Villasante is a partner in the TMT area of ECIJA and has more than 10 years of experience in intellectual property, technology contracting, digital services and information technologies. She has participated in advising on digital transformation projects in companies in all economic sectors. She is an expert in the negotiation and preparation of all types of contracts, in particular technological contracts, software licenses, implementation of systems or infrastructures and their exploitation. She has extensive experience in the management of intangible assets of companies and information management.

In addition, she has coordinated at the Firm a practice group dedicated to blockchain and distributed registry technologies, leading some of the most relevant operations that have taken place in the sector. Villasante joined ECIJA in 2018, after his previous stint at firms such as Eversheds, PwC and Accenture. As for teaching work, she is the director of the Center for Legal Innovation of the Camilo José Cela University and Second Vice President of the Spanish Association of Entertainment Law (Denae), as well as a professor of the Master of Intellectual Property at Icade.

Cristina is specifically an occasional speaker at specialized forums and business schools such as The Valley, IE or Blockchain Intelligence Law Institute. Villasante has participated in different academic articles related to his areas of knowledge. Collaborator in the collection “Actuality” of New Technologies by Tirant Lo Blanch and the Memento of New Technologies 2020-2021 by Francis Lefebvre. 

Contribution to Legal Tech

Spreading knowledge through different publications, workshops and conference regarding what is legal tech and the trends in the legal market – Being part of ECIJA’s legaltech team called “ECIJA Tech”, which is a new business branch that helps clients to digitize their legal departments. ECIJA Tech is a legaltech and cybersecurity one-stop-shop, which is capable of identifying the client’s pain points, mapping out the market in order to identify all legaltech tools available and give advice to the client of these tools implementation or ad hoc development of this technology according to the client’s needs. ECIJA Tech was born with the purpose of being the tech solution developed by and for lawyers, where Cristina Villasante has been the connection nexus between clients, lawyers and developers of these legaltech tools. Thus, Cristina Villasante has been part of the following legaltech developments: 1. Court hearings automatic transcription; 2. Secure channels for NDAs; 3. Scripts for machine translation; 4. Clause manager: a repository of contractual stipulations that allows having a search engine in the word processor itself; 5. IPBlock, test on blockchain: a management system for intellectual property rights; 6. Digital analysis of Spanish Agency for Data Protection resolutions; 7. Smart Box Negotation: a Saas solution that allows the management of agreement negotiation processes between two or more parties, controlling the flow of contract versions.

Bio

Carissa Schiller is the Legal Technology Advisor to the Global Financial Markets practice at Clifford Chance’s London office, bringing her previous experience in the legal tech industry to this magic circle firm. 

Carissa focuses on the adoption of the firm’s tech stack by designing tech-driven processes that are now embedded within the finance practice. She also pioneers the use of new tools and designs bespoke technology solutions to enhance the delivery of complex matters.

Contribution to Legal Tech

Carissa plays a key role in bridging the gap between IT teams and lawyers. She seamlessly integrates cutting edge technology within Clifford Chance lawyer’s everyday workflow. Carissa is able to do this by demonstrating clear benefits of solutions to both the firm and their clients and ensuring that technology is consistently delivered in a user-friendly way that is accessible to all lawyers.

Bio

Sarah Mack leads PwC NewLaw’s commercial partnerships with Legal Tech companies and assesses technology solutions that support the delivery of NewLaw client services. She previously established and led PwC UK’s first Legal Technology Scale-up programme and advised on the programme this year. The programme helps innovative fast-growing startups scale their business through expert masterclasses and connections with PwC’s global network and corporate decision-makers.

Sarah is a qualified Chartered Accountant and prior to her Legal Tech experience, led the implementation of a workflow product developed in Alteryx, automating tax analysis for client’s tax reporting requirements.

Contribution to Legal Tech

Sarah takes care of the development of internal business cases for internal pilots of new technology and commercial partnerships with Legal Tech providers. Through the Scale program, PwC has worked with 15 Legal Tech scale-up companies. Successful commercial outcomes for these businesses include paid pilots with PwC network, introductions to client networks, and securing follow-on rounds of fundraising.

Sarah has an understanding of the Legal Tech market, pain points, and solutions. She regularly shares knowledge with the PwC network about the maturity of the Legal Tech market, categories of Legal Tech, and key areas of focus for transformation within in-house legal departments. She also feeds her expertise into Legal Tech startups providing industry feedback through leading demos and discussions. This supports their growth/ helps them to pivot their product/service to align with industry demands.

Sarah has nurtured PwC’s relationship with the innovation ecosystem for Legal Tech, including start-ups, accelerators, funds, and supporting large organizations. She also supported the planning and delivery of PwC’s General Counsel Summit in Nov 2019, which showcased technology solutions to 60+ client attendees.

Sarah has a growing interest in Access to Justice use cases and is currently exploring how technology solutions can support the advancement of this impact industry, this includes understanding alternative commercial models for for-profit technology companies.

Bio

Marion Schumacher has been working as a partner secretary at Taylor Wessing Partnerschaftsgesellschaft mbB in Düsseldorf for almost 10 years. There she works in the Practice Area “Employment, Pensions & Mobility. As a certified legal specialist and prospective Bachelor of Laws, she manages the organization on a daily basis under legal and office management aspects and pushes the digitization of the Practice Area. During her training as a paralegal and notary’s assistant in Essen at that time, Marion was still using a typewriter. Just in 1999 the first computer moved in. Unimaginable in today’s digital working world 4.0.

Contribution to Legal Tech

Her know-how from years of legal assistance and her passion for new IT solutions help her to understand digital structures and to integrate them into her daily work sustainably and efficiently in the following. In doing so, she innovatively pursues the realization of a uniform digital structure for one of the largest departments in labour law at Taylor Wessing. As an interface between the team and IT, she works out solutions to problems and implements the knowledge gained in her strategic planning. She is committed to the further development of the IT infrastructure and already uses several tools developed by TW Legal Tech (a law firm start-up specialized in legal tech for companies) in her daily work.

Bio

Wendy is Innovation Manager at the Legal Tech Studio of ARAG SE NL. Her background is in Industrial Design Engineering at the University of Technology in Delft and she completed OneMBA at the Rotterdam School of Management in 2016. 

Prior to ARAG she worked for 8 years with high tech startups and SMEs in the healthcare and new energy sector. Her career started at the Strategic Futures group of Philips Design, the Design studio of Philips Electronics, in which she worked on Design and Design Research projects in healthcare, lighting and automotive.

Contribution to Legal Tech

Her background in Design and Technology enables Wendy and her team to support ARAG in the transition process towards becoming a Smart Insurer. Combining her Design skills and the opportunities that Legaltech offers, she develops new services and novel ways of customer interactions. 

Over the span of two years, Wendy initiated 15 experiments and 5 pilot projects with (Legal) tech startups. These experiments and projects bridged the gap between the corporate organization and start-ups and introduced 600+ legal experts to new technologies such as document automation, chatbots and speech recognition software.

In the past year she built up ARAG’s expertise and knowledge on decision tree software as a means to democratize legal knowledge. This enables ARAG to offer ever more people access to legal support through online self-service products.