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

Heidi combines years of experience as a Corporate lawyer with an inquisitive, creative mindset and a solutions-focussed attitude. Moving into legal technology full time in May 2019 she started her legal technology career at DLA Piper at a break-neck pace, quickly becoming a key member of the legal technology team at the International firm (which forms a part of the DLA enhanced legal offering, Law&, delivering solutions beyond legal services to help clients succeed), where she is trusted by lawyers across the globe to deliver tech-based solutions to solve client problems across multiple jurisdictions with her trademark enthusiasm, drive and endless positive energy.

Contribution to Legal Tech

Leading the firm’s fast-evolving international electronic signature solution in response to the unique challenges posed by the COVID-19 crisis, Heidi has worked tirelessly to build the firm’s DocuSign centred solution, keeping deals running and clients happy across the globe in universally difficult circumstances. Thanks to her hard work and dedication to the delivery of a quality tech solution, Heidi and her specialist DocuSign team are now trusted by hundreds of lawyers and clients, driving change by challenging lawyer’s attitudes to the “usual way of completing deals” encouraging greater adoption of legal tech across the UK, Europe and Australia with passion and tenacity.

Heidi has used her expertise in digital signatures to contribute her knowledge into guidance which was put to the Land Registry in the UK to assist with the creation of their digital signature policies. In addition to leading the firm’s work on electronic signatures, Heidi is also part of a change team revolutionising the firm’s approach to M&A by driving the use of machine learning technology Kira, using vRoomPlus technology and deal management tools like thedocyard to drive longer term change and greater efficiencies in the way that lawyers complete M&A deals; and is working with a wider team to develop software to aid in the generation and completion of due diligence reports.

She also forms part of the Working Group on LegalTech Adoption in International Arbitration, a team seeking to effect global change in the arbitration community through the better use of technology, who published in July 2020 the Protocol for Online Case Management in International Arbitration, helping arbitral participants develop efficient, safe and consistent procedures if adopting a shared online case management platform in their arbitration proceedings. Heidi is also an advocate for careers in legal technology, for example, speaking at a cross campus panel event on legal technology for the University of Law, encouraging future generations of legal professionals to develop core skills in technology.

Bio

Lina is the Managing Partner and co-founder of “This is Legal Design”, a consultancy and think tank, specialized in innovation at the intersection of law, design and technology. She founded the company in 2018, convinced that the digital transformation of the legal industry can only succeed if human needs are placed at the centre of every technical development. Lina is Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Handelsblatt legal innovation journal “REthinking Law”. As a member of the Legal Policy Advisory Board of the ROLAND-Rechtsschutz-Versicherung-AG, she covers the topic “Digitalization”.

After her 1st Legal State Exam, Lina studied Design Thinking of the Hasso-Plattner-Institute and worked at SAP, where she contributed to designing user-centered software solutions in co-creative formats with customers & users. To get even deeper into legal digitization topics Lina did her legal clerkship i.a. at the Committee on the Digital Agenda (German Parliament), worked as a Customer Success Manager for LAWLIFT GmbH, a legal tech startup for document automation & knowledge management, and became a certified SCRUM Product Owner. 

Contribution to Legal Tech

As a co-founder of “This is Legal Design”  Lina has been pushing the digital transformation of the legal industry, voicing human needs to be placed at the centre of every technical development. Her contribution lies mostly on doing the hard job: working with traditional law firms and legal departments to take the bumpy road of digitalization. Particularly, in her role as Advisor to the Board at the ROLAND legal Insurance, she brings in new perspectives, defending the relevance of legal tech and legal innovation to make the legal system better.

She serves as a model not only to younger generations but also to experienced legal professionals. When she was questioned about the ethical implications of legal tech, she answered: “ethical conduct should not ever mean to put a stop to tech development, because we fear it. Instead, our commitment must be to find the ways tech and law come together to assure the rule of law, access to justice, and social peace”. Lina’s contribution to Legal Tech is beyond particular projects, but her vision of tech, law, and humanity. 

Bio

Claire leads the Customer Success team at Juro – the contract collaboration platform. This means getting hands-on in the implementation of Juro for in-house legal teams. Previously, Claire held senior positions at Auth0 and at Swrve; establishing regional Customer Success teams and delivering world-class support to enterprise customers. Claire specializes in building and growing stellar CS teams in fast-paced environments. She believes that the most successful CS teams make their customers heroes.

Contribution to Legal Tech

Claire is an outstanding example of someone who not only talks about legal tech but actually enables lawyers to adopt legal tech. Where traditional contract management deployments can take up to a year to get going, Claire has got customers to value in an average of 14 days. This takes a keen understanding of customer pain points, a real passion for legal tech and the ability to take legal tech projects away from pure theory and into real applications that people use.

An example of Claire’s contribution has been onboarding and enabling Reach plc. Claire worked with Jane Clemetson, Commercial Legal Director to roll out Juro across the business. Jane says: Claire has been a huge asset to Reach, because although adopting Juro is a huge benefit to the legal department and the business, implementing it has been a bit of a logistic challenge, especially as we were starting from scratch and resources are tight. Without Claire, embarrassed as I am to say it, we might have just given up, excellent though Juro is. And as far as Reach is concerned, it is Claire who is the hero.