Bio

Cristina is Partner at Aphaia, one of the first world’s consultant firms in providing AI ethics and regulation services, with offices in London and Madrid. She is a lawyer and also a data expert on the legal, business and technical side. Cristina holds a MSc in Data Analytics & Cognitive Intelligence, a LL.M in Data Protection, ICT & Cyber Law, Telecom Law & Media Law and another LL.M in Legal Practice. Her dual profile as a lawyer and data scientist provides her with 360º data skills that she has applied to several projects during her tenure as a Privacy Advisor, and in her role as the Data Protection Officer to a number of vibrant businesses, including London and Silicon Valley tech start-ups in the areas of finance, sharing economy, e-commerce and software development. She is also part of the EU AI Alliance and participates as a member of the ethics board in EU H2020 projects. Before working at Aphaia, Cristina worked as a Project Manager at an international trade company based in Vietnam, and participated as companies’ defence counsel in the Madrid Court of Arbitration for the resolution of e-commerce and e-advertising disputes. Cristina also wrote her LL.M thesis about AI Ethics on algorithmic decision-making.

Cristina is also a mentor in Chaitech, a young Techpreneur Programme in St. Lucia which focuses on essential skills required to both develop tech solutions and put them into productive use. She teaches programming, AI ethics and data protection, helping young Caribbean techpreneurs to set up their businesses

Contribution to Legal Tech

Cristina’s contribution to Legal Tech is threefold, as she shows her passion about it either in her work, her volunteering activities and her spare time. As a lawyer and data scientist, Cristina helps both start-ups and multinational companies to build their algorithm and AI-powered apps and features in line with the GDPR and the AI ethical requirements set by the AI-HLEG, achieveing trustworthy AI while complying with the relevant legal framework, mainly in Europe and the US. She assists her clients in the whole process of product and algorithm creation, implementation, application and audit. She helps them to identify the risks for people’s fundamental rights and freedoms and the biases that may be derived from their technology, and suggests relevant mitigation measures. She may as well get involved with code review. 

As a Privacy and Data Protection expert, she also acts as the Data Protection Officer for a number of disruptive businesses in London and Silicon Valley which incoporateAI in their activities and services. The company she is a Partner at, Aphaia, has developed its own methodology and ‘smart compliance’ approach which saves time and costs to make the services affordable and accessible to any type of business, regardless of their budget or location worldwide. Cristina is also a member of the European AI Alliance, which allows her to contribute to the European debate on AI. She is part of some H2020 projects’ Ethics Board, such as DIH4CPS.

Cristina also collaborates as a mentor with Chaitech, a Caribbean tech and AI hub which provides young techpreneurs with essential skills required to both develop tech solutions and put them into productive use. Together with her colleagues at Aphaia, she maintains a YouTube channel, called Aphaia’s AI Ethics and Regulation, both in English and Spanish, where they discuss and analyse news, facts, FAQs, and tips on AI. She also writes AI and data protection related articles for Aphaia’s blog regularly. Her motto is “Everything is possible, you just need to know how to do it”. In her view, the combination of Technology and Law may provide almost any response one may need.

Bio

Friederike Göretzlehner is a senior associate at Baker McKenzie’s Corporate Practice Group in Berlin. Before joining the Firm in 2016, Friederike clerked in Hamburg and worked as a legal trainee for various international law firms in Hamburg and London. She earned a Master of Laws degree in business and commercial law from the Boston College Law School in 2013.

Contribution to Legal Tech

Friederike advises clients on all types of M&A and private equity transactions, as well as domestic and cross-border corporate reorganizations and general corporate law. Friederike has continuously developed methods and tools that help making standard M&A processes more efficient and less time-consuming.

Bio

Nadine started her career in the classical way with an apprenticeship as a paralegal and senior partner assistant at Taylor Wessing. After a detour into the private sector, she initially found her way back from the legal department to the large law firm. Due to her great interest in the technological development of the legal professions, she quickly became an integral part of the Legal Tech Team at Taylor Wessing and now makes sure that things run smoothly at tw legaltech.

Contribution to Legal Tech

Nadine was a founding member of the Legal Tech Team at Taylor Wessing and has been involved in all developments from the beginning. She worked her way deeply into the matter and was also the voice for the firm’s assistants and their ideas. She was also involved in the founding of tw legaltech from the very beginning. She was and is fully involved in the challenges of founding a legal tech firm. Today she keeps the firm running and is an integral part of the firm’s performance.

Bio

Anne is Salary Partner at Taylor Wessing in Düsseldorf and is a specialist lawyer for employment law. Best Lawyers 2020 has recommended her for Labour and Employment Law. Anne supports companies not only in their everyday business but above all advises them with regard to the digitalization of work/world of work 4.0.

Contribution to Legal Tech

Anne has many years of industry expertise in the IT sector and is very experienced in the structuring of flexible projects under employment law. In this context, the question of how software can be created in an agile manner and at the same time in compliance with labour law is being intensively discussed. Together with her colleague MareikeGehrmann Anne is currently involved in the development of a Legal TechTool for the design of agile working (Scrum, Kanban & Co) in accordance with labour law. Interested clients should be able to check whether they comply with labour law requirements in their day-to-day cooperation with their IT service providers or whether they have toadapt their cooperation.

Bio

Dani Poobalasingam is an Innovation Solutions Analyst dedicated to the international development of  legal tech. She has lived in various countries including New Zealand, India, Switzerland, and England, where she developed superior communication skills in English, Tamil, German, French and Spanish. After graduating with a law degree with from City University of London in 2018, she joined the London office of prestigious international law firm Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner LLP where she manages and develops legal innovation projects.

Contribution to Legal Tech

Dani astutely recognises that the future legal field will be vastly different, bringing with it unmatched challenges at the intersection of law, technology, and data. She has worked across a number of disciplines within the field of machine learning, including deep learning, natural language processing and pattern recognition. She also mastered refining the softwares’ understanding of legal clauses and concepts and consulted a Magic Circle firm in the completion of their review with AI assistance, transforming the way due diligence exercises are executed. After excelling in these tasks, she worked herself up into an integral position in the Knowledge Management team as a Legal Solutions Engineer at Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner LLP.

There, she was heavily involved in digital contract automation, optimized contract creations and due diligence processes, which are now part of the wider innovation strategy of the world renowned law firm. Thereafter, she joined the Innovation team, where she was part of the core team for the firm’s adoption of an AI Assisted review platform on an international level. She became the contact person for many stakeholders in the areas of digitisation and legal tech by championing horizon scanning, piloting and adoption exercises. Additionally, Dani is the youngest member of BCLP’s Innovation Team.

As an Innovation Analyst she manages innovation projects by identifying the tech needs as well as the design and development of user-focused end to end solutions with the necessary technologies, which she also partly develops herself. Her latest achievement includes working ad hoc on BCLP’s new integrated legal service delivery, Cubed, which has won several recognised awards within the legal industry. Further, she is coordinating the implementation of a new Innovation Trainee Seat within the firm. Having closely worked with Knowledge Management and being a core part of the firm’s innovation agenda, she believes this initiative will help form a new generation of lawyers with a solid foundation in legal tech and innovation and prepare them for the new legal world.

Bio

Catherine leads the Practice Innovation & Legal Solutions Department in the London office of Paul Hastings LLP, and is part of the global team named 2020 ‘Innovators of the Year’ by the International Legal Technology Association, for outstanding achievements in maximising the value of innovative technology in support of legal professionals. 

Catherine has always been excited by what the combination of law and technology can achieve and deliver, and pioneered e-learning in a legal context as a business law lecturer. She energetically promotes the necessity to embed tech in the work and mindsets of lawyers and support functions such as compliance and risk, for their own benefit and that of clients, and is committed to facilitating openness, honesty, and collaboration in legal tech projects.

Contribution to Legal Tech

Catherine applies her 20 years in the legal industry to the implementation of Paul Hastings’ award-winning legal tech solutions, including the Associate Committee on Technology, Matter Management resources and AI-based workflow automation. She is a driving force behind new solutions and the ground-breaking PH Legaltech University UK, which provides a unique curriculum of experiential legaltech learning and embeds that learning and client-informed mindsets in the firm’s lawyers from the outset of their careers. 

Catherine has a huge passion for legal education and strives to see technology feature in it as an essential part of progressing the delivery of effective legal services and solutions. She continues to develop her coding skills to enhance her knowledge of the mechanics behind legal tech.

Bio

Sidney Flaig is a trainee lawyer at the Regional Court of Frankfurt and a research assistant in the real estate and construction team at the international law firm Taylor Wessing.

Contribution to Legal Tech

She is interested in the simplification of legal work through legal tech tools and is committed to the technological progress of the firm in and with her team.  Last year she was a coach at the first Tech & Law Camp organized by the firm and introduced students and trainee lawyers to a program for document automation. She built several LAWLIFT templates for her department.

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.