LETS Lab Digital Lounge Series 2020/21 Webinar: The Promises and Perils of Legal Tech

28th May 2021 5pm - 7pm

Campus

Join us for this roundtable discussion, where we aim to provide a snapshot of the current landscape in law-tech, map key challenges and opportunities, and to suggest a roadmap for the future of the legal profession.  To what extent can we argue that law is computable?  How is technology driving innovation in the legal profession and what are the challenges faced?  How can we modernize the curriculum to help shaping the legal thinkers of tomorrow?

Chair: Dr Argyro Karanasiou, Senior Lecturer in Law & Director at LETS Lab

Discussants: Dilara Altun and Eva Souchet, LETS Lab

Speakers:

Judge Dory Reiling, Ph.D. Mag.Iur., IT and Judicial Reform expert - Senior Judge (retired), Amsterdam District Court

Hon. A.D. (Dory) Reiling Ph.D. Mag.Iur. (1950) was a senior judge of the Amsterdam District Court until she retired in 2018. Formerly a senior judicial reform specialist at the World Bank and IT program manager for the Netherlands judiciary, she was actively involved in designing and building digital procedures for the civil courts in the Netherlands.

She regularly lectures on court IT and AI and works on IT with judiciaries around the world. She acted as an expert for CCJE, CEPEJ, the Netherlands Parliament, UNODC, Amnesty, and EU High Level expert group on AI. She is on the editorial boards of the International Journal for Court Administration and of Computerrecht. Her publications are on www.doryreiling.com, her tweets on Twitter and her Technology for Justice blog on www.doryreiling.blogspot.nl.

---

Sue McLean, Technology and Fintech Partner, Baker and McKenzie LLP

Sue McLean is a partner at the law firm Baker McKenzie. She specialises in technology and advises clients on a wide range of technology matters, including outsourcing, cloud, digital transformation, technology procurement, development and licencing, m/e-commerce, AI, blockchain and data privacy. Sue is the Firm’s co-chair of the EMEA Financial Services Industry Group, co-chair of the Firm's UK FinTech practice and global tech lead for FinTech and Blockchain. Sue is an active supporter of innovation in the legal sector and one of the Firm’s Reinvent Innovation Ambassadors. She is also a trustee and vice-chair of the Society for Computers and Law and founder and chair of the SCL Women in Tech Law network.

---

Rebecca Keating, Barrister, 4PumpCourt

Rebecca Keating is a barrister at 4 Pump Court with a particular focus on technology law. She is qualified to practise in England and Wales and in the Republic of Ireland.

She has been instructed on a wide range of technology-related disputes relating to classic technology (such as project failures, data protection, cyber security and IP disputes) to cases on emergent technology (quantum computers, cryptoassets and AI). She also acts in an advisory capacity on the legal implications arising out of both classic and emergent technology.

Prior to joining 4 Pump Court, Rebecca worked at Dropbox's European Headquarters. Rebecca is a committee member of the Society for Computers and Law Women in Technology group and the Tech Disputes Network editorial committee. She has published several articles on the topic of technology and the law in both national and international publications. Rebecca is a contributing author to the Law of Artificial Intelligence (Sweet & Maxwell, 2020).

---

Maria Jesus Gonzalez Espejo, LegalTechEntrepeneur - CEO, Innovation in Law Studies Alliance

Maria is one of the word leading experts in Innovation, Legaltech, Strategy and Legal Marketing. Managing partner at Instituto de Innovación Legal a consultancy from which she advises many law firms, lawyers and organisations of the legal sector on innovation, digital transformation and legaltech. She has organized successful innovative events such as  several hackathons and The Legal Design Challenge, a pioneering program that has introduced the Legal Design Thinking methodology in Spain. She has created and built several corporate and professional brands and is a lawyer passionate for Technology Law. She helps professionals building strong brands and happy careers. She is certified as DYL coach. Maria Jesus devoted the first half of her career to the practice of law, specializing in #IP, #DataProtection and #Contracts’ Drafting. Admitted to the Madrid bar in 1989. She practiced first as a solicitor at Clifford Chance and Gómez-Acebo&Pombo; and later as a corporate counsel in several companies. Author of several books on innovation and LegalTech, management of law firms, innovation and Legaltech. She also contributes frequently to professional media. She teaches in several universities and lectures frequently in conferences and workshops. She is the Vice President of the European Legaltech Association (ELTA) and co-organizer of Madrid #LegalHackers. She is the Vice-president of the Latin American Legal Professionals Women Association (AMJI). She is recognised by the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) as one of the 5 most influential women in Legal Tech. The Madrid Town hall named her ambassador of Madrid and she has been included in the ranking of the top 50 Spanish legal leading women professionals.  She can work in Spanish, English, French, Italian, Dutch and Catalan.

---

Vasilis Tsolis, Founder and CEO of Cognitiv+

Vasilis is the Founder & CEO of Cognitiv+, a platform that extracts knowledge from legal data. Cognitiv+ extracts contractual obligations and risks monitor relevant regulatory and legislative change and trigger alerts when action is required, saving thousands of hours from professionals and minimising unpleasant surprises.

With a dual background in law and engineering, Vasilis has worked under various roles in dispute resolution, contract, commercial and procurement management for various sectors including energy, infrastructure and IT.

Vasilis has worked for clients, contractors and consultancies to undertake various assignments for a wide spectrum of the outsourcing lifecycle and also on a strategic level.Vasilis has a degree in law (LLB) and is a chartered engineer in UK and Greece.

---

Olivier Theraux, Head of Research & Development, Open Data Institute

As Head of Research and Development, Olivier leads the ODI’s R&D, product and service discovery work, and runs a multidisciplinary team of research, technology, and user experience practitioners. Olivier and his team add in-depth expertise to the ODI’s advisory activities on topics including data infrastructure, technology and society, standards, emerging data technology, and innovating with data.

He also stewards the ODI’s work on data ethics. He has been plying his trade for over 20 years on 3 and a half continents, with a focus on the various facets of open technology: open standards, open source, open data and open innovation. Upon graduating from the École Centrale Paris, Olivier left France for Japan where he managed the open source tools and services at the W3C, founded an international non-profit democratising the art and design world online, then spent a few years in Canada working on web technology and open innovation.

Before joining the ODI, he was heading the BBC’s R&D work on content discovery, leading internet-focused innovation through prototypes, platforms, and open standards. He talks with his hands a lot.

---

Sophia Ahmad, Associate Consultant, JDX Consulting

Sophia is a First-Class LLB Law Graduate from the University of Greenwich and a previous Oxford University Press: Law, Emerging Tech and Science Lab Legal Hackathon Winner (2020). She is currently working as an Associate Consultant at JDX Consulting, assisting a top-tier Investment Bank. Sophia is an advocate for socio–economic justice and currently volunteers for her local food bank. She also previously worked at PRAXIS; a pro-bono law clinic based in East London. Here she specialised in gender-based violence and Human Rights Law and assisted victims of trafficking and domestic violence and worked on immigration law matters, assisting refugees, asylum seekers and victims of the Wind-Rush scandal.

---

Harry Kliaris, Trainee Lawyer, Giannini & Associates

Charalampos (Harry) Kliaris is an affiliate researcher at LETS Lab with interests in content regulation and digital surveillance. He holds an LLB, currently studying for an LPC and MSc in Law, Business and Management. He has worked for Giannini and Associates Law Firm (Athens, Greece), Royal Tunbridge Wells Citizens Advice Bureau, Clements Solicitors (Ipswich, UK), Incontext Solutions (Teddington, UK) and Harbor Shipping & Trading (Piraeus, Greece). Charalampos has also volunteered for Offene Arme in numerous refugee hotspots in Greece such as the one in Chios. His duties there included going through and advising asylum seekers of their rights and also assisting in naval search and rescue operations.

---

Fraser Matcham, Founder, Legal Utopia

Fraser is the founder at Legal Utopia, a LawTech venture on a mission to make a difference, an impact, by making law accessible and affordable to everyone. Legal Utopia has received funding from the European Commission, as well as Innovate UK, national and local government.

Fraser is also the consultant Director of Legal Innovation at Westminster Law School leading the creation and implementation of a new Legal Innovation Programme bringing about a new focus on legal technology in higher education.

---

Fatimazahra Dehbi, Research Fellow, Business, Human Rights and Environment Research Group, University of Greenwich

Fatimazahra is a Research Fellow at the Business, Human Rights and Environment Research Group and part-time lecturer in law at the School of Law, University of Greenwich. She holds a Honours Degree in Law from the University of Greenwich and a Masters in International Human Rights Law from the University of Essex.  Her research interests include the intersections between technology, gender and human rights on which she produced her masters dissertation, focusing on a gendered approach to the UN Guiding Principles of Business and Human Rights through the adoption of a queer feminist lens. She is also interested in the intersection between business and human rights and the environment, which she has explored with the Essex Business and Human Rights Project and which she continues to explore at the BHRE.

---

The webinar is free to attend and can be booked via Eventbrite here: https://lex-ex-machina.eventbrite.co.uk.

Joining instructions will be sent on the day of the event.

BOOKING REQUIRED

Further details