🎙️ shift() Presenters
Every week of the shift() curriculum is hosted by a different presenter – from renowned LegalTech educators to software engineers, we’ve made sure that each topic is covered by people who know it best.
Week 1: Dr Anna Donovan
Anna was the inaugural Vice Dean (Innovation) at the Faculty of Laws at University College London, with AI and Blockchain being particular areas of expertise. Prior to becoming a lecturer in Company Law and Comparative Corporate Governance, she was a senior corporate City solicitor (qualified in both London and New York), specialising in corporate structuring and M&A projects. Anna is also the founder of UCL Art Futures, a member of the UCL Centre for Blockchain Technologies and was part of the LawtechUK panel.
Week 2: Samuel Smolkin
Samuel is the founder and CEO of Office & Dragons and a Transaction Development evangelist. He is passionate about applying frameworks and technology to help lawyers level up their work product and service delivery. Before O&D, Sam was a lawyer at Kirkland & Ellis in London and New York and an avid open-source software developer working on projects in blockchain and Linux.
Weeks 3 + 4: (Coming Soon)
Check back for updates!
Week 5: Josh Farmer @ BRYTER
As a Sales Engineer, Josh uses his product expertise to support legal and corporate companies evaluating BRYTER's No Code Service Automation Platform. Prior to joining BRYTER, Josh worked as a software consultant in the US, assisting companies in their Digital Transformation initiatives.
Week 6: Amy Conroy @ Avvoka
Amy works at Avvoka, an end to end document automation platform, as their in-house Legal Engineer. She works closely with Avvoka's in-house and law firm clients from around the world, managing their projects and automating their documents. She also focuses on product development and integrations, ensuring that the system is always improving to meet the ever evolving needs of the users. Prior to working at Avvoka, Amy graduated with an LLB and subsequently an MSc Computer Science degree from the University of Bristol. She has a passion for Legal Tech, working as the co-founder and maintainer of openTenancy, an open source access to justice platform, during the evenings. She is also a Legal NLP Research Associate with the University of Bristol, and the co-founder of Law School 2.0.
Week 7: Josie Good @ Kira Systems
Josie was an M&A lawyer at Shearman & Sterling, where she worked on a variety of corporate matters across a broad range of sectors, focusing on private M&A, private equity and private funds. In 2021, Josie joined Kira Systems as a Practice Consultant. In this role, she serves as a product and subject matter expert and advises law firms across EMEA and APAC on how to best integrate Kira into their existing workflows.
Week 8: Helen Libson @ Peerpoint by A&O
Helen Libson is the Global Community Manager for Peerpoint, Allen & Overy’s global platform for self-directed consultant lawyers. She oversees how the Peerpoint community of consultant lawyers evolves and grows as well as managing the resources, support and events Peerpoint consultants have access to.
💎 Learn from the best
We have developed the shift() curriculum in conjunction with some of the most incredible individuals in the LegalTech industry.
Chris Grant
Chris was named by the FT as a Top 10 ‘legal intrapreneur’ in 2019 and was Head of Law Tech Innovation at Barclays Eagle Labs and COO at Barclays Wealth, complemented by his experience in City law as a Banking & Finance lawyer. We are delighted to have Chris host Week 2 of our 8-week curriculum.
Alistair Wye
Alistair is the Lead Innovation & Technology Solutions Attorney for Latham & Watkins’ European operations. His varied career makes him at once a qualified solicitor, an expert in Legal Ops and LegalTech and a programmer. Having started as a banking lawyer at Latham & Watkins, Ashurst and Deutsche Bank, primarily focused on leveraged finance, he then created and led iManage RAVN’s preslaes operations, also advising on product strategy, working with top law firms and FTSE 100 in-house legal teams to design and implement AI-powered data extraction tools for due diligence and contract reporting. At Latham in his current role, Alistair leads a team focused on improving the firm’s legal operations through people, process and technology, and also consulting clients of the firm on how they can improve their own internal legal ops. Alistair is also a self-taught programmer, and has hands-on experience building and training Machine Learning algorithms to better understand their application to legal business problems.
Christopher Tart-Roberts
Chris is head of Macfarlanes' Lawtech group, he specialises in legal services innovation with a particular focus on digital products, including the application of Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics to legal practice, the automation of processes, expertise and standard documentation, legal process and Project Management and the application of other innovative solutions in a legal practice context.
Chris is a member of the Law Society’s Technology & Law Committee, the City of London’s Lawtech Sounding Board and the Harvard Law School Innovation Colloquium.