As part of our Women in Tech Series, we were delighted to speak with Paula Doyle, Legal Innovation Consultant and Lawyer.
We are lucky to have worked with Paula previously when we teamed up with World Commerce & Contracting for our webinar, AI is the Future for Contract Reviews.
Paula is a legal innovation consultant and lawyer based in London, with over 20 years' experience of working in industry. A seasoned professional known for her business acumen, she has served as Chief Legal Innovation Officer at World Commerce & Contracting and as part of the senior business team at Globality, an AI-driven, late-stage start-up. Previously, she worked with IBM for 13 years, specializing in “as a service” transactions heading up the Cloud and Solutions legal team across Europe. Nowadays, her main areas of focus are legal design and product advisory work for legal tech start-ups.
As part of our Women in Tech series and on International Women's Day, we chatted with Paula to find out more about her career to date.
We were delighted to partner with WorldCC recently, tell us a little more about your role there
I had a number of roles at WorldCC, initially heading up research. I very quickly became fascinated with legal innovation and started to focus more on contract design and simplification, helping WorldCC to develop the Better Contract Design Mark. I also started to work more with WorldCC vendor members such as ThoughtRiver and loved it! So much so that I was inspired to set up my own consultancy focusing on legal innovation. In that regard, I am fortunate to still have the opportunity to work with WorldCC and its members. Legal tech is a huge growth area and it is exciting to be able to contribute to its development.
What has your experience been as a woman working in legal tech?
It is an exciting time and, so far, I have noticed that men in the industry are happy to listen to me! Having worked in the largely male-dominated technology sphere for my entire career, it is good to see that women are playing a significant part in the evolution of legal tech. I have recently been speaking to a number of female founders gaining good traction in the marketplace with ground-breaking products. I think that the upsurge in the number of female lawyers qualifying into the profession over the last 20 years has contributed to greater representation here.
Do you have any advice for others looking for a career in legal tech?
Go for it if you have the skills. It is an exciting growth area. You have to approach it, though, with thought and consideration. Don’t dive in headfirst, just to get on the bandwagon. Think of what is needed and where technology can really add value. Empathy with potential users is important for success. Keeping users alongside as you develop products will help to build up traction faster. Focus on that all-important user journey. Legal tech is often still too complex and this impedes adoption by lawyers and contract professionals who often start from a position of skepticism, even possibly hostility.
Do you have a mantra you live by and wouldn't mind sharing with us?
Yes, the world and business needs more empathetic leadership. I believe in leaving your ego at home when you go to work. I welcome being challenged, as I believe it is the only way to truly grow. Treating people equally at all levels across organisations is essential to good leadership.
