The European Legal Tech Association (ELTA) renewed its board of directors last week. Tobias Heining is ELTA’s new president. A founding member of ELTA, he is also Director of Business Development and Communications for CMS in Germany. Heining has extensive experience in the development of technology-based legal advisory products. From his point of view, “digitization will have a dominant footprint in the legal market, as it puts a focus on usability, accelerates commoditization, enables new ways of collaboration and allows scalability of legal services beyond human resources”. Therefore, his first objective will be to convince all people affected by this massive transformation to “think positively and become active designers of their own professional future”.
In its board of directors, Heining will be surrounded by professionals who are active in the fields of innovation and Legal Tech. One of its main supports will be María Jesús González-Espejo, co-founder of the Instituto de Innovación Legal and managing partner of Emprendelaw, expert in legal design thinking and promoter of innovative events such as the hackathon #HackTheJustice or the Legal Design Challenge. González-Espejo, who was already a member of ELTA’s previous board of directors, will assume a more proactive role in the design and development of the association’s activities. For her, “jurists are already aware that digital transformation must be among their priorities”, to which she added that “they also need to have a global vision, because technology may or may not come from abroad. Collective knowledge and diverse backgrounds are critical, and it is precisely something that ELTA affiliation will bring them.
Hariolf Wenzler, who has served as President since ELTA’s founding, becomes treasurer. He is the head of business development, marketing and communications of Baker Mckenzie’s EMEA+ offices and a member of the firm’s global innovation committee. He helped set up ReInvent Law, the first legal innovation hub in continental Europe.
Finally, Marie Bernard and Jeroen Zweers remain in the executive board. Bernard is the founder and managing director of Bleu de Prusse, a business transformation consultancy and Zweers is the innovation director of Kennedy Van der Laan, a Dutch law firm.
The new Board has set itself an agenda aimed at achieving the following objectives: to represent the Legal Tech industry interests at the European Union; to promote the solutions that Legal Tech can provide to lawyers, to create a professional network of people interested in its development and to contribute to the training of its members on the applications of
technology for the legal sector.
About ELTA: ELTA is made up of law firms, companies, legal technology providers, start-ups and individuals in Europe. The association considers itself as a specific platform for the promotion of knowledge about – and possible application of – technological and softwarebased solutions in the legal market, as well as their uses in companies, law firms, start-ups and other initiatives active in this field.
Contact us:
María Jesús González-Espejo
Tel. +34 650 78 15 92 – E-mail: maria@institutodeinnovacionlegal.com
