Could you share an example of a time when you came up with an innovation that improved how your legal team works and did not come at a large expense?  
 
Innovation, including cost-effective innovation, is a significant priority for our team over the next ten years, aligning with the University of Sydney’s broader strategy. For example, in the last six months, we have developed and piloted an Uber-like contract self-service app for staff, enabling them to prepare, negotiate, and request signatures from both parties for low-risk contracts. We have also redesigned our template contracts using free design tools, resulting in an 84% reduction in the ‘time to comprehend’ and making them comprehensible at an education level equivalent to year ten, as opposed to the previous university-level comprehension. Currently, we are in the process of developing a generative AI-augmented retrieval chatbot for the University’s policy suite.  
 
All these initiatives have been done in-house by our team or in partnership with our IT colleagues, incurring little to no cost. Our primary focus is on strategic partnerships to improve the delivery of legal services to the business, not just within the legal team.  
 
What are the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?  
 
The University of Sydney’s legal team has an extraordinarily broad remit. We do everything from the teaching that we are known for, to cutting-edge research projects, including the latest in generative AI and quantum computing – which is expected to become mainstream in the next five years. Additionally, we lead international clinical trials, such as the COVID trials during the pandemic, send robots to space, and are in the process of constructing a new $100 million medical research facility. Much of our work is done in-house by expert senior lawyers, making it a very exciting and busy place to work!  
 
What is a cause, business related or otherwise, that you care about, and why?  
 
I am particularly interested in the intersection of technology and legal design to enable efficiencies without devaluing the human experience. Presenting our advice and facilitating our services with the ‘end user’ in mind not only improves the experience of engaging with the law and lawyers for those in need of support but also ensures that our advice ultimately has a greater impact and leads to increased adoption.  
 
The legal industry can learn a lot from product design on how to implement these principles through a proven methodology and data-driven approaches, which can be easily replicated. This becomes especially exciting when considering the opportunities, and risks, associated with generative AI. Recently, I have spent a lot of my time to prepare our business for the safe and responsible governance of this technology, all while adopting a pro-innovation approach to its deployment.