From M&A to AI: What my career pivot taught me about leading with purpose

In 2020, I was five years into practice as a corporate lawyer at a U.S. firm in London. Long hours, high-stakes deals, relentless pressure to deliver flawless client service and miss nothing.  

When COVID hit, everything changed. In that strange, disorienting stillness, a question surfaced that many of us hadn't had the time to ask previously: what if there was another way? 

The sense that the path you are on was built for someone else, or that there must be another way, is not unique to lawyers. It belongs to anyone who has ever paused long enough to ask a harder question about their own working life. 

For me, the answer came from watching the first wave of machine learning technology beginning to transform how buy-side diligence was done across the legal industry. I watched it happen and felt something shift in me - not just curiosity, but conviction. If technology could make lawyers' lives better, I wanted to be part of building it. 

I left practice and joined Kira Systems (acquired by Litera in 2021), one of the pioneers of AI-driven contract analysis, at a moment when the technology was just beginning to find its footing in law firms around the world. 

The Steep and Exhilarating Learning Curve 

I had no AI experience. No technology background. What I had was motivation - a genuine belief that something needed to change for lawyers globally, and that I could help make it happen. 

The learning curve was steep. The culture of a technology company is worlds away from a law firm. But what I found on the other side was something I hadn't expected: creative freedom. 

In technology, you are encouraged to have ideas, to imagine what might have seemed impossible before, to build something that didn't exist yesterday. It was invigorating. 

What I also discovered is that subject matter expertise is not a liability in technology - it is a superpower. Subject matter experts are needed across industries. Legal technology specifically needs lawyers in the room. We bridge the gap between what technologists can build and what practitioners actually need. And empathy, the ability to sit in someone else's seat as well as your own, turns out to be one of the most valuable skills you can bring to innovation work. 

I believe women bring it in abundance. 

Leading with Purpose, Not a Roadmap 

I did not have a plan when I made the leap. I had a purpose. I wanted to use everything I knew about the realities of legal practice to help build technology that genuinely made lawyers' lives better. That purpose became my compass when the path was unclear, and in a career pivot, the path is almost always unclear. 

For any woman considering a non-linear move, you do not need a roadmap. You need a reason. Lead with that, and the rest becomes possible. 

The Moment We Are In 

Today, AI has fundamentally transformed legal practice. The experimentation phase is over. Law firms are no longer asking what AI can do - they are asking what it can do for their lawyers, specifically, measurably, and now. The conversation has matured from possibility to performance. 

It is an extraordinary moment to be working at the intersection of law and technology, and a moment that needs more women at the table to shape it. In my experience, it is already breeding female excellence. 

As a young female lawyer, I was often in the minority. The career ladder did not always look like it was built for me to climb. Now, I am proud to work alongside a strong cohort of women in senior leadership and to host panels of law firm innovation leaders where I purposefully fill the seats with women. Representation is not incidental. It is intentional. 

As we celebrate International Women's Day, I want to say to women who are standing at a crossroads, wondering whether a new path is possible, that the skills you are building - analytical rigor, empathy, the ability to hold complexity and deliver under pressure - are exactly what the technology industry needs. 

If you lead with your purpose, the place you are meant to thrive is closer than you think.