Women in Tech: AI on the In-House Agenda

RHIANNON:
Hello and welcome to Ashurst's Women in Tech podcast series. We are very excited to be back for a third season. In this series we share the stories of inspiring women working at the intersection of law and AI innovation. If you haven't listened to our previous seasons, you can find us and Ashurst's Legal Outlook podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

My name is Rhiannon Webster and I'm a partner in Ashurst's Digital Economy team. The Ashurst Digital Economy team supports clients digital strategies and identifies how they can leverage new technologies from a legal perspective.

Today we are joined by Rebecca Seaman and Abby Kay, who are Legal Counsel in Sage's Product and Technology team, who will share more about their career paths, AI projects and trends they're working on, and advice for others looking to carve a path in the industry.

RHIANNON:
So Rebecca, could you start by telling us a little bit about Sage?

REBECCA:
Yes. Sage is a software accountancy business. We've been running for about 40 years now. It's global. Our main regions are across the UK, the US, Canada, APAC, AME, and Europe. Our ambition, our purpose, is to support SMBs (small medium businesses) with their accountancy software needs, whether that's HR, payroll, anything that touches those type of things. And we do that through software and also through AI capabilities, which is our new ambition.

RHIANNON:
Great. Thanks Rebecca. And then can you share with us a bit about how you got to work at Sage and your career path to date?

REBECCA:
Yes. So, I would say I took a pretty traditional route into law. I did an English literature degree at Leeds, and then as I was coming out of that, I knew that I wanted to step into law, and had secured a training contract with a regional firm. So I went on to do my Graduate Diploma in Law and my LPC in York, and then took up my training contract straight after that in Newcastle and trained for two years there. Post-qualification I did, I think it was two secondments to Sage in those two years, both of differing lengths, both in quite slightly different roles. And then I went back into private practice, and the opportunity came up to take a permanent role at Sage.

I would say at the time I was, I think it was two years qualified, so very junior. In private practice you've got that real structure set-up to support you. So I kind of toyed with whether it was the right time to go into an in-house role, given the step-up it is in terms of the fact that you're expected to manage your own workload and drive things forward. You're very autonomous in that respect. But I did it, and took the leap, and went to Sage. And then I've been there for eight years now across a variety of roles, which have led me to where I am now, which is Senior Legal Counsel in our Product and Technology team.

RHIANNON:
And what does that involve?

REBECCA:
So, our Product and Technology team was set up, I would say it was it three or four years ago now, just to support the strategic direction of Sage. And when we say that, what I'm talking about is that we have progressed a cloud strategy, and then AI off the back of that. And the way that we used to operate – Sage has grown through acquisition. So we used to operate across a lot of regions, but each region would have their own kind of business and model. We've rolled all of that up into one centralised thing, and we needed a central team to support that product strategy globally. So we're a small team, but we sit in the centre and work with the core products, the ones that are really important to our growth, like Sage Intacct, and help support them with the things that they see on their roadmap in probably more of the medium and long-term, as opposed to the go-to market things. And at the moment, that tends to touch a lot of things around AI because it's the focus, it's the future. It's where everything's moving.

RHIANNON:
And Abby, what about your role in that team and how you got there?

ABBY:
Yeah, so I did a languages degree first - I did French and Spanish at Newcastle. I decided I loved it so much up there that I wanted to stay. I did work as a translator for a little bit and then decided to do the law conversion and the LPC whilst working. So it's taken quite a long time for me to get to the role I'm in.

I actually joined Sage as a paralegal at a time when we were doing a sort of rotation at that point, so I joined into the global Privacy team. And then I did that for a couple of years, and then moved into the new Product and Technology Legal team when it was initially launched. And then, yeah, since then last year I qualified as a solicitor, and I'm now the Privacy Legal Counsel in the Products and Technology Legal team. So it's sort of like a hybrid role between Privacy and the Products and Technology Legal team, as there's a lot of crossover, and obviously privacy is quite a pervasive topic in a lot of things that we do. So yeah, I didn't intentionally fall into privacy, but I think it's just where I've landed. And I'm happy that I am in the role I'm in, and every day is not the same. And I enjoy the sort of challenges that that brings.

RHIANNON:
Great. So in terms of the traditional training contract that law graduates would do - is it similar to what you did at Sage?

ABBY:
No, that's a good question. Sage were really supportive of me training in-house, so I did the ‘equivalent means’ route. So, I demonstrated the equivalent of a trainee in a law firm, but with my experience in-house. And, yeah, just had to do the standard two years and reflect my evidence of what I'd done within a portfolio, and submitted that. And then wait for the result, and thankfully, it was positive.

RHIANNON:
So how many years overall did that take?

ABBY:
I would say, I think I had to have the two years qualifying experience, and then it was a six-month submission I had to wait to see if my portfolio was accepted or not. So, two and a half years, I'd say, overall.

RHIANNON:
Then, coming back to what Rebecca touched on, which is the AI related projects, can you tell me about an AI project that you've been working on recently?

ABBY:
Yeah. So, I think we've sort of been supporting AI for a long time. Obviously, with traditional AI and machine learning, and it's been in our products for years. I think at Sage Future last month in June, our CTO, Aaron Harris, sort of announced we've got about 40,000 I think models trained and developed in Sage products and services already. The next sort of workstream that we have been supporting obviously is the evolution of AI and generative AI. So we've been working a lot more on Sage Copilot. That's probably our biggest piece of AI functionality - that's the umbrella for a lot of the underlying AI that's now in our products and services. So it's basically an AI-powered productivity assistant that's being gradually implemented into a lot of our products and services globally.

And the main aim of this is to provide real-time financial insights, automating routine tasks and generating customer reports. It's basically there to try and streamline and create efficiencies for our customers who quite often are sort of a one-man band, or sort of like a small company who wants to focus on their strategic projects, rather than their routine, day-to-day, boring sort of admin type stuff that they need to do, but isn't necessarily what's driving their business to move forward. So we're just trying to help alleviate some of that.

RHIANNON:
So it's a customer facing product?

ABBY:
Yes.

RHIANNON:
Rebecca, have you been working on any of the projects, or a different one?

REBECCA:
Yeah. The core one really is Sage Copilot because it encapsulates everything, all those AI offerings, which might be more traditional machine learning as we know them with the new wave of generative AI; it's all bundled up in that Sage Copilot experience. But I can talk to more about what we've been doing in that area, because it spans across much more than just what we externally say as ‘Sage Copilot’. We've, over the past 18 months, been very heavily involved in building the AI governance process from the ground up. We've been in the room with multiple other stakeholders to look at how that works for Sage. And our role in that has been kind of assessing the underlying technology and architecture that we're using for these types of functionality that we're offering, supporting our engineering and product teams with that. And it's not static - it moves. We know at what pace that those models are released and changed. So that's something that's constantly on the agenda.

And as well as that, there's all of the kind of facets of legal that come into it. So there's IP, privacy, and considering kind of on a 'use case' basis - I don't like to use that word because we are never quite clear sometimes on what the use case is - but the actual piece of functionality, it might have been developed centrally, as we've already said, and then deployed across multiple regions, or across multiple products. So it's kind of trying to put a framework in place that allows the business to do that at pace, so that we're not reviewing everything and having to step into the room when they don't want us to, when they don't need us there, even.

And I think another part of that as well is not just what we bring as legal counsel, but with the ethics lens on there in making sure that it's safe and trusted, and responsible. So that's kind of where we've been heavily involved. It's changing - we have to flex with it, so it’s an interesting place to be at the moment.

RHIANNON:
And you've mentioned lots of areas of law - privacy and IP, and there'll be commercial contracts. How do you stay across all that? And how do you bring it all together for a piece of legal advice?

REBECCA:
So, as Abby said, we kind of have subject matter experts within our legal team. We're lucky to have probably what you would consider quite a big legal function at Sage. Globally, I think we're probably in the region of 40 to 50 lawyers. So we have a dedicated privacy team, we have a dedicated IP team who are subject matter experts in that area. And where P&T sits across that is - I'm a commercially trained lawyer - is pulling in that subject matter expertise, and kind of honing it myself to be able to give that rounded picture of what the business needs. We can't just send them out to individual people for advice in isolation. It doesn't work. So we have to coordinate the pulling of the behind the scenes to pull all of those bits together. And that's how my role has definitely progressed. The majority of what I do touches on privacy, it touches on IP, with the commercial contracts piece in there as well. But we've had to kind of pivot and move into those areas as the business need has dictated it, really.

RHIANNON:
I think we've all found ourselves pivoting in our careers in ways that you wouldn't necessarily expect. So, what about trends that you see emerging in the way companies and legal departments are approaching AI? And do you think it's going to evolve even further in the coming years?

REBECCA:
Yes. I think this is a really interesting question. As I said, we've been involved in building elements of AI governance from the ground up since what I would call the hard launch of ChatGPT into our lives a couple of years ago. And it's required effort from cross-functional teams, multiple cross-functional teams. And we've had to be flexible and pivot, because it's set against a backdrop of technology that's changing at pace. What we're seeing internally at the moment is a real focus on the AI that we're building being kind of safe and accurate. The real lens is ‘trusted’. That's what we want it to be, we want you to trust what you're using. There's that growing kind of recognition that AI isn't about progression at any cost. So companies are having to invest in AI ethics boards and compliance frameworks, to be able to demonstrate that to customers. We don't know what that looks like yet because there isn't one ‘gold standard’, but there are things out there, whether it's frameworks or ISO standards where you can try to align with it and get ahead.

But it's about moving quickly. If you're not allowing your colleagues to use AI, or you're not building it and deploying it, you're already behind, because it's part of everybody's life. And I think if I take the challenges and learnings we've had within one organisation, and you kind of apply that lens to what governments and regulatory bodies are having to do, you appreciate the scale of what that task looks like. It's huge. And the obstacle that I see at the moment, I think from a legal perspective, is that our legislative process is so slow. You run the risk of things that you're putting in place being obsolete before it's even being enforced.

What I would hope to see is these regulatory bodies and governments, they're going to have to be agile, and maybe a bit more flexible in how they approach this. And generative AI is, as I've said, it's changing, it's nascent, so it's really hard to legislate against that background. So, it would be helpful if they could kind of just align on maybe standards, principles, get those out, get them fast, and take on that innovation mindset that all the rest of us have to. And it's fail fast, and see if it works, because I don't think that deregulating is the answer, but it has to be done in a scalable way. And I don't think that we're quite there yet.

RHIANNON:
Maybe a slightly unfair question, but where do you think the UK are going to land on AI regulation legislation?

REBECCA:
Good question. And I think your guess is probably as good as mine, but I think that they're doing the right thing in holding back at the moment while you see what plays out. The European Commission came and said, "We're going to be the gold standard," and organisations are maybe going to have to, well - still are having to comply with it to some extent, but it is changing at such a pace that, like I've just said, you risk it being out of date before it's even begun. So, again, showing that they're adaptable and can maybe align with business requirements, but also protecting people to make sure it's done in the right way that people are building, and it's just putting those core principles. You have to understand your risk appetite, and I think that's where people are kind of unwilling to come down hard at the moment, but at some point somebody's going to have to do it, because you have to do it internally, it's what we're having to do. We're building it, we're deploying it. So what does that look like for us?

And all of this is touching on generative AI as it is right now, but the next wave is already here, like agentic AI. And for me, that's even more challenging than addressing what's happening now. It's not even just a regulatory piece anymore. It's a people piece, isn't it? Your colleagues of the future. What does that look like from a human, a people perspective? How are you going to manage that? What type of structure do you have within organisations? You wouldn’t just bring in an employee and say, "Crack on, do whatever work. We're never going to train you. We're never going to develop you. No one's going to look at the outcome." So, organisations are starting to have to think about that now, which just identifies kind of the scale of what we're up against.

RHIANNON:
Bet you didn't think early on in your career that you would be thinking about these existential questions?

REBECCA:
No, absolutely. It's fascinating, and it's one of the things that I love about being in the tech space, that you have to be curious and willing to learn, and we have to be almost as agile as the technology itself because legislation isn't keeping up. So it's on us. But no, it's big questions that we can sit here and discuss for hours as everybody else is doing, but sometimes it's just action, isn't it? Over conversation.

RHIANNON:
Yeah, no, that's true. That's super interesting, Rebecca. Thank you. So changing the subject slightly, I see that Sage has hosted an EmPowerCyber event to inspire young girls to pursue careers in tech. So, Abby, can you tell us a bit about how this initiative came about, and what specific activities or programmes are included in it?

ABBY:
Yeah, sure. So yeah, Sage has hosted EmPowerCyber at St. James's Park in Newcastle, in alignment with the Newcastle United Foundation for three years now, I think. It started in 2019. It was created by one of our colleagues who wanted to make sure that young girls actually knew about the opportunities in cyber, and just the tech industry more generally. I think we just found that young girls in particular aren't often aware of those less traditionally well-known job roles. And so it is a good opportunity to showcase some of those various opportunities within the field that are out there, so that they could actually consider them as viable routes to go down when they leave school.

We are really proud to partner - and the fact that it's hosted in the Northeast I think is a great opportunity - and it's getting bigger and better each year. We've got some really big local organisations as well as national organisations who partner with us, and give short workshops and demonstrations, as well as interactive sessions with these girls. And they can sort of get involved with things like hackathon type activities, coding, crisis simulation management, that sort of thing. And we do see the girls get a lot out of it. They find it a good time, but they also come away with it. We sort of do a question and answer thing right at the end, and ask them to, initially when they come in, put their hands up if they were interested in a career in tech. And there's normally very few people who put their hands up.

And then at the end we ask it again. And we do tend to get quite a lot more of the girls putting their hands up and actually thinking about a career path they may not have even thought existed when they first came in on the day.

So yeah, really, really inspiring event. And we're both signed up to the one that's starting again in November. So, looking forward to that.

RHIANNON:
When you've been to them, have you ever thought that there's any careers that had you known about them that you would've done them instead of being a lawyer?

ABBY:
I think I was quite interested at one point in the cybersecurity world, and I always found that interesting about hackers and things like that and how it can affect a business, and how everything just goes on hold in all of the big decisions that come off the back of that. Do you give in? Do you not? But yeah, I think I'm happy in the end. Slightly less stressful.

RHIANNON:
You could definitely pivot into the cyber breach response world with your privacy experience.

ABBY:
Yeah, I'm not sure about the 2:00 A.M. wake up for a breach!

RHIANNON:
You’d need a global team. So, I'll stick with you, Abby. What advice would you give someone starting your legal career and wanting to work in technology and AI?

ABBY:
Yeah - I think my advice sort of is quite pervasive. It's not necessarily about AI in particular, but just sort of about the area of law that the person wants to look into. But I think firstly, developing a strong technical understanding. You don't obviously need to be the subject matter expert. That's what the rest of the business is there for if you're working in-house. But you need to understand it and have a basic understanding of what it is and how it works to be able to then advise on it. Particularly with AI, familiarising yourself with what it is, how it works, and what the different terminology means - the difference between traditional AI and machine learning compared to generative AI, and the difference with agentic AI, the new buzz topic. Then I would say just being curious. I think, as Rebecca has mentioned, it's evolving all the time, so just keeping track of it, but also not getting bogged down into the detail because you'll read about it one day and then the next day something else has changed that has just completely kiboshed what you've just learned the day before.

But yeah, I think there's a lot out there in terms of LinkedIn learning courses, and more formal certifications like the IAPP’s, AIGP (Artificial Intelligence Governance Professional training), which I'm currently doing. So yeah, I think being curious, trying to learn about it and understand it as much as you can. And also, as Rebecca mentioned, having knowledge of those interrelated fields like privacy and IP and stuff, it definitely doesn't, AI is not something that works in a vacuum. You do need to know about all of the other topics that surround it, and the risks that come with it.

And then finally, I'd probably just say connecting with professionals in the field through those networking events and webinars and LinkedIn. I think it's quite clear from reading myself on the topic – it’s changing all the time. No one's an expert, and everyone's just trying to stay on top of it and follow what's happening, and try and balance between promoting innovation within your business, but also making sure that you're mitigating any associated risks. So, it's just sort of trying to stay afloat alongside everyone else, and just not falling behind if you can help it.

RHIANNON:
Wise words, Abby. Thank you. What about you, Rebecca?

REBECCA:
Yeah, I think everything that Abby's highlighted rings true. The only other thing that I would add is, especially kind of in the AI space, is use it. Go out there and use it in your own personal life. Don't use it at work, unless you know that you can. But that's how you get under the hood of these things, and actually really understand the kind of risks and opportunities that are there. And that's how I've learned the most about AI, and trialing it, and testing it with my own kind of little iterations. So yeah, use it, because that's something that you can quite easily do, and it actually might make you more productive or efficient in the long term. So it's a win-win.

RHIANNON:
Yeah, it's true. It's very tempting to advise on these issues in a vacuum, isn't it? When you don't actually come the technologies. But actually seeing it and using it brings it all to life.

ABBY:
And you can actually find some use cases yourself that make your day-to-day job easier. Just by testing out what other colleagues in different teams are using, you can actually be like, "Oh, I can actually apply that to my day-to-day work, and see how that can create efficiencies."

RHIANNON:
Thank you so much, both of you. That was super interesting, a really interesting insight into Sage and your roles. And we really look forward to seeing how Sage continues to grow and develop in the AI space. So thank you very much.

ABBY:
Thank you.

REBECCA:
Thank you.

RHIANNON:
Thanks for listening to season three of Ashurst's women in tech podcast series. If you enjoyed this episode and want to listen to the rest of this season or catch-up on season one or two of our women in tech podcast, please subscribe to Ashurst Legal Outlook wherever you get your podcasts, whilst you're there, feel free to leave us a rating or review. If you'd like to find out more about Ashurst's digital economy team, please visit www.ashurst.com, in the meantime, thanks very much for listening and goodbye for now.