UK Jurisdiction Taskforce

Sir Geoffrey is Master of the Rolls and therefore the second most senior judge in England and Wales, as well as head of civil justice.

Sir Geoffrey is committed to enhancing the role of technology, both in the UK and globally, in dispute resolution, the delivery of legal services, and the advancement of access to justice and the rule of law. Sir Geoffrey helped establish the Panel as the Lawtech Delivery Panel in 2017 and chairs LawtechUK’s Jurisdiction Taskforce, responsible for delivering the Legal Statement on Cryptoassets and Smart Contracts.

Mr Justice Zacaroli was born in Sutton Coldfield and educated locally at Bishop Walsh comprehensive school. He studied law at Pembroke College, Oxford, where he subsequently became a part-time law tutor from 1987 to 1991.

He was called to the bar (Middle Temple) in 1987 and became a Queen’s Counsel (now King’s Counsel) in 2006. He specialised for most of his career in insolvency, banking and commercial law.

He has been a member of the management committee of the Bar Pro Bono Unit since 2001, the Insolvency Rules Committee since 2012 and the Financial Markets Law Committee since 2015. He was appointed a High Court Judge, Chancery Division, on 13 November 2017.

Leading commercial silk, with vast experience of complex, sensitive and high-value litigation and arbitration. David practises across the whole range of commercial disputes, with a focus on banking and finance; commercial and financial fraud; investments and joint ventures; international trade; technology and computing (including fintech, blockchain and cryptoassets); insurance and reinsurance; and professional negligence. He has a large offshore practice, particularly in the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands, the Bahamas, and the United Arab Emirates. He is a skilled advocate (in court and arbitration) and a formidable cross-examiner, with a particular facility for handling complex financial and technical material. Banking Silk of the Year 2021.

Lawrence Akka is a lawyer advising and representing clients including insurance companies, banks, businesses and individuals in national and international disputes.

He has an extensive background in large commercial and contractual disputes, particularly involving a technical element. His IT practice covers software and hardware procurement, outsourcing, supply and development, e-commerce, Internet and telecommunications law and data protection.

Lawrence Akka has been involved with Information Technology for over 20 years, and has a thorough grasp of the technical and other issues involved in the industry. He has written a number of domestic and business software applications, and is fluent in the C, C++, Java, PHP, Pascal, Perl and Python programming languages. He has for a number of years been a systems administrator of a medium sized network, and has a particular interest in object-oriented design and modern software development methodologies.

Mary is an ex-financial services litigator now working at the City of London Corporation to support innovation and technology adoption across the financial and professional services sector.

Nicholas has worked in a variety of sectors over his career which has given him a deep technical knowledge of the retail investment market and the regulatory approach towards these, past and present. While Nicholas has worked primarily in Supervision at the FSA/FCA this has routinely involved working with and influencing Policy, Competition, Authorisations, CASS, Enforcement and other areas.

Peter pioneered the techno-legal development of smart contracts and currently leads Smart Agreements products at DocuSign.

Peter founded the first open-source project for smart legal contract software, the first smart legal contract technology company to be publicly acquired, and has advised various law and technology organisations, including the Law Commission of England and Wales.

He is a member of the UK Jurisdiction Taskforce and has co-edited the first volume dedicated to the topic of smart legal contracts, recently published by Oxford University Press.

Richard is Linklaters' FinTech lead and has considerable experience in advising on the financial structuring and regulatory aspects of innovative capital markets structures, products and systems.

He regularly advises investment banks, broker-dealers, market infrastructure providers and start-ups on the deployment of novel technologies to support new or existing business lines. He has particular experience of new product development in the context of market infrastructures, notably trading, clearing, payment and settlement systems. He has also advised numerous start-ups and buy-side institutions on the creation and issuance of novel instruments and investment structures.

Richard has advised extensively on structured securities, exchange-traded and OTC derivatives and clearing, including on the enforceability of netting, set-off and credit support provisions.

Sarah is Law Commissioner for Commercial and Common Law at the Law Commission of England and Wales. Sarah’s early career was as an IT consultant with Accenture, and she has a keen interest in the intersection of law and technology, having focused much of her academic work on this.

Previously Professor of Private Law at the University of Bristol and Professor of the Law of Obligations at the University of Oxford, Sarah has a close involvement with the active lawtech community in Bristol and Bath. Sarah is committed to ensuring the law meets the needs of business and wider society and brings both a real-time and forward looking lens to this. Digital trade is a current focus, as well as the treatment of intangibles, smart contracts, digitised material and distributed ledger technology. Sarah sits on the LawtechUK Jurisdiction Taskforce and is contributing to the Lawtech Sandbox.