Stephanie Lopes is chief legal officer of Volt, a London, England, open-banking payments company. She joined Volt as general counsel after ten years at the law firm Bird & Bird, where Volt had been her client. Read our review of Volt.
Secondments from Bird & Bird to the Bank of England
She studied law at the University of Warwick, the first in her family to go to university. At Bird & Bird she was seconded to the Bank of England, BAE Systems, ABB and Nestlé. "You can become very lawyer-ey, sat in your ivory tower in private practice, but once you've gone into a business, you become a much better commercial and business lawyer," she told Assured in 2022.
Running Contracts Through Legal Technology
As chief legal officer she brought in contract lifecycle management software so the legal team runs contracts through one system, from drafting to signature. "We mitigate risk by starting with pilot programmes, allowing us to evaluate the technology's performance on a smaller scale before full implementation," she told Artificial Lawyer in 2024.
