CDT- NGCM Seminar

A Tale of a Legal Engineer with Prof. Sophie Stalla-Bourdillon

In this talk, Sophie will explain why data governance is a challenge that every data-driven organisation is or should be facing and offer insight into the key components of successful data science initiatives from a governance, risk and compliance perspective.

Too much legal complexity surrounding data usage means that in data-driven organisations of all sizes, the compliance burden is de facto shifting to those in technical roles, who must navigate the legal landscape mostly on their own. Lawyers aren't trained to translate high-level legal norms of which remit is not well defined into concrete recommendations for operationalizing compliance strategies. As a result, lawyers tend to step back.

However, technical roles such as Chief Information Security Officers and Chief Information Officers need legal help. This means that lawyers' advice needs to be formulated in a way that is useful for decision-making. Lawyers must step into the shoes of technical roles and craft legal guidance that can be easily put into use. In other words, lawyers should become "legal engineers" too, helping to engineer legal requirements directly into software systems and processes. This evolution is key to the success of data regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Prof. Sophie Stalla-Bourdillon

Sophie is Professor of Information Technology Law at the University of Southampton and Senior Privacy Counsel and Legal Engineer with Immuta, a data governance platform, where she works on tackling the ethical challenges of AI. Sophie is responsible for examining current data protection and model risk frameworks, helping customers to embed aspects of these frameworks within the Immuta platform, and framing these practices into digestible, easy-to-scale methods to help customers control risk across their data science programs.

https://www.southampton.ac.uk/law/about/staff/sophie_stalla.page

The seminar will take place in the Mountbatten Seminar Room, Building 53 Room 4025 on Highfield Campus.

Lunch will be provided at 12:30, with the seminar commencing at 13:00.