Working hand in hand to transform the legal landscape

Meet our team

• 

  Alexander Laprell

  Managing Director

  alexander.laprell@legaltechcolab.com

  

  Why I do what I do

  During my law studies I always loved to dive into a new topic. However, once I got an understanding of the new topic my enthusiasm slowly faded. I needed something new. So when I passed my bar exam rather than becoming a lawyer I wanted to learn about how businesses work. Fun fact: I got fired as a pizza boy in Australia for listening to business podcasts during working hours. 8 years later with an MBA under my belt and having co-founded my own e-commerce company, I am still learning everyday and gladly help founders find out how their business works.

  How I get things done

  Finding out the jobs to be done by interviewing people and then building processes and systems to tackle them makes me strive. For example when a finance sheet automatically connects to bank accounts, accounting software and other systems, so no one has to manually input data anymore but everyone knows in real time where the company stands financially, I am happy.

  My role at LTC

  Having a legal domain expertise but also business acumen and entrepreneurial experience, I will help our members to fully get to their potential regarding their business model, product roadmap and financials. By providing them with our infrastructure offerings such as a legally fine-tuned LLM, we will speed up their product roadmap together so they can go to market even quicker.

• 

  Moritz Krüsselmann

  Head of Strategic Projects & Start-ups

  moritz.kruesselmann@legaltechcolab.com

  

  Why I do what I do

  For me not many things are cooler than supporting people who want to build something new and innovative. The Legal Tech Colab allows me to combine my passion for entrepreneurship with my experience as a VC lawyer to help our founders do just that.
  Ideally Legal Tech should also contribute to promoting justice by improving access to legal services and speeding up tedious legal processes.

  How I get things done

  Even for big projects, I’m known for an almost annoying focus on “next steps” and a strong distaste for meetings without a clear agenda. I value clear communication and I am a big fan of immediate open feedback. With regards to investing I’m a passionate supporter of the clean cap-table club.

  My role at LTC

  Using my network and experience in VC and company building to help our founders to find the right focus for their product, attract the first clients and find the right investors.

• 

  Priscila Rios

  Senior Project Manager

  priscila.rios@legaltechcolab.com

  

  Why I do what I do

  My purpose in life is to create opportunities that improve people’s lives. While this may sound ambitious, my legal career was driven by this goal. However, it was through my work with startups and a Legal tech entrepreneurship that I truly realized the transformative power of innovation to deliver impactful solutions—that can improve not just a few lives, but many. Exploring the Legal Tech market in Germany and Brazil, I saw firsthand how jurists around the world face similar challenges. This experience confirmed to me that I am on the right path: finding better ways to increase access to justice and create meaningful change. I do what I do because I believe in using technology to solve old problems in innovative ways, building a more accessible, efficient, and justice-oriented legal world.

  How I get things done

  Working in a collaborative spaces with open communication and a culture of feedback enables me to reach my full potential. It provides a sense of safety that allows me to be creative and tackle the challenges that naturally arise in innovative environments. Also guides me the line of thinking: Every problem has a solution. If there’s no solution, then it’s already solved :)

  My role at LTC

  At LTC, my role will be to facilitate networking events that foster learning, growth, and scaling opportunities for the Legal Tech startups we support, while inspiring innovative minds to embrace entrepreneurship. Additionally, I will stay informed about the Legal Tech market and provide up-to-date insights to ensure our strategies and support align with industry trends and opportunities.

• 

  Dr. Stefan Blenk

  Strategic Advisor

  

  Why I do what I do

  Curiosity and a sense of purpose have always been my driving forces: Curiosity about what technology could do led me to spend many childhood days tinkering with Commodores, i486 PCs, and small machines. The desire to improve people's lives and make a difference is what motivated me to become a lawyer. Bringing the two together eventually led me to co-found an AI start-up, and now to help other founders push the boundaries of what is possible to create impact with technology.

  How I get things done

  In both my professional and personal life, I adhere to a simple yet powerful principle: listening is key. By dedicating 80% of my time to listening and only 20% to talking, I strive to truly understand the needs and aspirations of those around me. I am an open-minded, enthusiastic and creative entrepreneur with many years’ experience as a lawyer at Freshfields, now supporting other founders with a solutions-oriented, structured and analytical approach. Fun fact: I am second to none when it comes to navigating unfamiliar cities.

  My role at LTC

  With a good idea of what technology is and is not capable of, I provide guidance at the intersection of law and technology, particularly generative AI. Combining my own experience as a lawyer with insights from my constant conversations with decision makers in in-house legal teams and law firms, I bring valuable data, opportunities, and challenges back to our start-up ecosystem.

• 

  Melanie Pospisil

  Working Student Operations & Partnerships

  melanie.pospisil@legaltechcolab.com

  

  Why I do what I do

  I began my academic journey studying law, then transitioned to a bachelor’s degree in mathematics, and am now pursuing a master’s in Data Science. Each of these fields has fascinated me in its own way. Legal Tech offers a unique opportunity to merge all my interests into one area while constantly learning new things.

  How I get things done

  I’m very structured and enjoy working with a lot of data and a strong knowledge base. But what drives me the most is pushing ideas to become reality. I take great pleasure in guiding projects and products from concept to completion.

  My role at LTC

  As a working student at LTC, I assist with data analysis and research, but I'm also ready to help wherever I can be helpful.

• 

  Ingrid Caracas

  Working Student

  ingrid.caracas@legaltechcolab.com

  

  Why I do what I do

  I am a law student in Munich and totally fascinated by everything that is new and innovative. The legal tech industry is full of potential and I want to get to know it as well as possible and help shape it. The dynamic field of legal tech suits my personality perfectly, as I like to think creatively and am open to new challenges. I find it particularly exciting that we work with start-ups here and can thus participate directly in the development of new solutions.

  How I get things done

  Order and structure are important to me in everything I do. They relax me, especially when I'm completing to-dos - it makes me feel like I'm making progress. Starting new projects, whether it's learning a new skill or taking on a new challenge, always motivates me. This not only keeps me productive, but also helps me to grow continuously.

  My role at LTC

  As a working student, I support the team with various tasks, such as scouting start-ups and organizing events. Another important part of my work is planning events and helping to bring exciting, promising ideas to the stage.

• 

  Emin Tufanoglu

  Venture Consultant

  emin.tufanoglu@unternehmertum.de

  

  Why I do what I do

  My journey into entrepreneurship began when I fell in love with the vast start-up ecosystem during my Masters in Lisbon. I always wondered how I could make a difference in my environment and soon found a way - what started as a membership in my university's start-up club quickly turned into a passion for entrepreneurship and building impactful and sustainable business models. So far, I have supported ventures at different stages and in different industries - from student-led to corporate.

  How I get things done

  I put a lot of focus on nurturing and constantly expanding my knowledge of the ecosystem and technical skills required to help start-ups reach their potential. However, I believe that at the end of the day it all comes down to people. I am a communicative, open-minded and empathetic innovator. Combining a human-centred and analytical approach allows me to get inside the heads of founders and the inner workings of a start-up, as well as fostering optimal collaboration within our vibrant ecosystem.

  My role at LTC

  In my role as Venture Consultant with a focus on legal tech start-ups in the XPRENEURS incubation programme, I coordinate the programme's activities and start-ups' needs with the Legal Tech Colab and other project members. As part of this collaboration, I help identify and evaluate promising early-stage legal tech start-ups in the ecosystem and build a strong network within the legal tech ecosystem. Fun fact: I may not have the voice of an angel, but I promise I can put on a show at karaoke!

• 

  Philipp Gerbert

  General Managing Director TUM Venture Labs

  

  Why I do what I do

  I am passionate about helping the NextGen of entrepreneurs in (deep) tech and life sciences and about building a hub to assure European tech sovereignty. In Germany, the automotive industry will not carry the country through the 21st century – so we need fresh ideas and business models.

  How I get things done

  My favorite leadership principles are: Bring clarity to complexity! Create positive energy! Get things done in a constrained world! Act as one team! Empower and develop! Care!
  Add to this an aspirational: 95% acting, 5% talking (I am almost there ...) – that should sum it up.

  My role at LTC

  As General Managing Director of the TUM Venture Labs I founded the Legal Tech Colab. Why? Well, Georg Eisenreich can be very persuasive... :)
  Also: I have been an AI afficionado all my life, and after GPT-3 was published in May 2020 the opportunity to fundamentally increase the performance and create amazing scalable novel businesses in the (stubbornly word-based) legal profession became obvious. Even in continental (civil) law! Even in conservative Germany! And I feel very strongly that lawyers should stop just working harder and instead implement leverage tech to become drastically faster, more customer-friendly and less expensive – we will all enjoy the results! So I simply support my team at LTC as best I can to make this happen!

• 

  Stefan Drüssler

  Chief Operating Officer UnternehmerTUM

  

  Why I do what I do

  Quite a few years ago, I created two startup business ideas as a student of TUM as part of the Business Plan Seminars. Instead of founding a company, I joined a strategy consulting firm after graduating. Maybe that left an unfulfilled desire. I am now eager to help talents and founders to find their personal path for innovation. I love being around passionate people who want to really change things for the better.

  How I get things done

  First: Know which direction you want to go. I like to leverage the knowledge of the ecosystem around me, where I can find an expert in almost any field. Second: Get started and never forget that 80% really done is most of the time more than others will produce. Third: Improve the 80% to over 100% with your network.

  My role at LTC

  I act as a liaison between Legal Tech-specific professional offerings and networks with successful services in the areas of education, incubation/acceleration and investments. I want to bring in the full expertise of more than 20 years of UnternehmerTUM to be applied in the legal tech domain.

• 

  Prof. Dr. Dirk Heckmann

  Academic Director

  https://www.gov.sot.tum.de/gov/home/

  

  Background

  As a constitutional judge and internet law professor, Dirk combines tradition and modernity like no other in Germany. He is not a sceptic of digital innovation but rather a shaper of its progress. He has been researching law and digitalisation for more than 25 years.

  Specialisms

  He is passionate about legally secure and fair digitisation and modernisation of the state, economy and administration. Legal tech as a matter of course: Dirk finds the law in the digital and the digital in the law.

• 

  Prof. Dr. Matthias Grabmair

  Academic Director

  https://www.cs.cit.tum.de/lt/home/

  

  Background

  Prof. Grabmair bridges the disciplines of law and computer science, bringing expertise from both worlds to the forefront of legal tech. After a German state exam in law and an American LL.M. he researched and taught at Carnegie Mellon University’s language Technologies Institute until 2019. He then spent a year as a Legal Data Scientist at SINC before joining the CIT School at TUM in 2021.

  Specialisms

  Prof. Grabmair’s AI & Law research focuses on how natural language processing on legal text, knowledge representation, and computational models of argumentation can be leveraged to support and transform legal practice. In particular, he strives to find synergies between data-driven solutions and human legal expertise.