Speakers
10 November 2010

Melanie Farquharson joined 3Kites Consulting in 2007, having been a lawyer at Simmons & Simmons for more than 20 years, latterly taking on a central role in the firm as the partner responsible for knowledge management. At Simmons & Simmons she was involved in a number of technology related projects, including the implementation of PMS and CRM systems, client/matter inception workflow and document management, as well as the more traditional knowledge management tools. She has been able to apply this experience of specifying, purchasing and implementing technology in the professional services environment to her consultancy work. Since joining 3Kites she has worked with more than 20 law firms and in-house legal departments.
   
Kathy Jacob is the Head of Information Services at Pinsent Masons LLP. She is responsible for the Library and Information Services teams, vendor management of external information content and involved in firm wide knowledge projects. Kathy has worked as an information professional in financial services, investment banking and media sectors.
   
  Lynley Barker is currently seconded to knowledge projects, principally on the firmwide vocabulary strand and is part of the Information Services Management team. Lynley has worked in legal and government sectors in a variety of information roles both in the UK and New Zealand.
   
Mats Bergman is Information Architecture Manager at Clifford Chance. He was educated in Sweden and Switzerland (MSc in Engineering Physics). After leading the intranet development for Alfa Laval and Tetra Pak in the late 90s, work that took him from Sweden to England, he joined Clifford Chance to develop legal online services in 2000. His expertise is in knowledge retrieval and taxonomy development and implementation. In 2005 he received an MBA from the University of Liverpool. The dissertation topic was "Taxonomies: Creating competitive advantage in a knowledge driven organisation".
   
Adam Wyner has a Ph.D. in Linguistics (Cornell, 1994) and a Ph.D. in Computer Science (King’s College London, 2008). His research interests focus on legal knowledge extraction, representation, and reasoning; in particular, he has done research on deontic concepts (obligations), legal textual information extraction from cases, ontologies for the law, and argumentation. Originally from the USA, Dr. Wyner has lived in the UK since 2001. He is currently employed as research associate on the EU funded IMPACT Project in theDepartment of Computer Science, University of Liverpool. IMPAC is about using visualisations, computational models of argumentation, and web-based technologies to support public policy-making. Read more about his research interests on his blog.
   
Gwenda Sippings is Head of Information at Linklaters LLP, where her role is to lead, develop and manage world-class global information and research services. She has worked at senior management levels in the public and private sectors, including as an Interim Manager leading a major information and records management project in Local Government, and as Director of Knowledge Resources in Central Government at HM Revenue and Customs. She has also previously worked at Clifford Chance law firm as their London Head of Information. Gwenda has a Master of Librarianship from Aberystwyth where she is an Honorary Departmental Fellow, and is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (FCLIP).
   
Gerard Bredenoord has over 15 years experience within the Professional service industry. During this period he has worked for extended periods in South Africa, Canada, USA and Belgium. He has also completed many shorter projects in a number of other regions including Poland, Belgium, UK and Kenya. This background provides him with an intensive and in depth view of the challenges that are faced by projects that have to deal with distance, culture and working practices. He is experienced in the areas of knowledge management, change management, ERP system implementation and e-Business solution development. He also has an extensive security and controls development background.
   
Derek Sturdy worked in the 1990s with Christine Miskin at Legal Information Resources, producing the first legal electronic metadata databases (especially Legal Journals Index). When LIR was bought by Thomson (Sweet & Maxwell), they continued their partnership, first launching Current Legal Information (CLI), and then creating the editorial and database systems for Westlaw UK which launched in 2000. In 2000, Derek founded Granite & Comfrey to provide effective KM systems for law firms. This firm later joined Tikit, the largest integrator of legal systems in the UK, where Derek continues his work in KM and related fields.