By John Murph
Angela Conway specializes in what she calls “legal transformation” at a time when rapid technological advancement is presenting women more opportunities to lead the legal profession and help shape the future of law. Through her nonprofit organization, Lady Justice Initiative, Conway is working to democratize and expand participation in this shift, with the goal of harnessing the power of AI.
“I see us building a new era of law,” Conway says. “I’m on a mission to make sure that women are right there in front — whether they’re in a law firm, in court, or running a start-up. With the new technology, we have a historic opportunity to design a new legal system. The system that we currently have is not very diverse. So, this is the moment to design a new era of law in a way that actually works and reflects the views, knowledge, perspectives, and needs of more people.”
Realizing that AI can potentially increase inequities for women when it comes to obtaining leadership roles or gaining more knowledge about emerging technology, Conway launched Lady Justice Initiative in 2022. The nonprofit’s work focuses on two programs, Lex 2X Exec™ and The Justice Hive. The former is a global leadership network for women executives who are shaping the law through artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technology, giving members access to executive coaching, mentoring, and professional development programming. The Justice Hive is geared toward practitioners in government, business, the judiciary, and academia who are seeking to connect and collaborate on AI solutions.
In the age of AI, Conway views law, finance, and tech as a trinity. “All three are converging in this space that we’re in, and they are playing off of each other,” Conway says. In 2023 Conway conducted a global study, “Innovating for Equality: Catalyzing Opportunity for Women in Law Through Digital Transformation and AI,” interviewing 105 women leaders from 31 countries to understand how women are accessing and harnessing the power of AI and other emerging technology.
“My study shows that it’s all about perceptions and bias in terms of who should be building tech or who has the opportunity to become the CEO of a tech company, which will affect tech products that will be seeking investments,” Conway says. Some of the women lawyers interviewed for the study left their legal practices and “went out and founded legal tech companies because that allowed them to fly higher,” she adds.
Conway also discovered that many women expressed frustration with their careers because of the lack of professional development, flexible work–life balance, and access to financial resources and entrepreneurial support. “From my study, I could see that more support was needed to help women become more aware of opportunities to help fill gaps where there were challenges so that they could lead us in this new era of law that we’re about to enter,” Conway says.
Background in Global Rule of Law Initiatives
Before launching Lady Justice Initiative, Conway spent 18 years with the American Bar Association (ABA) as program director of its Central and East European Law Initiative (CEELI), where her work focused on Bulgaria, Romania, and Slovakia; as director of its Rule of Law Initiative’s Middle East and North Africa Division; and later as senior counselor and special advisor to the associate executive director for global programs. In those capacities, Conway helped governments, universities, and legal communities strengthen rule of law and promote economic growth.
Conway was first drawn to the association in the mid-1990s after reading in the ABA Journal about CEELI, a new project that was taking off in Eastern Europe. “The ABA was calling upon lawyers in our country to help [our] colleagues in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe to rebuild their legal systems,” Conway recalls.
Prior to joining the ABA, Conway had written the article “Winds of Change: Eco Glasnost in Eastern Europe” for the Kansas Journal of Law & Public Policy about how environmental issues played a role in the revolutions of 1989. “I had always been interested in global affairs,” she says, “so the ABA had me do some comparative research on constitutional law models because it was helping the drafters of the Russian Constitution.” That volunteer position, her first assignment at the ABA, eventually led to Conway being tapped to create a research department to support the new initiative.
At that time, Conway wanted to become an international law practitioner, but the ABA opportunity was too good to resist. “We were helping governments in Slovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria imagine what their justice systems would be like,” she says. “We helped draft laws to govern intellectual property and other commercial issues. We also helped modernize their law schools so that they would be better positioned to prepare lawyers.”
Conway’s international law work caught the attention of the U.S. Department of State, particularly her short report for the Bahrain Justice Ministry. Around that time, the State Department had launched the Middle East Partnership Initiative. “The goal of the project was to build ties between our legal community and the legal communities of all the Middle East and North African countries,” Conway says.
“The State Department heard about [my report] and invited me over for what I thought would be a briefing on [it]. Instead, the meeting … turned out to be more of an interview for the new initiative …. So, I found myself on a plane to Bahrain,” Conway recalls.
In September 2003, the Kingdom of Bahrain partnered with the United States government to host the Arab Judicial Forum, identifying common issues and generating discussion on the essential elements of sound judicial systems. With Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and British barrister and writer Cherie Blair leading the United States and UK delegations, respectively, the forum drew legal leaders from 15 countries.
Following the event, the State Department granted the ABA funds to launch the Middle East and North Africa Division of its Rule of Law Initiative. “The collaboration with the Bahrain government, the U.S. State Department, and the ABA endured for 15 years,” Conway says.
Conway describes this part of her career as magical, working in 19 countries all over the Middle East and North Africa. “We were embedded in government bodies helping them strengthen the performance of their justice systems; we worked with law schools in helping them develop their curricula and better prepare their young attorneys — all of this with the theme of legal transformation.”
In 2013 Conway led a State Department-funded research project on the experiences of Syrian refugees who fled their homeland and resettled in countries such as Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan. “[The State Department] wanted us to document those experiences so that they could see if there had been potential human rights violations,” Conway says. “They also wanted us to collect evidence of war crimes.”
Conway and her team interviewed approximately 900 people for the project and developed a technology platform that enabled the refugees to get access to legal information and lawyers. “It was before legal tech was a thing,” says Conway, noting that the platform drew thousands of subscribers. “I could see the value of technology firsthand from that experience. So, I began using technology more. I could see technology as a disruptor of law.”
The Power of Connections
Growing up in Topeka, Kansas, Conway did not plan on being a lawyer or legal disruptor.
She recalls writing a paper in eighth grade about her desire to work as a foreign service officer and, when she was 16, going through a transformative experience during a high school trip to France. “Our teacher kept talking about all the historic stuff, but for me the experience was really about the people and culture,” she says.
Conway attended Northwestern University, where she earned a bachelor of arts degree in political science and government. “I was steeped in international affairs,” Conway says. “In college, I studied Russian studies. I took anything that was international.”
Shifting focus, she decided to attend the Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law in Texas. “I knew that I wanted to focus internationally, but I did not plan to get involved in international development,” Conway says. “But really the kernel of me becoming a lawyer was participating in debate teams in high school and at Northwestern.” Conway completed her law degree at the University of Kansas, then she came to Washington, D.C., in part because of her husband’s job.
Today, as founder and CEO of Lady Justice Initiative, Conway works with 24 executive coaches across the globe and offers one-on-one and peer mentoring. Conway says one of the findings from her 2023 study was that 67 percent of the women interviewed didn’t have access to a mentor, such as a computer engineer in a large law firm or an affinity group. “So, these women were kind of by themselves. Since [our] launch, we’ve been holding workshops and ‘communities of practice.’ We’re about to start something in D.C. called ‘AI for Breakfast,’ which will be a networking group of women in law.”
Reflecting on her rich career experiences, Conway says “it’s all about the people.”
“Whether you’re writing a constitution, putting a tech product together, or just helping your team, the thing that endures is the people,” she says. “Sometimes you think the thing that has a physical infrastructure or a code behind it has the most value. But I learned that what has the most personal value to me is building people and helping them realize possibilities and their individual power.”
Reach D.C. Bar staff writer John Murph at [email protected].
