The Potential Impact of AI on Managing Contracts

Nick Whitehouse constantly pushes the boundaries of innovation, with dedicated experience in artificial intelligence and digital transformation. In his role as General Manager of the Onit AI Center of Excellence, he develops and executes AI strategy and innovation throughout Onit’s platforms and products.

His career to date has won him numerous recognitions, including the title of 2019 IDC DX Leader of the Year and Talent’s Most Disruptive Leader Award, as judged by Sir Richard Branson and Steve Wozniak.

He comes to Onit from the company he co-founded in 2017, McCarthyFinch. The company, acquired by Onit in 2020, developed and launched AI contract management software that helped legal teams automate contract reviews and approvals and streamline intelligent activities such as redlining documents, comparing clauses and defining legal terms.

Prior to that, he held the role of the first chief digital officer in law in the world at Minter, Ellison, Rudd Watts. There, he was responsible for the overall technology environment and led the firm’s digital vision, strategy and innovation. Nick experience has centered on technological transformation, with his earlier jobs focused on digitizing analog broadcasts, putting 4G on buses and WIFIs in stadiums and creating public cloud access in New Zealand. He holds an ITIL V3 Certification.

Jean Yang, vice president of the Onit AI Center of Excellence, has a background in building businesses and solutions that improve how law is practiced and accessed. In her role at Onit, she applies her extensive experience and dedication to innovation to continue the AI evolution of Onit and its products.

She was named Emerging ICT Leader of the Year 2019 and regularly presents on the topics of legal technology and AI. She is also the founding executive of LegalTech NZ, an organization that facilitates the development and adoption of advancing legal technology in New Zealand.

Yang was a solicitor at a commercial law firm, Minter Ellison Rudd Watts, where she started automating repetitive aspects of her own work with code. From there, Jean left the traditional legal career to become the COO and VP of Legal Services at AI contract management software provider McCarthy Finch (acquired by Onit in 2020). She helped build the business from infancy to acquisition and lead product and technology development.

Jean has a bachelor of law and bachelor of commerce from the University of Auckland and is admitted as a Barrister and Solicitor of the High Court of New Zealand.

Stasha Jain has been practicing law for more than 15 years, the majority of which has been as in-house counsel. She is currently vice president of legal and compliance at Onit where she is responsible for all legal support for Onit and its affiliates.

Stasha and her team work closely with the Onit leadership team and other key stakeholders to efficiently deliver legal services, including contract management, compliance, data privacy, and other areas of significant company-wide impact. Incidentally, she also enjoys using Onit tools to help her team run an efficient legal department.

Stasha’s rich experience and background includes serving as senior legal counsel at ZS Associates, Inc., a boutique consulting firm, and corporate counsel at Hewitt Associates (now known as Alight Solutions), a human resources outsourcing firm.

Stasha received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago and a J.D. from the University of Michigan.

Letitia is associate legal counsel at Adobe in their Digital Media product group, and oversees the suite of products a part of Document Cloud, from Acrobat to their newest offering, PDF Tools API. She advises multiple business units, such as product, AI innovation, and go-to-market, and works on in-bound and out-bound licensing, strategic partnerships, and privacy by design.

Letitia is also an active member of Adobe’s AI/ML committee, including the project working group responsible for developing internal AI/ML policies and guidelines, as well as the AI/ML evangelization taskforce.

Letitia graduated from University of California, San Diego, with a B.S. in Biology, and received her J.D. from Santa Clara University School of Law. Previously, Letitia litigated intellectual property matters with a focus on patents and trade secrets in technology sectors such as software and pharmaceuticals. Letitia also worked in the data privacy and cybersecurity space, and is CIPP-US certified.