A lawyer who’d rather build than block
AI rollouts, compliance that actually gets done, decisions that are hard to undo. I bring the curiosity to ask the right questions, and the legal judgment to act on the answers – along the way, not after.
What I do
I work where law, technology and business overlap. Bring me in to get started, to lead the change, or as a steady extra pair of hands.
From “we should do something with AI” to a team that actually works differently – strategy, the right use cases, hands-on setup and the change management that makes it stick.
Lawyers who use Copilot, Claude or Harvey because it helps, not because IT rolled it out – workflows, playbooks and training built by someone who has done the legal work herself.
A senior, decisive extra pair of hands, 1–2 days a week. GDPR and AI Act work that gets implemented, not just written down.
Raising capital, changing owners, launching something new? I help owners and boards see what’s true, what’s at stake and what to test first – before it’s hard to undo.
Teams that actually understand AI, privacy and legal risk – not just sit through a training on it. Delivered everywhere from boardrooms to hackathons.
Who I work with
Most of my years were spent in AI scale-ups and legal services, and I’ve trained leaders from manufacturing to regional business. If your organization runs on knowledge, data and trust, we’ll speak the same language.
You know AI matters. You don’t yet have a plan – or a way to roll it out without putting data, trust or people at risk.
One or two lawyers, a growing company and a to-do list that keeps growing. You need capacity and judgment, not another memo.
Capital, generational change, a new business line. Big decisions, hard to undo.
Kind words
Quotes from a few of the amazing people I've had the privilege to work with.
Helena was one of the sharpest, most trusted people on my leadership team at Adway. She thinks like an operator, not just a lawyer - and it shows in work that keeps paying off long after she’s moved on. Any founder lucky enough to work with her should feel the same.
Building Lextopia together was one of the most energizing projects of my time at Fondia. Helena doesn't just understand AI and legal tech in theory – she gets in and builds the actual workflows, and brings the rest of the organization along with her. That combination is genuinely rare.
The human behind the work
I started Hola Gato to help organizations get things off the ground – AI, compliance, big decisions – without losing their footing on data, law or people.
I’m a lawyer at heart, but I’m at my best leading change: projects, people, negotiations, rollouts. And unusually for a lawyer, I have a genuinely technical mind, which means I can sit inside a build process while it’s happening, instead of showing up afterward with a list of demands.
My view of a well-run organization is that it should become a self-playing piano: clear processes, automation wherever it makes sense, and enough freedom inside the right guardrails that everyone can do their job without hitting a bottleneck.
Off the clock, you’ll usually find me lifting weights, out in the woods, or on a bike. Crime novels are the reset button – Agatha Christie is non-negotiable over the holidays – and the rest of the time goes to concerts, travel, and keeping up with the kids.
My point of view
“The best legal work doesn’t slow good ideas down. It gives them somewhere to go.”
How I work
Advice should make the next move obvious. No legal fog, no twenty-page answer to a two-line question.
I plug into your team, learn how you actually work and solve the problem with the people doing it.
Not every risk is a red light. I help you see what matters, decide confidently and keep moving.
I understand the technical side well enough to sit inside the build process, not just review it afterward. I build workflows – from straightforward automation to AI-native processes, with a human checkpoint at the milestones where it actually matters.
Case studies
A mix of real engagements and one worked example, organized by the kind of problem they solve.
Turned a pitch into a fully-funded venture – a new AI-native legal service line, built and run from scratch after winning board sign-off.
A legal services group had the expertise but no clear initiative to develop next-generation AI-driven legal services. Spotted the opportunity, developed it into a concrete proposal, and pitched it to the group board. Got the mandate, built the organization and ways of working, led pilot collaborations with clients, and set up partnerships with legal tech vendors. Result: launched as an independent innovation venture within the group, with a new AI-native, fixed-fee delivery model.
A measurably shorter sales cycle – built on new contract templates, clear decision rights, and an ISO 27001 certification in four months.
Contracts were drafted from scratch every time, and large customers’ security and procurement reviews were dragging out the sales cycle. Built a SaaS-standardized contract structure and a decision-rights framework giving sales reps freedom inside clear limits, with built-in thresholds for when a deal needed to escalate to a manager. Designed the templates and user rights structure to be intuitive both for in-house CLM users and for the counterparty receiving the draft. Rolled out and trained the team on legal tech tools, built a HubSpot-based sales playbook for one source of truth on numbers, and co-led the company’s ISO 27001 certification in about four months, building on governance work already in place. Result: fewer negotiation rounds, shorter time from verbal yes to signature, less friction in security reviews, and a measurably shorter sales cycle. The framework was still running largely unchanged years after she moved on.
AI & transformation
Shorter sales cycles and a tool the whole company actually uses – not just what the vendor’s demo promised.
Many lawyers are bad at buying systems – they take what a vendor recommends without knowing what the organization actually needs. Has procured CLM systems multiple times: mapping actual needs, listing must-haves versus nice-to-haves, streamlining existing processes, negotiating hidden costs out of the deal, leading migrations, and building playbooks herself for both legal and sales. Usability always comes before feature count. Result: shorter sales cycles and the ability to actually verify that playbooks and guides are being used correctly.
20 lawyers walked away having built the tool they had been missing in their own workflow – not just sat through another training.
Organized and ran an internal hackathon evening for about 20 lawyers who’d never vibe-coded before. The premise: vibe coding is going to become a normal way of working for lawyers, not just developers. Participants built whatever they wanted, and mostly built tools they’d been missing in their day-to-day. Strong feedback, and an evening that sparked more thinking than expected.
A GDPR-compliant AI tool, launched on schedule – by joining the build early instead of reviewing it after the fact.
A large corporate group had built an AI tool for internal GDPR pseudonymization of images. Brought in during development itself, as a running sounding board – not a post-launch review. Ran a risk assessment alongside the dev team, and reviewed exactly what metadata the service actually needed, stripping out anything kept “just in case” that risked employees’ privacy. Result: a genuinely useful tool that saved time and money, was GDPR-compliant, and protected employee privacy – with no delay to launch.
Leadership & change
Output and customer satisfaction held steady with a smaller team – after stepping in to lead a group that had neither a leader nor a plan.
A team had no leader and was underperforming – no one internal was ready to step up. Took the role herself, introduced productization as an operating model to get processes and cost under control, and slimmed the team while holding production levels. Result: six months in, both output and customer satisfaction held steady with a smaller team. It was messy for everyone involved – but it worked. Leadership isn’t a title, it’s rolling up your sleeves.
Two funding rounds closed in time and with more balanced terms – despite being the smaller party at the table.
A fast-growing AI company needed someone to hold together fundraising, board governance and employee equity without slowing the business down. Project-led two investment rounds end to end – coordinating outside counsel, managing legal budget, keeping the data room current, and negotiating every agreement (SPA, SHA and more) alongside the CEO and interim CFO. Sat as board secretary with a standing seat in every meeting, often serving as a real-time “handbrake” or guide when discussions needed it. Ran the company’s entire qualified employee stock option program. Result: no delays in either funding round traced back to her work. Terms came out more balanced despite being the smaller party in negotiations.
Helped executives and industry leaders turn AI uncertainty into a plan they could actually act on – as a recurring guest lecturer and speaker.
Teaches the ELSI (Ethical, Legal and Social Implications of AI) module within the University of Gothenburg’s “AI for leaders” course, in collaboration with Fondia Legal Services. Also a regular speaker for Business Region Gothenburg’s “AI Know” series and IUC Syd’s AI governance sessions for manufacturing leaders and technicians, run jointly with Effectit.
Workflows & training
Client meetings that start already prepared – an AI-native framework handles the groundwork, with a human check at the moment it actually matters.
Preparing for a first client conversation usually means manually gathering and structuring information – slow and inconsistent depending on who’s doing it. Designed an AI-native framework (currently in active development; specifics confidential) that automates information-gathering and initial analysis, and helps surface the right questions before a first meeting – with a human checkpoint built in at the point where accuracy and legitimacy actually need verifying. Sits alongside a separate, more traditional automation build for a previous employer that’s still running largely unchanged years later.
Gave legal and compliance teams a clear, actionable read on cross-border data transfer rules – as a recurring masterclass speaker.
Delivered masterclass sessions on transferring personal data outside the EU (primarily to the US) for a GDPR compliance platform’s customer base of legal and compliance professionals, and for a legal training center audience of practicing lawyers.
Fewer negotiation rounds and faster signatures from enterprise customers – earned with visual maps and white papers, not legal leverage.
Large enterprise customers with heavy internal procurement processes routinely dragged negotiations out for weeks, especially around complex topics like data flows, cookies and pixels. Built visual maps and white papers that clearly showed exactly what happened to a customer’s data. Trimmed contract terms down to what actually mattered, and gave clear reasoning for the terms that couldn’t move. Result: fewer negotiation rounds and a shorter path from first meeting to signature.
Legal & compliance foundation
Balanced terms secured against a much larger counterparty – negotiated from experience on both sides of the DPA table.
Has sat on both the vendor and customer side of DPA negotiations – unusual for a lawyer, who typically only sees one side. A DPA isn’t just paperwork; it’s a guide for who does what if an incident is suspected. In one case, negotiated both a more balanced allocation of responsibility and terms that favored her client, despite representing the smaller company.
Fast, defensible calls on whether an incident needs reporting – made through rapid technical and legal assessment, not guesswork.
Good incident response starts long before an incident happens – in policy and internal training. Her role: quickly understand what happened technically, assess whether personal data was exposed, and document it against pre-built templates to determine reporting obligations. Good incident work is a team sport, not a solo job for compliance.
Employee handbooks and policies built to actually be used – not filed away and forgotten.
Builds policies and employee handbooks with legal design as the guiding principle – readable, accessible, practical dos and don’ts instead of legal paperweights gathering dust. Clear policy is also what makes union negotiations and reorganizations possible – it gives you something concrete to point to.
Pragmatic terms against take-it-or-leave-it cloud vendors; union negotiations built on clear policy.
With major cloud vendors, price is rarely negotiable – what matters is knowing exactly what you’re signing, and accounting for the vendor’s own limitations of liability in your downstream terms. Has also led union negotiations and reorganization planning alongside People & Culture leadership – always aiming to build trust rather than force an outcome.
A launch that holds up legally without losing momentum – risk classification and a compliance plan built before a deadline forces a rushed one.
A company is about to launch an AI-driven product – say, in recruitment or credit scoring – areas often classified as high-risk under the EU AI Act – but has no process for working out which requirements actually apply. Classify the product under the AI Act’s risk tiers, map which obligations are triggered, and build a pragmatic compliance plan that doesn’t stall the launch. Result: a launch that holds up legally without losing momentum.
Hola Gato · Helping organizations get AI, compliance and big decisions off the ground – with the legal calls made along the way.
Pitched the concept to Fondia's group board, got the mandate, built and ran the venture from scratch.
From Senior Legal Counsel to AI & Tech Lead Sweden, then Competence Lead Privacy.
Seat on both leadership team and board; interim head of Customer Operations; concurrently Head of Legal for sister company Reducero.
School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg.
“Is this even allowed?” “Where do we start?” “Who decides?”
Tell me where you are, what you’ve tried, or what keeps sliding to the bottom of the to-do list.
Svenska? Självklart – skriv på det språk du vill.
helena@holagato.se ↗︎