Tony Lai

Welcome, and thank you for visiting my personal website. I invite you to have a look at my projects. If you are interested in contributing to a project or discussing how lawyers and social entrepreneurs can change the world, please get in touch.

I'm deeply passionate about the intersection of law and technology. I grew up in England, tinkering with computers and getting lost in books, playing the violin and helping with the family businesses.

Blessed to have had the chance to study history at Oxford University, I was fascinated by the patterns of human interaction that have been drawn out from the past, whether in an economic, social, cultural or political context. From studying the development of some of the earliest Anglo-Saxon legal codes, I learnt how these nascent political authorities sought to begin using the law as a means of regulating and channelling human interaction towards shared goals that no individual alone could achieve; I was drawn to a deeper understanding of how the law could be framed to shape positive human interaction and collaboration, now and in the future.

My interest in the legal system and my goals in life have developed around my own, somewhat variegated, identity. With my roots in English education and society and a solid historical perspective, I have sought, nevertheless, to understand myself through the lens of my Chinese heritage and my 10,000 hours of professional experience at an international law firm. I practiced for 5 years at Herbert Smith in their London and Hong Kong offices, advising companies, public sector bodies and charities working in the technology, communications and media industries across Europe, Asia and Africa.

In 2010, I received the chance to pursue further studies in the heart of Silicon Valley as part of Stanford Law School's Law, Science and Technology program. Transformed by new modes of communication and information flow, the increasingly collaborative methods in which communities across the world perceive and address some of the world's problems electrified me. The law is crucial to protecting this, often fragile, state of affairs. Tied to the revolution in renewable energy and smart grids, the evolving transformation in the energy-information matrix was happening nowhere, faster than in Silicon Valley. Given the freedom to design my own interdisciplinary course, highlights included: learning from leading social entrepreneurs at the Urban Studies department with Melanie Edwards; six glorious months working with a team of graduate students under David Kelley at Stanford's d.school to reinvent cultural experiences; and peering into the future of online music and video in a project based law school class with Barbara van Schewick and Paul Goldsmith.

Upon graduating from Stanford, I joined the teaching team for Jonathan Zittrain's joint Harvard-Stanford class, Ideas for a Better Internet; became a fellow at CodeX, the Stanford Center for Legal Informatics; helped research and design the first Legal Technology and Informatics course to be taught at Stanford Law School; and joined the founding team of StartX, helping to grow Stanford's preeminent community of entrepreneurs.

As a co-founder of LawGives, I now work with designers, engineers and lawyers on building the next generation of legal service delivery technologies.

In my spare time, I enjoy meeting with the many modern nomads from around the world who come visit our co-living community known as The Embassy Network, in San Francisco.