Berlin-founded legal AI company Flank is set to unveil a heavyweight senior advisory board that it calls ‘The Orchestration Layer,’ bringing together general counsel, legal operations leaders, contracting specialists and law-firm partners who run legal work at scale inside large organisations.
Flank specialises in AI agents for repeat enterprise legal work such as intake, drafting, redlining and review. It says that the board exists to keep Flank’s agents “anchored in how legal work is actually done.” Members bring first-hand experience of the volume, the edge cases and the trust bar that define enterprise legal, and they use it in three ways: shaping the product so that agentic systems fit the real needs of lawyers and the business people they serve; testing new capabilities before they reach customers; and opening and guiding partnerships with legal knowledge providers, enterprise software vendors and law firms.
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The name reflects the members themselves. In every large organisation there is a layer of people who decide how legal work flows between the business, its lawyers and its systems. That layer, not the technology, determines whether AI agents deliver.
Founding members of The Orchestration Layer are:
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James Donald, general counsel MEA & APAC and deputy general counsel, premium, midscale & economy division, Accor
Sally Guyer, global CEO, World Commerce & Contracting
Kent Dreadon, partner, Positive Momentum (formerly group GC, Ascential; deputy GC, O2/Telefónica UK)
Stéphanie Hamon, global head of legal external engagement, HSBC
Lucy Shurwood, partner, Simmons & Simmons
Suzanna Kalendzhian, SVP strategy & programme, LegalTechTalk
Co-founder and COO Jake Jones told Legal IT Insider that the members of this initial cohort have already supported new product development, including the launch of its legal front door and agentic contract repository.
Jones says that further members will be announced over the coming weeks as Flank expands what enterprise legal teams can offload to supervised agents. The board meets in person twice a year and works with Flank’s product team between sessions on specific capabilities and use cases.
“There’s a gap between deploying legal AI and realising meaningful outcomes. The people on this board have delivered real outcomes at global enterprises, and we’re proud to be building Flank with them,” said Lili Breidenbach, CEO and co-founder of Flank.