Sarah Burley

From Stamford, England	Place of study and course Neuroscience at University College London	Fun fact I was recently published in the journal Neurosurgery for a meta-analysis of spinal cord injury cell therapy trials

My journey from neuroscience to legal innovation

Legal innovation may not seem like an obvious next step after studying Neuroscience, but for me this graduate scheme was the perfect place to start my career. I had always been interested in law, as it touches so many aspects of our lives, but it wasn’t until I came across talks on legal tech that I realised there were careers in law outside of being a lawyer.

After doing lab research and spending many hours with my cell cultures, I knew that I wanted to join a collaborative workplace and work on something that I felt had a tangible impact in shorter time frames. Combining legal with business and technology ticked all the boxes for me. I get to use my scientific skill set but apply it to a wide variety of work and gain new multidisciplinary skills.

Lab research involves meticulous planning, overcoming (a lot of) failure, thinking of creative solutions to your problems, analysing data and presenting your insights to a team of critically minded individuals. This is not dissimilar to working in legal innovation. We come up with ideas, plan projects, interpret our findings and learn to embrace failure!