Bringing ‘been there, built that’ to legal tech.

I am Mike Kennedy, and I have spent over a decade putting technology into legal work at a top 20 UK law firm. From early days as a paralegal and trainee, I saw how much of the work technology could do better, and set about proving it in live matters. That work allowed me to carry out one of the first innovation-focused training contracts - I qualified as a solicitor while we grew the innovation function, and ended up heading research and development inside one of the best innovation teams in the market.

My experience spans everything that the legal technology market has to offer, with in-depth, hands-on experience across large-scale diligence, eDiscovery, product development, AI development and evaluations, detailed research into LLMs, vibe coding, AI governance, procurement and IT engagement, and much more. Along the way I got hands-on with hundreds of legal technology tools and sat through more vendor demos than potentially anyone else.

Vesta is the independent version of that job. I work with law firms, in-house legal teams, ALSPs, legal technology vendors and AI-native businesses on strategy, tool selection, implementation, training and governance - and if required, I can also build. If the answer to your problem is a working prototype, then you get the prototype.

The name is from Roman mythology: Vesta kept the hearth - the flame that stayed lit while flashier gods came and went. That is the bar for every engagement: steady, practical, and still burning when the hype has moved on.

The past couple of years have shown that GenAI has caused a real spark across the legal space. My belief is that you need genuine and intentional work to turn that spark into a resilient fire that burns across your organisation. There is still a huge gap between the promise of AI and the delivery, and my vision is to close that gap.