The Wired Wig: Smooth integrations and creative lawyers

In this episode of The Wired Wig podcast, host Annabel Pemberton is joined by Tom Dunlop, Summize's CEO and Co-founder. Annabel, a lawyer and legal technologist, created The Wired Wig to demystify technology law trends and explore how law is evolving in tomorrow’s society. Through thoughtful conversation, she draws out practical insights from leaders shaping the legal tech landscape.

Tom brings a rare dual perspective to the discussion. After qualifying as a solicitor in the UK, he led in-house legal teams at fast-growth technology businesses including UserZoom, Zuto and AppSense. Now, as founder and CEO of Summize, Tom now combines his hands-on legal experience with an entrepreneurial approach to software design. In this episode, Annabel and Tom explore how legal technology can better support lawyers, why creativity matters in legal roles, and what the future holds for legal teams and trainees.
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How Summize was born from real in-house problems

To start, Tom chats about the origin of Summize and the practical problem our solution is set out to solve for in-house legal professionals. Tom explains that his move into legal technology was driven by frustration with the manual nature of contract work. As a General Counsel managing funding rounds, regulatory change and day-to-day contracts, he found himself repeatedly opening PDFs, reviewing documents line by line and tracking key terms in spreadsheets.

While some legal tech tools existed, Tom felt they were often heavyweight enterprise products that addressed only narrow use cases and required significant behavior change. Summize was designed instead to be flexible, cost-effective and easy to use under time pressure, spanning multiple contract-related tasks rather than solving just one. This grounding in lived experience shaped a product intended to work for lawyers, not against them.
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Meeting lawyers where they already work

Another key topic is Summize’s philosophy of integrating into existing workflows. Rather than forcing users into a standalone system, the platform “comes to where the lawyer works”, which is strong differentiator of Summize, embedding across popular business tools such as Microsoft Word, Teams, and Slack.

This approach allows lawyers to review, summarize and redline contracts directly within familiar tools. From quick risk summaries and red-flag reviews to playbook-driven clause analysis and chatbot-style contract queries, Summize supports different stages of the contract lifecycle. The goal is to deliver immediate value without overwhelming users or requiring large-scale change management programs, making adoption easier for teams of all sizes.
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Supporting adoption through incremental improvement

Adoption of legal technology is often a challenge, and Tom addresses this directly through Summize’s Kaizen-inspired approach. Rather than pushing full automation from day one, onboarding focuses on small, incremental improvements that deliver quick wins.

Typically, this begins with the Microsoft Word add-in, ensuring value is delivered the moment a lawyer opens their next document. From there, teams can gradually build playbooks, upload selected contracts for summaries, and later extend insights into collaboration tools like Teams or Slack. This step-by-step method reduces resistance, avoids disruption and helps lawyers see technology as an assistant rather than a threat.
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Creativity, visible value and the future lawyer

Beyond technology itself, the conversation broadens into creativity and the evolving role of lawyers. Tom challenges the stereotype of lawyers as rigid or uncreative, arguing that legal work is inherently creative because it revolves around problem-solving, negotiation and judgment.

He encourages lawyers to apply that creativity beyond legal analysis and into communication, process design and personal branding. From reframing himself as more than “Tom from legal” to using video and interactive documents to explain contracts, he shares practical examples of creative approaches that increase “visible value” within a business.

This perspective also extends to trainees and junior lawyers. By automating repetitive tasks, legal technology can free up time for developing advisory, commercial and client-facing skills earlier in a career. Rather than replacing trainees, Tom sees technology as a tool that accelerates learning and improves job satisfaction.

This episode of The Wired Wig offers a thoughtful and practical exploration of legal technology, creativity and the future of the profession. To hear the full discussion and gain deeper insights from Annabel Pemberton and Tom Dunlop, listen to the complete podcast on at the start of the article, and explore more of our insights below.