Ben Jacobs

About

I’m an in‑house legal leader who has spent more than two decades at the intersection of M&A, strategic growth, and technology – from London investment banks to my current role leading the legal teams behind Xero’s new products, technology, ecosystem and corporate transactions. I specialise in working inside the business to manage risk commercially while helping set and deliver on strategy. Both in my day job, but also as President of New Zealand's Inhouse Lawyer's Association (ILANZ), I see every day how in‑house lawyers are drowning in updates – cases, regulations, guidance and law firm insights – with very little tailored to their role, industry and jurisdiction. That frustration gave me the inspiration to use AI tools to prototype products that turn raw legal information into personalised, actionable intelligence for real in‑house teams. For the LegalQuants Hackathon (Cohort 2), I built The Briefcase – an AI‑powered legal update app that learns who you are, what you work on and where you operate, then curates a digest of only the most relevant developments, with feedback loops to keep improving over time. I’m here to connect with others who want to do the same for in‑house lawyers globally: using AI, product thinking and legal judgment to give lawyers less noise, more signal and a bit more breathing room.

1 Project

The Briefcase

Mobile App

Introducing "The Briefcase" – a personalised legal update app for in‑house counsel A mobile‑first app that asks in‑house lawyers a few targeted questions about their role, industry and jurisdictions, then uses AI to assemble a stream of highly relevant cases, legislation, regulatory guidance and law‑firm insights. Users can choose daily/weekly/monthly digests and train the app with simple thumbs‑up / thumbs‑down feedback so it continually refines what it surfaces. Starting with the UK, Australia and New Zealand, but designed to scale to additional markets and practice areas. Web version coming soon!

Try It Live

Media Appearances