THE LAW IS
HUMAN
STORY.
A
THIS
IS MINE.
“Kelsey got lost on her way to drama school
and ended up at law school by mistake.”
It’s a joke my family has made about me for years - but there’s truth behind it. I’ve always loved the magic of stories on stage and on screen, and growing up I was always in some school play or otherwise writing my own. As a teenager I worked my way through entire oeuvres of Bergman, Kieslowski and Truffaut, and then Haneke, Tarkovsky, Almodóvar… I was, to put it bluntly, insufferable.
And yet, it was this deep respect for actors and writers that led me to write one of the first peer-reviewed papers in the world to explore genAI from a legal perspective. Because I didn’t approach AI as a lawyer first - I approached it as someone who admires what creators and performers do. It’s their work that moves people. I consider it a privilege just to play a small role behind the scenes, so my clients can do what they do.
It all started with a deepfake.
I moved to London from the West Coast of the U.S. to study at the LSE. After graduating, law school just seemed like the sensible career move. And like many young solicitors in the City, I started out in a large, corporate firm as a commercial contracts lawyer.
It was fast-paced, precise work. I learned how to manage high-stakes negotiations, draft 100-page frameworks, and withstand the pressure of deals worth millions of pounds. I loved the intensity and was good at the job.
Everything changed in 2018, when I read Scarlett Johansson’s interview about being “deepfaked” into porn videos. Although this faceswapping technology was still years away from going mainstream, a few journalists were already sounding the alarm on non-consensual sexual deepfakes.
If AI can be used to realistically clone a person’s body and voice, what happens to the line between fantasy and truth?
Campaigners and legal scholars soon started the difficult and important work of changing the law to combat online harassment and criminal sexual behaviour. But I kept coming back to a different question: what was stopping production companies or studios from making non-sexual deepfakes of Scarlett anyway? Wouldn’t they want to create a perfectly-behaved digital actor, for a fraction of the cost?
And if that technology was possible, what was going to happen to cinema, to TV? If we remove human performance from human emotion, what’s left? This wasn’t just about legal rights: it was about having the ability to decide how and when you are seen and heard by others.
As a lawyer, I knew there was little that could be done to control this sort of content - even with the best legal team money could buy. Copyright, privacy law, and internet regulation could only go so far when balanced against freedom of expression.
These questions
are about art
and autonomy;
about power
and permission.
That’s why I sat down to write Do Deepfakes Pose a Golden Opportunity? Considering whether English law should adopt California's publicity right in the age of the deepfake (JIPLP 2019). What began as a contribution to an emerging conversation about publicity, intellectual property, and reputation law soon became my core specialism.
Since then, my expertise has expanded to the use of AI more generally. And in 2024, I made the decision to leave behind corporate law firm life to start my own practice. Since then, I’ve focused supporting clients within the media, entertainment, publishing, and art sectors almost exclusively.
Whether they’re individuals, companies, or cultural institutions, what most of my clients have in common is a need to navigate the space where law, creativity, and emerging technologies meet. (Sometimes it’s just a gentle nudge; at others, it’s a rowdy tussle.) In practice, this means that one week I’ll be helping an artist prevent the unauthorised use of his work for algorithm training. And the next, I’ll be advising a production company on how to use AI within their workflow responsibly.
But while advising on AI might be my raison d’être, I still enjoy taking on more “traditional” media and entertainment work, too - whether that’s writing and negotiating contracts, advising on intellectual property and data regulations, or speaking at film festivals. At the end of the day, I’m just a woman who loves good writing, good music, and good art… and I’m certain no machine will ever do it better than we humans can.
(Sorry, Elon.)
I help clients deal with the messy edges of modern media, creative content, and technology: things like AI, publicity, data protection, and copyright — whether you’re licensing your work or just signing something that matters.
→ Expertise
What I do depends on what my clients need — contract reviews, negotiations, training sessions, risk consultancy, clarity. Sometimes people come to me with a problem. Sometimes just a feeling. We start from there.
→ Services
I set up my own practice so I could work more closely with clients: fewer distractions, more rapport, and the freedom to take on meaningful work. If you think I can help or you want to ask something specific, reach out. No gatekeepers, no assistants — just me.