How Women Can Reclaim Legal Narratives in Emerging Tech Sectors

By: Meenal Maheshwari, Group General Counsel and Head of Public Policy, Angel One

Meenal is a strategic legal leader with deep expertise in governance, policy, M&A, and regulatory risk. She drives legal digital transformation through AI integration, influences public policy, and advances innovation with compliance and safety at the core.

In a thought-provoking interaction with Women Entrepreneurs Review Magazine, Meenal shares her insights on how women lawyers and policy leaders can shape legal-tech, governance reform, and ethical innovation in emerging sectors like fintech and AI. She highlights strategies to drive influence, inclusivity, and transformative leadership.

How can women lawyers shape the narrative around legal-tech adoption instead of being passive implementers of the tools?

In leading legal transformation with AI and automation, women lawyers must move beyond being implementers to becoming architects of legal-tech solutions. This requires actively participating in the design and deployment of tools with a strong understanding of both law and technology.

Women should challenge the traditional assumptions baked into tech, such as gender bias in datasets, and bring a nuanced, inclusive lens to the table. By doing so, they reclaim agency over how these tools are used and ensure legal frameworks support fairness and accessibility.

The goal isn’t just to adopt legal-tech, but to shape it meaningfully so that it serves a diverse range of users and perspectives, not just the dominant narrative.

You’ve structured legal frameworks for complex groups. How can women in-house counsels take the lead in governance reform, especially in fast-evolving sectors?

Women in-house counsels can lead governance reform by owning the intersection of law, business, and technology.

In rapidly evolving sectors like fintech and generative AI, where regulations are still being formed, in-house counsel are in a unique position to bridge regulatory uncertainty with business innovation. Women must leverage this space to propose forward-looking compliance strategies and embed ethical considerations early in product design. By doing so, they not only ensure legal safeguards but also influence product trajectory and consumer trust.

Across your career, have you observed women policy professionals reshaping public discourse on emerging tech regulations? Can you share one such inspiring anecdote?

One powerful example is how women policy leaders played a pivotal role in shaping India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act.

I recall a moment when a senior woman policy advisor advocated during public consultations to include provisions that addressed gendered risks around data misuse, like online stalking and identity theft.

However, no one really paid heed, and so she worked hard to get sponsorship from other women leaders. They held a meeting with a unified voice, not once but repeatedly, and these repeated conversations, where the group of women did not let go because things didn’t move the first time around, rather kept going on with perseverance, with each other’s support, reshaped the conversation on user-centric safeguards, leading to greater focus on consent architecture.

This kind of leadership proves that women aren’t just part of regulatory processes; they can define them. It’s also a reminder that we must design products ourselves and continually remind decision-makers that the product user is not always “he” half the time, it’s “she,” and her needs must be intentionally addressed.

With risks around IP, data, and ethics growing in tech sectors, what strategies can women lawyers adopt to become trusted innovation enablers rather than just risk managers?

Women lawyers must reposition themselves as innovation partners who understand risk not as a blockade but as a navigational tool. In sectors riddled with IP, data, and ethical complexity, the strategy lies in being anticipatory, i.e., identifying issues before they surface and helping product teams build with guardrails. This means embedding oneself into product cycles early, contributing to data governance policies, and even co-designing frameworks for ethical AI.

It’s time we stop viewing compliance as a cost center and start positioning legal as a strategic enabler. Women, in particular, bring a valuable perspective to ethical design and must assert that value in shaping not just what is built, but how it is built.

LAST WORD: Advice For Women Leaders in Law & Policy

My advice to women leaders in law and policy is to stop waiting for a seat at the table and start building your own.

The tech world moves fast, but policy and regulation are still catching up. That’s a massive opportunity. Don’t be afraid to ask bold questions, insert your voice early, and design processes that reflect the realities of all users. Influence is earned through persistence, domain depth, and clarity of thought.

And always remember, being visible is not vanity. It’s leadership. Reclaiming the narrative means owning your expertise, amplifying diverse perspectives, and demanding that systems evolve to reflect the world we actually live in, not just the one traditionally imagined.