How can lawyers help shape the future of technology without holding back innovation? In our interview with Helena Kasper, Senior Associate at SKW Schwarz, we discuss the legal challenges and opportunities AI brings to the games industry, why legal expertise should be part of the creative process from the very beginning, and how curiosity, perseverance and stepping outside your comfort zone can shape a career at the crossroads of law and technology.
You’ve built your career at the intersection of law, technology and innovation, including your work with the SKW Schwarz Innovation Lab.
What first sparked your interest in this intersection, and how has your perspective on the role of lawyers in shaping technological progress evolved throughout your career?
To be honest, it wasn’t a master plan. At university I noticed early on that the purely theoretical side of law wouldn’t make me happy. I wasn’’t the most disciplined student and I wanted to actually use law in practice. I had always been interested in technology, but law school was still completely analogue, from library books to handwritten exams, so I couldn’t really see how to combine the two.
After my first state exam I did an internship at a legal tech startup in Vienna that was building tools to help consumers enforce their claims. I was the only law student in a team of developers and for the first time I had to actually translate law into a logic the developers could build into a tool. There was no AI back then, so this meant very systematic and analytical work. I loved this hands on trial-and-error mentality. It was so different from anything I had done at law firms that I knew I wanted to stay at this intersection.
When I started my legal clerkship in Munich in 2020, only about three firms in the city even mentioned legal tech on their website. SKW Schwarz already had an Innovation Lab, so it was a perfect fit and I have stayed there ever since. After my second state exam I joined our IT & Digital Business practice group as lawyer. Today I get to combine the tech side through the Innovation Lab with the legal side of my work with clients. The business side comes in because I work a lot with small companies, studios and startups.
When I started that internship eight years ago, the way people saw the job of a lawyer was completely different, for me personally and also in society and business. At university the message was study hard, work a lot and you’ll be a successful lawyer. Both still apply, but they’re not the holy grail anymore. Today you also have to adapt and embrace technology, even if you don’t work in tech, and keep rethinking what your job actually is. For me, the role has become much more like that of a consultant. I look at far more than how the law applies to a specific legal problem. I think about how to build business models and work much more strategically. And I keep trying out new ways of working with AI in my own work.
Technological progress isn’t going to reverse itself. It’s not enough anymore to be the same excellent lawyer you would have been 25 years ago and wait for people to come to you with their problems. You have to adapt and find your place in all of this, again and again.
As AI becomes increasingly integrated into game development, studios face new questions around data protection, creative ownership and responsible innovation.
How can legal frameworks help developers navigate these challenges without stifling creativity, and what would you most like the games industry to understand about the opportunities ahead?
Legal frameworks are often seen as a brake on creativity. In my experience, they mostly become one when they’re ignored until the very end. Used early, they work more like guardrails, and you know where to go (and where not to go) from the start. If I’m involved while a feature is still a sketch or a game mechanic is still being designed, I can usually help find a way to make it work and keep it privacy-friendly and compliant. The later legal topics are addressed, the more expensive and frustrating it gets.
The three topics you mention are important for studios working with AI.
Let’s start with data. Games generate a lot of personal data, such as player behaviour, chat logs and voice recordings, and AI makes that data more valuable but also more sensitive. Whether you train your own models or plug in a third-party tool, you need to know what data flows where, on what legal basis and what you are allowed to do with it.
Creative ownership is a second big topic. Under European copyright law, protection generally requires human creative input. Content generated purely by AI may not be protected at all, which matters if you want to defend your assets later. So it’s worth documenting where the human creative work happens. It’s also worth reading the terms of the AI tools your team uses, because they differ a lot on training data and output rights.
And then there’s responsible innovation. Most AI uses in games fall into the minimal-risk category of the EU AI Act. The Act sets transparency obligations, for example around AI-generated or manipulated content. It also sets clear limits for AI that manipulates people or exploits vulnerabilities such as age. In an industry with many young players, studios should take that seriously, even beyond what the law strictly requires.
None of this needs a big legal department. A short internal AI guideline, an overview of which tools are in use and a quick check of vendor contracts already go a long way.
What I’d most like the industry to understand is that there are huge opportunities here, especially for smaller studios. AI can take repetitive work off small teams and give them more time for the creative side of game development. And studios that are open about how they use player data and AI build trust with their players. In the long run, that’s a real competitive advantage.
From your early career in law to becoming a Senior Associate specialising in Privacy & AI Law, what experiences or decisions have shaped your journey the most, and what advice would you give to women who want to build a career at the intersection of law, technology and the creative industries?
One experience that shaped me a lot was the early years of our Innovation Lab. We built decision trees and tried to develop useful tools on no-code platforms and honestly, hardly anyone was interested. People just weren’t ready for it yet, and the technology wasn’t quite there either. We kept going anyway because we were convinced it would matter one day. Then AI came along, and suddenly everyone was calling for innovation. Now the topic is booming, also in the legal industry. I’m a little proud that my instinct to stick with it was right, despite all the negative feedback at the beginning. People catch up sooner or later (and some never do). If you want to shape something of your own, you have to be ahead of them and that means the positive feedback only comes later.
How I ended up in data protection wasn’t a big strategic decision. After my second state exam I joined our IT & Digital Business practice group and the Berlin team I started in worked almost entirely on data protection law. So that’s what I did. It wasn’t my passion from day one. I just started somewhere and developed my interests and my specialisation from there. Data protection can sound dry from the outside, but it touches almost every digital product. Working with app and game developers showed me how creative and fast-moving this field is, and I realised I enjoy being the person who helps turn a good idea into something that can launch safely. That’s why I think it’s fine not to have everything figured out at the start. A lot only becomes clear once you’re actually doing the work.
My most important piece of advice for women who want to build a career at the intersection of law, technology and the creative industries (or any intersection) is to be curious about all of it, no matter which direction you’re coming from and not to be afraid to ask questions. With new technologies in particular, nobody has it all figured out. In my experience, many of us women tend to underestimate ourselves and feel we’re not qualified enough to get involved in something outside our original field while Men often have fewer reservations about new technology when they see a benefit in it, even if they don’t know any more either.
If you come from a different industry or background, most people are happy that you’re interested in their topic and will gladly share what they know.
If you’re a lawyer, you don’t need to learn to code. But do try the tools, ask developers how things work and learn their language. You gain a lot of credibility simply by understanding the product.
Also, get out of your bubble. As a lawyer, don’t just go to legal conferences. Go to tech and games events too, because that’s where you get real feedback and learn what actually matters to your potential clients. It works the other way round too. And the more often you do it, the less out of place you feel.
And finally, find your people. Look for mentors, colleagues and peers who support you and your ideas. For me, that was the Innovation Lab, where I met people who shared and supported my interests.
Thank you for this interview, Helena!
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