Karen Watton
qLegal
Karen Watton is a Senior Lecturer in Clinical Legal Education at Queen Mary University of London and Director of Queen Mary 's award-winning pro bono commercial law clinic, qLegal.
Having qualified as a barrister, Karen practised law in the UK and internationally for 15 years, in private practice and in-house. Her subsequent roles within LexisNexis focused on innovation across the legal market. As a Careers Consultant, Karen helped clients explore the future of work.
Now at Queen Mary, Karen leads a team of educators who are focused on innovation – in the way law is taught and how it is (and could be) practised. qLegal’s experiential learning programmes help postgraduate law students from all over the world prepare for the future of law; and enable qLegal’s start-up clients to receive legal support they could not otherwise afford.
Karen teaches Legal Design, running projects where students from different schools across Queen Mary collaborate to deliver solutions for clients, as part of the university’s SKETCH knowledge exchange initiative. She draws on her four years at art school exploring what happens if you try to mash up law and creative practice. Her not-so-secret aim is to infiltrate the next generation of legal professionals so they find new ways to do law better.