From practising law to building it.

I'm Dominic "Dom" Conte - a legal-tech founder and former real-estate solicitor. Today I'm co-founder at Purple, where we build AI products for law firms, and I write and speak about what it actually takes to make legal innovation stick.

I've spent most of my career starting things. I co-founded my first company, Varsity Events, at university, then built and sold a B2B health-tech start-up, Fitfix. Law was the chapter in between: I trained at Hogan Lovells and practised as a real-estate solicitor at Gowling WLG - which is where I learned the thing that still drives the work: the gap between how legal services are sold and how the work actually gets done. Lawyers are surrounded by repetitive, high-stakes tasks that software should have solved years ago - and yet most of the tools aimed at them go unused.

That gap pulled me back to building. As Chief Product Officer at Avail, I spent five years building an AI platform for commercial real-estate lawyers, taking it from inception to the majority of the UK's top-100 firms - and today I'm putting those lessons to work at Purple. Practising law first turned out to be the unfair advantage: I know where the work is painful, where the judgement really lives, and why so many "obvious" products quietly fail to land.

Career so far

2025 - now

Co-Founder, Purple Legaltech build studio - taking firms from AI strategy to systems they actually run.

2023 - now

LegalTech Startup Mentor, LawtechUK Government-backed UK legaltech body - mentoring early-stage founders.

2019 - 2025

Chief Product Officer, Avail AI platform for commercial real-estate lawyers - growing it from inception to most of the UK's top-100 firms.

2015 - 2019

Senior Associate, Gowling WLG International law firm - advising on commercial real-estate deals.

2013 - 2015

Trainee Solicitor, Hogan Lovells Global law firm - training across its commercial practice groups.

2011 - 2015

Co-Founder, Fitfix B2B health-tech start-up - building it from seed funding through to asset sale.

2008 - 2011

Co-Founder, Varsity Events Events start-up - scaling it to a team of 30-plus.

What I care about

Adoption over hype. The hard part of legal AI was never the model - it's changing what people actually do on a Tuesday afternoon. I care about narrow, real use cases; keeping a human in the loop where judgement matters; and being honest about what works and what doesn't.

Beyond the work

I'm based in London, UK. When I'm not building, I'm usually writing about legal innovation, on a podcast, or on a stage talking about how regulated professions adopt new technology. If any of that overlaps with what you're working on, I'd love to hear from you.

The technology is no longer the hard part. The hard part is the same as it has always been in professional services - changing what people actually do.