Chioma Wilson-Dike is a lawyer with vast experience in global compliance. In 2015, she kicked off her career at Aluko & Oluboyede, a Nigerian top-tier law firm, in corporate finance. But eight years later, it was a new test that would bring her the most clarity and set a course for the founder path that she’s on right now.
After years of working in Nigeria, Wilson-Dike moved to the UK on a student visa in 2022 after a national security incident that shook her core, she said. The following year, she completed a master’s in project management at the University of Liverpool.
She has since worked on legal compliance and labour regulation projects in Nigeria, Canada, and the UK. But it was one ‘yes’ that got her going.
In 2023, she reached out to join a global sustainability project at Adidas, the sports apparel company—not for recognition, but to work on something meaningful.
“I decided to reach out directly to the supervisor to say, hey, look, I’m interested,” she said. “At first, I didn’t get a response. I sent a follow-up, and I got selected.”
The work turned out to be defining. At Adidas, she researched human rights, environmental, and modern slavery laws in more than 30 countries where the company operates. It involved scanning fragmented legal texts across various jurisdictions, often written in different languages, with no central access point.
“That was the first time I said to myself—there has to be a better way to do this,” she said.
The work was dense with no pay. But what she walked away with was more valuable than money: a firsthand look into the messy, inefficient world of global compliance. She saw the gaps, the delays, the legal blind spots. But instead of turning away, she began sketching a solution.
From the walls of UNN to Liverpool
Born and raised in Enugu, she had always aimed for law but began her undergraduate journey in philosophy at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), in Eastern Nigeria.
Eventually, she switched to the law faculty and graduated with a focus that took her to Aluko & Oyebode.
In Lagos, Nigeria, she became fluent in the language of finance and mergers and acquisitions, but her heart wasn’t in it. She began helping startups structure operations, draft contracts, and pitch to investors.
Then came the role at a Canadian gaming company. It felt like a step in the right direction—until it plateaued. A promise to relocate never materialised. And then, a national tragedy made the path crystal clear. In March 2022, after the bombing of an Abuja-Kaduna train, Wilson-Dike started applying to UK schools.
It was not an easy decision. She had a toddler, a stable job, and a home.
“That was the moment I told myself I really needed to leave Nigeria,” said Wilson-Dike.
By September that year, she landed in Liverpool with her husband and child. What awaited her was both the promise of new beginnings and the brutal honesty of British life.
Rent was due monthly. Agencies wanted up to a year’s worth in advance. Healthcare was a labyrinth of appointments and waiting lists. There were no shortcuts, no soft landings.
Still, she managed to turn the quiet chaos of adjusting into a crucible for growth. Her work at Adidas had planted a seed, and now in Liverpool, she had the mental clarity and professional lens to water it.
How Chioma Wilson-Dike is building a legal-tech product with AI
Navigating a maze of laws from different countries, each tucked away in dusty legal documents, local non-government organisation (NGO) sites, or inaccessible databases. So she asked a question: What if this could be automated?
That question evolved into a startup idea—a legaltech company that helps businesses and professionals instantly access and understand global regulations, enabling compliance. Wilson-Dike’s stealth startup is building an AI-powered platform that scans, summarises, and interprets environmental and human rights laws as well as sustainability compliance across borders.
For example, if a German company wants to expand to Nigeria, it’ll need to know what local labour laws apply. Wilson-Dike’s product will show them instantly. It allows users to engage with the product through agentic AI and creates a checklist for companies to stay compliant in the regions they want to stay compliant.
The concept is straightforward, but the build is anything but. It requires a combination of legal expertise, artificial intelligence, and machine learning—all calibrated to read laws like a trained attorney.
Wilson-Dike employs a global team of engineers in Brazil, Pakistan, and India; designers in Nigeria; and advisors in the UK. They’re building in English first, with ambitions to scale across other languages.
“It’s not simply about paying for backend developers,” she said. “You’re paying for people who can train models, interpret nuance, and build for scale. The cost of hiring engineers with AI and machine learning experience has more than doubled. And they deserve what they’re earning.”
She’s bootstrapped most of the company. The product is in its second stage of building. Trademark filings are underway, and the first users are already testing it.
“We’re working on the data training process. We’re feeding the model with relevant data and training it to interact as a lawyer,” she said.
Despite the buzz around AI in legal-tech, Wilson-Dike is cautious. She knows adoption is still slow in many court systems. But she also knows her customer base isn’t just courts—it’s companies, compliance officers, international law firms, and NGOs that cannot afford to be wrong about the law.
Life in the UK
For Wilson-Dike, being a digital nomad isn’t about Instagram-worthy workcations or startup vanity metrics. It’s about flexibility, grit, and long-haul endurance. Her startup is based in the UK, but her work spans five time zones.
She juggles meetings across continents, tech sprints with freelancers, and childcare—all from a modest flat in Liverpool. But there’s also a kind of loneliness to it.
“I had never really had any moment in my life where I was battling any mental health problems,” said Wilson-Dike. “But it hit me almost immediately.”
In Nigeria, community support is ambient. It wraps around you—sometimes too tightly. In the UK, support has to be sought out, scheduled, and often paid for. Still, she’s building a new rhythm. Church, school runs, client meetings, code reviews—it all fits between breakfast and bedtime.
“This was one of the biggest things that was very catalytic to how far I’ve come,” she said.
There’s still a long road ahead. Product refinements, user acquisition, and investor conversations. But there’s clarity now. And conviction.
Wilson-Dike isn’t preoccupied with being a disruptor. What drives her is the satisfaction of solving a problem she understands intimately. From her early days navigating the clutter of legal systems to building a platform that simplifies that very chaos, her story is defined by consistency.
Sometimes, she said as we wrapped our call, the only way to fix the system is to step outside it, map it, and then quietly start building something better.
