Simon Heetkamp holds a professorship for commercial law, mobility and insurance law at the TH Köln. He was previously a judge at Cologne Regional Court, where he first worked in an appeals chamber and most recently in a construction chamber. Prior to that, he held a civil division at Cologne District Court. At the beginning of 2022, Simon Heetkamp initiated the digital judgeship, which is an exchange platform for digitalization topics in the judiciary, with the IT department head of the Regional Court of Cologne, Dr. Christian Schlicht. Before becoming a judge, Simon Heetkamp worked for several years in the litigation department of a large German, internationally active commercial law firm. In addition to legally and factually complex legal disputes with a focus on banking law, he worked as part of the management team on mass proceedings in the automotive sector. In this context, he designed a tool for managing and processing mass litigation proceedings. Simon Heetkamp already focused on the legal tech sector as part of his doctorate on the topic of online dispute resolution, i.e. out-of-court online dispute resolution. He is a lecturer at the University of Osnabrück, where he specializes in digital law.