We are proud to announce that the history of the Legal Hackers movement has been included in the book New Suits: Appetite for Disruption in the Legal World, edited by Michele de Stefano and Guenther Dobrauz. Filled with chapters written by experts in the intersection of law, innovation, and technology (including several Legal Hackers!), New Suits provides a global perspective on the diverse legal service delivery ecosystem that will be our future.
Chapter 28, entitled “Legal Hackers: Grassroots Innovation on a Global Scale”, details the history of the Legal Hackers movement, from its beginnings in Brooklyn, New York, to its expansion to 140 chapters across the world. You can read the entire chapter on Legal Hackers for free here.
The Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System (IAALS) has launched an award in honor of Alli Gerkman, who passed away in 2019 after a battle with cancer. In addition to working tirelessly to make legal education and the practice of law better, Alli was the co-founder of Denver Legal Hackers and an inspiration to many in the Denver and Legal Hackers communities.
The Alli Gerkman Legal Visionary Award recognizes an innovator who has made significant impacts early in their career toward making the American legal system work better for everyone who needs it and everyone who is a part of it. The purpose is to encourage and showcase innovators, risk takers, visionaries, and emerging leaders who bring a different perspective and a reform-minded approach to the improvement of our legal system. Candidates should be early in their legal careers to be eligible, roughly the first 15 years. Nominations are accepted between October 1 and December 1 each year.
Since Legal Hackers organizers were not able to safely gather together for our annual summit this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we asked our chapter organizers to share their reflections on the Legal Hackers community using the hashtag #LegalHack2020. Below are some of the submissions we received:
As the world continues to fight the current health crisis caused by COVID-19 by requiring social distancing and restricting travel, Legal Hackers wants to remind our community that today, more than ever, we can use technology to stay connected and help each other. We are all in this together, and so Legal Hackers chapters from all over the world have worked together to create the below message of hope and unity during this difficult time.
A special thank you to Santiago M. Caravaca from the Trieste Legal Hackers chapter for coming up with the idea and producing the video.
The Hamburg Legal Hackers chapter has gotten off to a great start! Co-organizer Dalia Moniat sends us the following report on the Hamburg chapter’s most recent event:
The 5th Hamburg Legal Hackers Meetup took place on August 9, 2018 at Hogan Lovells with about 70 participants from various law firms, companies and universities on the subject of “Young Geex in a Hoodie”.
For the first time, the entire crew of the Hamburg Legal Hackers Chapter (Lukas Kellermeier, Nico Kuhlmann, Dirk Hartung, Dalia Moniat, Daria Suvorova, Zoë Andreae) was present to announce the founding of the new Hamburg Chapter.
After a warm welcome by Yvonne Draheim, partner at Hogan Lovells in the IPMT department in Hamburg, Nico Kuhlmann (organizer of the event) led the evening as usual.
He began by setting the evening’s hashtag for Twitter (#hltm5), briefly summarizing the topics of the first, second, third, and fourth Meetups, and reviewing the events of recent months in the legal tech scene in Germany and around the world.
Afterwards there was a lively discussion. This time, the stage was deliberately set for the next generation to hear how they perceive digital transformation and what points are important to them. The participants were Dalia Moniat (Law student, Coordinator of the pro bono legal aid project “Cyber Law Clinic”), Daniella Domokos (Law student, blogger of allaboutlegaltech.de) and Paul Schirmer (Law student, Founder of MLTech).
All in all, the student speakers were looking for more interdisciplinary and hands-on experience.
They agreed that they are seeking a modern legal education that is updated to the current challenges of the digital age.
Since we began in 2012, Legal Hackers has been guided by a singular mission: creating a free, open, and collaborative platform to explore and solve pressing issues at the intersection of law and technology. Today, as the largest grassroots legal innovation movement in the world, Legal Hackers is excited to partner with LexBlog to create a virtual home for each of our 80+ chapters.
This partnership will enable Legal Hackers chapters to better share the amazing things that their local communities have been doing, from legaltech demo nights, coding workshops, and hackathons, to policy discussions on hot-button issues related to artificial intelligence, blockchain technologies, the sharing economy, and more.
With help from the LexBlog platform and community, we hope to inspire legal innovators throughout the world to try “legal hacking” for themselves. We look forward to an enduring and productive collaboration with LexBlog, and thank Kevin, Bob, and the LexBlog team for supporting and amplifying our mission.
Jameson Dempsey, Phil Weiss, Lauren Mack, and Rebecca Williams
Legal Hackers Board of Directors
2017 marks five years since a handful of recently graduated law students in New York City started a Meetup group called “Legal Hackers” that sought to bring lawyers, technologists, and policy makers together to discuss issues at the intersection of law and technology. Since then, the movement grew quickly — from a second chapter in Washington, D.C. started by original New York Legal Hackers members, to organizing legal hackathons and Le Hackie awards, to new chapters spreading across the United States and then the world, to international summits that brought chapter organizers together to discuss law, technology, and community building.
Legal Hackers now boasts over 50 chapters across five continents. We couldn’t be prouder or more excited for how far the movement has come! We’d like to especially thank Jonathan Askin for his inspiration and continued evangelizing and support, all of our chapter organizers and participants across the world, and everyone who has ever spoken at a panel, competed in a legal hackathon, or spread the word about Legal Hackers. We look forward to fivemany more years of legal hacking around the world! (Antarctica chapter, anyone??)
BONUS: A special message from the Legal Hackers Madrid chapter!
Legal Hackers is proud to announce that Larry W. Bridgesmith and Caitlin “Cat” Moon have been honored with the Janice M. Holder Award by the Tennessee Alliance for Legal Services for their work with Music City Legal Hackers organizing its first legal hackathon focused on access to justice! The Janice M. Holder Award recognizes an attorney, public servant, or other advocate “who has advanced the quality of justice statewide by ensuring that the legal system is open and available to all.”
Larry Bridgesmith, an adjunct professor at Vanderbilt Law School, and Cat Moon, who teaches legal design at Vanderbilt Law School, are the organizers of the Music City Legal Hackers chapter along with Lori Gonzalez and J.B. Ruhl. The Music City Legal Hackers’ LEGAL + Tech = A2J hackathon challenged participants to create solutions to actual problems submitted by Tennessee nonprofits in the legal space and awarded funds to the winners to continue their work.
Congratulations Larry and Cat, and keep up the good work!
On August 4-6, 2017, legal hackers from all over the world convened in Brooklyn, NY where Legal Hackers was born 5 years ago for our third international summit. Participants traveled from as far as Nigeria, United Arab Emirates, and Ukraine to discuss, share, and collaborate on how to improve access to and the practice of law using technology. Topics of discussion included access to justice, open data, tech policy, data science, and of course, the blockchain.
The hashtag for the event was #legalhack2017 and the entire summit was live streamed. The schedule and videos of the summit can be found below:
Morning Keynote
Jim Sandman, President, Legal Services Corporation
Measuring Legal Innovation
Dan Linna, Chicago Legal Hackers Legal Hackers
Chapter Case Studies
1. Legal Hacking in Nigeria, Olumba Chukwemeka Benjamin, Imo Legal Hackers
2. Legal Hacking in the Middle East, Suzanna Kalendzhian, Dubai Legal Hackers
3. Legal Hacking in Ukraine, Dmitry Foremnyi, Valentyn Pivovarov, Nestor Dubnevych, Helen Locaychuk, Nataliia Komarnytska, Kyiv Legal Hackers
Hacking Human Trafficking
Rob Spectre, Brooklyn Hacker
Keynote
Cori Zarek, Senior Tech Policy Fellow, Mozilla, former Deputy U.S. Chief Technology Officer
Sunday workshop previews
The Gray Area: Where Government Transparency Meets Individual Privacy
Rebecca Williams, DC Legal Hackers
Chris Wong, NYU GovLab
Rashida Richardson, NYCLU
Dominic Mauro, Civic Hacker (DoITT by day)
Teaching Hacking for Access to Justice
Jose Torres, Colombia Legal Hacker
Lexorium: Improving Innovation Skills for Law Students
Denis Ivanov, Kyiv Legal Hackers
Five Things I Learned Launching a Legal Tech Startup
Amy Wan, LA Legal Hackers
Cannonball
Sarah Feingold, Vroom
Hacking Law Firm Culture
Scott Allan, Toronto Legal Hackers
Holacracy for Law Firms
Dima Gadomsky, Kyiv Legal Hackers
Tech Policy: The General Counsel’s Perspective
Adam Greenberg, Warby Parker
Charles Kwalwasser, Bark & Co
Ho Shin, Yext
Sarah Feingold, Vroom
Blockchain Year in Review
Noah Thorp, SF Legal Hackers
Dazza Greenwood, MIT Media Lab
Nina Kilbride, Monax
Houman Shadab, Clause.io
Pat Berarducci, Consensys
Reuben Bramanathan, Coinbase
Legal Hackers Chapter Case Studies Legal Hacking in Kenya, Nairobi Legal Hackers
Legal Hacking in Singapore, SG Legal Hackers
Using Network Theory to Improve Legal Systems
Aileen Schultz, Toronto Legal Hackers
Design Thinking Workshop
Cat Moon and Franklin Graves, Music City Legal Hackers
Demystifying Data Science Workshop
James Miller, Federal Communications Commission
Technology for Social Justice: Field Scan Workshop
Georgia Bullen, Open Technology Institute
Legal Hackers, the Global Legal Technology Laboratory, and Law School Collaborations
Jonathan Askin, Brooklyn Law School
Accelerating Legal Hackers
Phil Weiss, New York Legal Hackers
Taking Legal Hackers to the Next Level
Dan Lear, Seattle Legal Hackers
On May 27-28, 2017, Kyiv Legal Hackers hosted its first legal hackathon! The event was spread across two locations in the Ukraine, with over 150 people attending the pitch night for the 15 projects produced during the weekend. First prize went to Playbook, an app to help seed investors make sure their legal documents are correct from the start. The runner up was a bot that checks real estate listings for problems called Safe Property.
Congrats to organizers Valentyn Pivovarov, Nestor Dubnevych, Nataliia Komarnytska, Dima Gadomsky, Mykyta Pidgainiy, Dmytro Foremnyi and Denis Ivanov on their successful first legal hackathon. Check out their video of legal hackers at work:
