There’s been much focus this year on how we, as a profession, can harness and adapt to the technology and innovation that is transforming the legal landscape at a rapidly accelerating pace.

Watching the finalists in the Law Society’s inaugural #InnovateLaw2018 hackathon, which took place against the backdrop of the successful FLIP Conference in Sydney recently, highlighted the innovative ways that new technologies can assist both the legal profession and the people that it seeks to serve.

For the benefit of those who are not familiar with the term (which until recently included myself), a hackathon is an event, typically lasting several days, in which a large group of people meet to engage in collaborative computer programming.

In partnership with The Legal Forecast, the Law Society’s hackathon saw teams of students, legal techs and the legal profession working over a weekend to solve one of two unique challenges set by the Supreme Court of NSW and Justice Connect.

The winners of the Supreme Court challenge, team “HACKTIVATE”, developed a multi-platform “Uber-like” app, which provides interpreters to courtrooms, when required, on demand, both digitally and in person.

The advantage of this app, when compared with existing court interpreter services, is that it facilitates a direct connection between interpreters and those requiring their services.

Team WOMBAT took out the Justice Court Challenge with their REAL (Records, Entitlements and Letters) app and website, which assists self-represented people to claim their lost entitlements when they have discovered they have been underpaid.

Congratulations to the 2018 winning teams and my thanks to all involved in this outstanding event, including our judges from the Law Council of Australia, the Supreme Court, Justice Connect, the Law Society and representatives of legal technologists and successful legal-start-ups.

If the innovative and creative solutions developed by all the teams who participated in the #InnovateLaw 2018 hackathon is anything to go by, the future for the legal profession certainly looks bright.

Doug Humphreys
Law Society President 2018
Twitter:  @LSNSW_President

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