JUSTICE IDEAS FESTIVAL
HOW WE SHIFT LEGAL (TECH/EDUCATION) IN UKRAINE
Implementing the innovations in jurisprudence has become an integral part of modern legal reality in most countries around the world. At the very core of any innovation, product or service is the idea. While there are many components to measure success and benefit of the project, the idea plays a key role. Inventive and advantageous ideas in the field of jurisprudence should be open to those interested and implemented.
On May 12, 2018, the first “Justice Ideas Fest” was held. A major reason for such format was because (sometimes) people around us do not have the confidence level they need to make sure their ideas are correct, necessary or practically viable. Plenty of genius and revolutionary thoughts that can change the legal world pass into oblivion. While people who are willing to solve this problem — that is implement such ideas — are still engaged in resource-intensive and inefficient activities.
What is the “Justice Ideas Fest”?
It is the place where people meet, carry out debates and cooperate in order to turn the ideas into working projects in the field of jurisprudence. The audience invited represent a variety of stakeholder groups — practical lawyers and advocates, software developers and coordinators of IT communities, students of legal and technical universities, representatives of state and social sphere, media, etc.
The authors share with the audience their views on improving the effectiveness of legal procedures, automatizing and algorithmizing of templated legal processes, collecting-processing-analyzing of data and statistics.
Independent jury
In addition to the audience the framework the event implies the work of the jury.
It comprises the leaders from the spheres connected with the proposed ideas implementation:
marketers, social entrepreneurs, start-upers, IT lawyers, representatives of the legal aid, heads of incubation programs and accelerations.
At the first “Justice Ideas Fest” the jury members were:
— Innovative agent of Hague institute of Innovation in Law
— Head of the legal club of the domestic legal aid system
— Head of the Marketing and Sales Department of the IT Academy
— Legal-engineer / developer of the legal neural network
— Cofounder of the national volunteer movement
— CEO of the top law company on IT practice
Some rules
Each participant has:
5 minutes for pitching,
2 minutes for jury questions,
3 minutes for audience questions
The final entails the winner determination part.
The “Justice Ideas Fest” offers no financial rewards. Thus, under the prize fund approach the jury members provide pro-bono:
— incubation programmes
— certificates for participation in thematic events
— marketing consulting or PR support at the stages of developing and release of the product.
Networking after the official part is the most obvious benefit.
It is a really valuable way to:
— conduct the most relevant section of local problems of society in the field of jurisprudence, being examined and validated by the participants, the audience, and the jury
— find like-minded people or missing team members for technological improvement of the product or service
— build a team for the upcoming hackathons or startup challenges in just 120 minutes.
Be prepeared
However, not everyone can come up with his idea. Otherwise, there is a risk to turn the event into a dump of poor-quality content. Applicant’s presentation must meet all of the basic requirements for classical pitching:
— problem (pain)
— solution
— market analysis
— competitors
— secret sauce
— resources
— road map
— why YOUR idea deserve an attention?
The best options for preparing a speech following this scenario are to check the idea by Lean Canvas, SWOT analysis and discovery phase (interviews with future users and stakeholders). Thus, the validation of the idea and the collection of hot leads goes back to the stage of team formation, fundraising, prototyping or the creation of profit centers. This saves a huge amount of resources, finances and time, while at the same time crystallizing from the sand of not relevant ideas the pearls of future legal-tech unicorns.
The evaluation criteria chosen were as democratic as possible, without assessing the participants’ professional knowledge, but with the aim of determining the degree of research and validation of the idea.
In particular, it was necessary to assess on a 5-point scale:
— Level of idea validation
— Possibility of implementation
— Business model testing
— Scalability
— Social importance
Priceless feedback / advice
Due to the support of socially responsible experts in the jury, it is possible to achieve the maximum result at the stage AFTER the “Justice Ideas Festival”. The subsequent pumping of the weak sides of the projects brings them to a level worthy for a confident participation in the stratup crash tests, investment forums and other fundraising events.
Win the race
Despite the well-developed ideas of all the participants, the clear leader was determined from the very first minutes of the performance. It was a chatbot on bullying and domestic violence “SaveYourselfBot”. This idea (partially realized in MVP) became the winner and was given the opportunity to participate in the legal startup crash test, which will be held on May 26th at the first European Legal Hackers Summit (Odessa, Ukraine).
Here is winner pitch video:
Keep an eye on this project as it has good chances to scale to the majority of the countries in the world and bring huge social benefits in this area.
Where did the participants come from?
The “Justice Ideas Festival” held on May 12 in Odessa was the final class for the University students in my author’s course “Legal Tech and Innovations in Law”. Seven main topics were studied in depth over the period of 10 weeks (once a week).
The topics covered the information necessary to work out the students’ ideas of improving the jurisprudence:
1. Introduction to Legal Tech (overview of the history, terminology, ecosystem and infrastructure of the worldwide and Ukrainian legal tech community)
2. Access to justice (classes took the form of a battle between two existing legal start-ups that build services in the field of access to justice)
3. Legal design, lean canvas, SWOT analysis (building business canvas and analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of the ideas that students have identified for themselves)
4. Legal chatbots (in the form of interview with the authors of the most successful legal chatbots — PatentBot, Sudobot, PanPrawnikBot)
5. Online tools for developing products without knowledge of programming (demonstration of the work of available and free online resources for prototyping, research, mocap and design)
6. Employment of lawyers after 2020 (discussion on the clearly dying functions in the legal profession and identification of the new skills that will be in demand in a few years)
7. Presentation of the project (recommendations and practicing the upcoming project pitches)
Plus three classes were devoted to general rehearsals of the pitches, where students advised each other primarily on the level of research of the idea according to the basic criteria mentioned above, as well as on the presentation visual or textual filling.
Conclusion or Beginning
New times appeal to new formats.
It is not enough for now that classes can be just interactive.
Students should understand that they solve a specific problem, what they lack for its solution and what they should do to solve it in a more effective and faster way.
The benefit of knowledge is not assessed by the presence of a diploma, but by the value that the student bears for the society.
I would appreciate hearing your comments and, as always, am open for communication on innovations in the field of legal tech and its application in education. More information on my other activities always available at http://denis.org.ua
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Big thanks for the support of “Justice Ideas Fest” to:
Dmytro Foremnyi (HiiL)
Irina Bondarenko (Legal Club “Pravokator”)
Maria Donets (Ukrainian Volunteer Service)
Andrey Kostenko
Maksim Zubenko
Dima Gadomsky (Axon Partners)
Iulia Iulinetskaya (NU “Odessa Law Academy”)