Global Legal Hackathon – Johannesburg

The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HiiL) is excited to invite you to take part in Global Legal Hackathon, this February at the Tshimologong Precinct in Johannesburg.

Global Legal Hackathon is an annual event aimed at kickstarting innovations in law and justice. It takes place in 42 cities worldwide simultaneously, and is an opportunity for teams to work on ideas and present their ideas to a panel of local judges.

Throughout the event, there will be mentors on hand to assist. These will include people from the fields of both law, thanks to our partners at Hogan Lovells who are hosting the event with us, and technology. If you've been wondering how to apply AI to the tricky justice problem you're working on, we may have someone on hand who can help.

And, thanks to our friends at Lexis Nexis, we have some small prizes for local innovators to give out on the day.

The local event is just round one, however.

Winning ideas will then get an opportunity to present to international judges, ahead of a grand final held in New York in April.

Our goal here in South Africa is to use the event to help showcase some of our amazing local talent to the world, but we also see it as an opportunity to help justice entrepreneurs to develop ideas for our annual R300 000 Innovating Justice Challenge (IJC - innovatingjustice.com), which kicks off in March.

If you're thinking of entering that – and last year's South African cohort was very successful – this could be a way to add a bit of polish to your justice innovation before putting it forward for the IJC. On top of all that, we’ll also be hosting a series of speakers throughout the weekend, including South African winners of previous IJCs, lawyers, technologists and more.

The Tshimologong Precinct is Johannesburg's most exciting new tech hub. Based around a giant collaborative workspace owned by Wits University, it's dedicated to digital innovation and hosts acceleration programmes in fields as diverse as mining and media. It's also home to the Johannesburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE) and IBM's South African Research Lab.

Participants and participating organisations are encouraged to form cross-functional teams prior to the event, ideally composed of legal professionals, technology professionals, and design professionals. It is highly encouraged that teams be composed of members from multiple organisations (ie. a company, one of its law firms, and perhaps some students or staff from a legal tech company). This aids the creative process by contributing broader experience and perspective to the team.

Note: It is not necessary for participants to be part of a team, as one rule of the hackathon is that teams, even if formed in advance, must be willing to accept additional team members on the first evening of the hackathon. In addition, participants are welcome to come the day of and participate in the networking function at kick-off to mingle with others and form, or join teams.

Look forward to seeing you there!