Techies come to aid of Hackney Law Centre with legal ‘hackathon’

An innovative legal ‘hackathon’ in which computer programmers will compete to find the best solutions to legal technology problems is set to boost efficiency at Hackney Law Centre – and could help law centres nationwide in the longer term.

The hackathon is being organised by the website Legal Geek – a not-for-profit legal tech start up – and will run at the Google Campus in London over the weekend commencing 18 March. As Legal Futures reports, the event will see teams from the public, private and legal sectors working to pitch and build IT solutions to specific challenges faced by Hackney Law Centre. Successful solutions could then be rolled out to other law centres struggling to meet public demand in the face of swingeing legal aid cuts. Hackathons are commonplace in the United States, but not so much here and those launching the initiative hope that this will help to bring techies and lawyers closer together for the public good.

Jimmy Vestbirk, the entrepreneur who launched Legal Geek, said: “The hackathon is really about bringing people together – techies involved in the law space – to boost the profile of law tech as an area… and do something really cool for Hackney Law Centre that they can do something good with.”