2016 Ben J. Altheimer Symposium

Legal Innovation

The Prototype Jam: A Legal Hackathon

..with an impromptu swing Presented by

Michael Robak

University of Missouri – Kansas City School of Law

Associate Director Leon E. Bloch Law Library

Chief Technology Officer – UMKC School of Law

February 5, 2016

Law Schools, Technology, and Access to Justice July 2014

A conference entitled "Law Schools, Technology, and Access to Justice," is being held 17-19 July 2014 at the University of Missouri Kansas City in Kansas City, Missouri, USA. The conference was sponsored by the UMKC School of Law, the UMass School of Law, and the Kauffman Foundation.

Kansas City Principles For Teaching Technology in the Academy

Statement of Fundamental Principles Fundamental Principal #1: In their role of ensuring that the lawyers of tomorrow have the core competencies to provide effective and efficient legal services, law schools have the responsibility to provide all students with education and training to enable them to understand the risks and benefits associated with current and developing technologies and the ability to use those technologies appropriately.

Fundamental Principal #2: In order for lawyers to fulfill their professional obligations to advance the cause of justice, it is essential that economically viable models for the delivery of legal services be developed that allow all members of society to have access to competent legal representation or effective self-representation regardless of income, and law schools should assist in the development of technologically-supported legal marketplaces that help identify available alternatives and, where legal representation appears most appropriate, to empower those seeking the services of a lawyer to identify and retain a competent lawyer of choice at reasonable cost.

Fundamental Principal #3: As part of their responsibility to assist in providing access to law and justice, law schools should use their legal knowledge and technological capabilities to make the law more comprehensible and readily available to the public so as to empower people to use the law and, where appropriate, lawyers, to improve the quality of their lives, and should include in this endeavor, among other initiatives , working with national, state, and local governments to provide the public with free on-line access to statutes, regulations, cases and other primary law at all levels of government.

Fundamental Principal #4: In order to encourage community economic development and contribute to a strong global economy, law schools should educate lawyers who can stimulate entrepreneurship and innovation and assist in developing technology that can support economically viable means of providing affordable legal services to small businesses, social ventures and start-up enterprises.

Fundamental Principal #5: Because technology has the potential to reinvent the processes of law in ways that can help achieve access to justice, law schools should encourage their students, faculty and graduates to research, teach and implement non-traditional, technological approaches to legal innovation that will maximize the ways in which individuals and entities can achieve the benefits of law and legal process.

Background:

• The interdisciplinary and inter-institutional Law, Technology & Public Policy course (LT&P Course) operated by UMKC School of Law (UMKC Law):

• Was created as a direct result of the July 2014 Law Schools, Technology & Access to Justice

Conference convocation of several key law technologists and legal futurists (Law Tech Conference) hosted by UMKC Law with funding from the Kauffman Foundation.

• Was designed by UMKC Law faculty members (including its Dean) working in collaboration with Dazza Greenwood of MIT Media Lab and Jonathan Askin of Brooklyn Law School, two pioneers of the “legal hackathon” movement, as a semester-long variation of a hackathon.

• Has led to collaborations with other universities and colleges, the Code for America Brigade, Free Law Founders, private sector and non-profit legal technology firms, and user experience testers, and the formation of a Cities & Law Schools Consortium poised to engage in civic hacking/civic entrepreneurship with multiple disciplines, governments and municipalities throughout the U.S. and across the globe.

• Has to date produced three innovative and productive “Prototype Jams”—one in Boston (in November of 2014), and two in Kansas City (in April and November of 2015). These events have featured the presentation, testing, and critiquing of tech-based tools relating to, among other matters, streamlining municipal regulatory and permitting and licensing processes, smart cities and smart contracting, facilitation of real estate development entrepreneurship, and an attorney-client tool to assist in startup ventures advising.

• The April 2015 Prototype Jam in Kansas City was coordinated with two other key events: (i) the annual conference of the large network of law school entrepreneurship clinics in the U.S. (connected by the Kauffman Foundation’s EshipLaw website and listserv), which in April 2015 included the creation of a “network or networks” between EshipLaw and iLINC network of clinics at several European law schools assisting tech startups); and (ii) the second Kauffman-sponsored and UMKC Law-hosted Law Tech Conference. John Cummins, a Technology Fellow at Queen Mary University-London, and the driving force behind the organization and launch of the iLINC network, participated in all three of those April 2015 events. Inspired by the Prototype Jam, he led a discussion group on the last day of the Law Tech Conference that envisioned the creation of the Global Legal Technology Laboratory (GLTL) that is now in a scoping and proof of concept phase.

The Prototype Jam http://law.umkc.edu/prototypejam/final-presentations/