Registration opened this week for the Global Legal Hackathon 2019, taking place worldwide from Feb. 22-24. #GLH2019 will feature the launch of the GROWL initiative – Global Rise of Women in LegalTech. We spoke to GROWL chair Nita Sanger, chief strategy officer at Integra Ledger, about the GLH and GROWL.
GROWL brings together a global panel of senior women legal innovation leaders who will be available as mentors and advisors to women-led teams all around the world, during the hackathon weekend.
Nita, what’s the real purpose behind the GLH and why should people get involved?
I think the real reason was to create a community instead of focusing just on ‘legal innovation’.
[Founder David Fisher] is very interested in blockchain and how it can be used, but at the same time, in the legal profession a lot of people talk about innovation but don’t realise that the hack provides the perfect opportunity to dive in and do innovation in a very compressed timeframe.
It changes your innovation mindset – the energy that takes place brings people together from different parts of the world and is so much more powerful than if people in the same firm look for a solution.
Who are you trying to attract and who do you need to take part?
Not just the techies but all business people with all different kinds of experience and all levels of seniority. We want people from corporate legal departments, law firms, and vendors.
We want to help solve some of the biggest issues facing the legal industry and to do that will take all three.
What do people need to do to take part?
It depends on which city you’re in but say you’re in London, there are already a bunch of people hosting a hackathon and you then need to register. You can’t register as a team but as an individual.
On Friday 22 February, people will pitch their ideas and there will be a vote for the idea with the most merit. 10 ideas will go forward and the people who pitched the ideas will form a team, with a balance of people who have UX experience, marketing experience etc. People come from different parts of the world and backgrounds, so the solutions are likely to be richer.
The idea is that by the end of Sunday evening you have created a working prototype and the ideas are pitched to the judges. In GROWL we want female mentors to help shape and iterate the ideas.
So tell us more about GROWL?
We are identifying senior mentors from the legal profession to be part of growl.
We’re looking for coordinators who can help get more women involved. Then we will be running events such as networking, training, and webcasts on how to participate. People are missing out on how women think. When you’re trying to innovate, it helps to get ideas from different places and that’s how women work; we aren’t as linear and solve problems in a way that works for a number of people. We haven’t been given the opportunity to innovate and this is a chance to bring everyone to the table.
If women don’t want to take part in the hackathon, we are creating other opportunities to bring women together.
To register for #GLH2019, visit https://glh.hivebrite.com/ and select the city where you would like to participate during hackathon weekend. No experience is required, and you don’t need to be part of a team to register.
For more information on the Global Legal Hackathon 2019, you can visit globallegalhackathon.com