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/