In May, AI MEETS LAW invited students from the University of Tübingen attended the first Legal Hackathon in Hamburg at the Bucerius Law School. The Hackathon was hosted by the Bucerius Law School in cooperation with built.e.V., recode.law and ARAG.

Following a warm welcome by the hosts at Bucerius Law School, Professor Dan Katz from Illinois Tech – Chicago Kent Collage of Law opened the weekend with his thoughts on legal innovation. After another brief presentation on legal product management and a few practical words on how to hack, the students felt well equipped to start hacking. 

During dinner, students were given the chance to get to know the other hackers, form teams, and to discuss first ideas. Together with students from other universities, AI MEETS LAW sent two interdisciplinary teams to participate in this hackathon. After a first brainstorming session, each team presented their idea to make sure there were no overlaps, and every team was set on track. The first drafts of ideas were already promising!

The hacking started Friday night and ended on Sunday at noon, during which the teams could also attend further informative talks e.g. on legal design thinking or legal tech for studies. Over the course of the hackathon, mentors were held available to pitch ideas to and obtain feedback from on the product.

The first team “Angelica”, which placed third in the hackathon, built a safe chatbot to help people in need, predominantly victims of domestic violence, by providing them with secure legal insight. The second team “Case Connect” created a high-fidelity demo using Figma prototyping for their idea of client management software.

Overall, the first ever participation of AI MEETS LAW at a hackathon was a success in particular insofar such that machine learning students with an interest in the legal domain and law students with an interest in tech from Tübingen were brought together to discuss ideas, learn from each other, and get to know like-minded peers.