Tübingen Team Develops AI “Co-Counsel” at Cambridge Hackathon

With AI MEETS LAW a team of Tübingen machine learning and law students participated in the highly competitive „Hack the Law“ hackathon in Cambridge from June 20th to 22nd. This significant international event, hosted at the renowned Judge Business School, attracted participants from 43 universities across 14 countries, all gathered to explore the intersection of LLMs and the legal field.

The hackathon commenced with an opening ceremony featuring insightful presentations from leading figures in technology and law. Hermann Hauser, the visionary behind the ARM processor architecture found in virtually every smartphone worldwide, shared his experiences in building global technology companies and his vision of the future of LLMs in the legal profession. His talk, alongside those from the director of Stanford's Codex Center for Legal Informatics and representatives from King's College Cambridge, highlighted the event's core theme: the transformative potential of AI, particularly LLMs and intelligent agents, for the legal sector.

Following the opening, the teams were presented with a series of challenges. The Tübingen team chose a challenge centered on arbitration law, presented by Jus Mundi and the Stanford CodeX. This challenge provided participants with a case database to tackle a key issue in the field: the significant time and cost associated with researching past cases during arbitration proceedings. The goal was to design an AI to act as a co-counsel, analyzing how past legal strategies performed in similar situations to help shape and challenge a user's own strategy, particularly when facing a counterclaim. The students dedicated Friday night to intensive brainstorming, laying the groundwork for their innovative project.

Saturday was a full day of „hacking“, a twelve-hour period of intense and focused work. The interdisciplinary team, composed of two law students, two machine learning students, and two members with expertise in both fields, thrived in the high-energy environment. The hackathon provided access to advanced technologies, including Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Mistral AI, as well as guidance from top technical experts. This support enabled the team to develop their solution: „CAI“, the strategic co-counsel for arbitration lawyers. This LLM-powered tool is designed to assist legal professionals by reviewing legal strategies, identifying potential weaknesses, testing them against case law, and recommending stronger alternatives with clear, visual outputs.

On the final day, the team successfully pitched their solution to a jury of judges, competing in a field of strong contenders. While they did not advance to the final round, the experience was exceptionally valuable. The closing ceremony celebrated the innovative spirit and collaborative energy that characterized the hackathon.

The „Hack the Law“ event in Cambridge provided a unique and valuable platform for interdisciplinary collaboration and offered a glimpse into the future of legal technology.