The event took place on 13 December at the Spanish Ministry of Justice in Madrid. The 3 award-winning tools are #EnTurno, #BotMySelf and #QuiereteV!VA
MADRID – 15/12/2017 – The #HackTheJustice hackathon awards ceremony, organized by the Instituto de Innovación Legal, was held on Wednesday 13th December, at the Parcent Palace of the Ministry of Justice. In addition to winners and authorities, the event was also attended by members of the jury and sponsors of the programme.
The team of #EnTurno has created a tool for legal-aid lawyers to communicate, exchange information and schedule hearings both among themselves and with the bar association in charge of coordinating them. They were given the everis award by Carlos Tabernero, Director for Public Industry at everis. The team of #QuiéreteV!VA has designed a tool to make it easier for victims of gender-based violence to access immediate help; they were given the Thomson Reuters award by Ignacio Carnero, Communications Director at Thomson Reuters, as well as the Ilunion Accessibility Award, by Verónica Martorell, Director of Accessible Technologies at Ilunion. The team who created #BotMySelf, a tool to facilitate the legal relations between e-commerce platforms and their users through chatbots, received the KPMG award from Francisco Uría, its managing partner.
Spanish Minister of Justice Rafael Catalá defended the need for digital innovation in the legal industry, highlighting that from the outset it had been one of the priorities of his ministry, and while he acknowledged that in the administration of justice “this process has started late and slow, but there is no turning back”, he also mentioned the improvements occurred in the recent months and the importance of civil society and private initiative to accompany the public sector through its digital transformation.
María Jesús González-Espejo, founding member of the Instituto de Innovación Legal along with Laura Fauqueur, made several requests to the Minister: the review and modernization of law degree studies so that new lawyers can meet the technological challenges; more investment in technology that will benefit both legal professionals and citizens; more support for initiatives such as #HackTheJustice; the promotion of partnerships between public and private sector; more transparency and open data from institutions and finally, policies that promote greater diversity and in particular an increased presence of women in the governing bodies of organizations and companies in the legal industry.
Previously, the winners of the hackathon #HackTheJustice had participated in an intense mentoring session during the afternoon, led by Enrique Abad, head of international development of i-deals, and María Jesús González-Espejo. The aim of the session was to support the teams involved in the development of their projects to help them become successful LegalTech startups.
The ceremony can be watched online on YouTube: https://youtu.be/cAVapTubqTk
