Legal hackathons have been used to develop solutions on everything from closing the justice gap and promoting diversity in the legal industry to figuring out the applications of novel technologies like blockchain. But now, a new organization is looking to harness the power hackathons to disrupt the entire worldwide legal industry.

The recently launched “Global Legal Hackathon” is aiming to bring together legal and technology professionals across the world to compete with one another in building and deploying legal technology solutions.

Those participating in the organization's coordinated legal hackathons across dozens of cities will develop their projects during a global session between February 23 and February 25. Afterwards, local judges in all partaking cities will pick one standout solution, which will be pitched and judged in two follow-up rounds. The winning team and their solution will be announced at an April 21 event in New York City.

As of February 1, the event includes 40 cities across 20 countries, including New York, Buenos Aires, Berlin, Shanghai, Johannesburg, Sydney and Dubai,  said Aileen Schultz, director of network intelligence at Integra Ledger and co-founder of the Global Legal Hackathon.  Each city's legal hackathon is sponsored by host organizations, which are usually local law firms, law schools and tech companies

Each team of contestants—which Schultz noted will likely be coming from legal departments, law firms, or made up on the spot with participating developers and legal professionals—will have a chance to develop technology that serves a particular need in their legal community.

But she also believes the hackathon will be seen by some as “an opportunity to facilitate global solutions for the legal industry.” As an example, she pointed to the development of something akin to a “sovereign identity solution,” which can provide global denizens with a digital identity that is “unique to each individual and that doesn't live within the rules of government or borders.”

Though the hackathon has a global scale, initially it will be a locally-run endeavor. During the late February global hackathon event, for instance, Schultz noted that host organizations will “select their own panel of judges and run the hackathon at a local level.”

But while Global Legal Hackathon wants to “enable people to really make it their own,” those participating will have to abide by the start and stop times dictated by the organization as well as follow its judging criteria, which will be released online shortly before the hackathon starts, she added.

After one winning team is selected from each city, they will go on to pitch their legal solution in the second round, which will take part online, on March 11, 2018. The solutions will be reviewed by a “global judges panel,” made up of judges nominated by host organizations and selected by all participating hackathon parties.

The eight to ten who make it to the third and final round will have their travel to New York and local accommodation subsidized by the Global Legal Hackathon, while the winning team, also to be selected by the global judges panel, will receive an yet-to-be determined amount of sponsorship funding for their project and free technology services from the event's sponsors.

As of now, the only publicly-announced sponsor is Integra Ledger. But Schutlz noted that the Global Legal Hackathon does have other “sponsors right now, and we do expect more global sponsorships to come in,” though she said that it was too early to name them publicly.

To be sure, Global Legal Hackathon is still a nascent organization and effort. It was only a few months ago in October 2017, when Schultz, along with David Fisher, founder and CEO at Integra Ledger, came up with the idea for the organization after attending a hackathon event in New York.

Though the event was not legal-focused, “a legal company ended up being at the front and center of the whole thing,” Schultz recalled.

Noticing the interest in legal innovation, Schultz and her colleagues formed the Global Legal Hackathon, and in December, approached Richard Tromans, founder of the Artificial Lawyer blog, about promoting the organization. “He loved the idea and was sort of able to toss it out to the world,” she said.

Schultz also reached out to a friend of hers who ran a company called “Legal Advice Middle East” in Dubai, and another who ran a legal hackers group out of the Hague Institute of Innovation in Law (HiiL) in the Ukraine. Both friends help spread awareness of the Global Legal Hackathon, and got Legal Advice Middle East and HiiL to act as host organizations in their respective countries. From there, the Global Legal Hackathon went “viral very, very quickly,” Schultz said.