The Global Legal Hackathon—a legal tech development competition that boasted participants from across five continents and, in the first round, over 40 cities—held its third and final round in New York on April 21.  Of the 14 remaining participants, two team were chosen as winners for the public sector tech category.

But while only two access to justice solutions took the top spots, many more competed in the monthslong event. The scope and diversity of these solutions underscored how such tech is shaping up across the world in response to both local and global problems.

A Florianópolis, Brazil-based team, for instance, developed a solution named Apresente-se that allows local citizens to remotely be present before justice officials when needed. Alexandre Golin Krammes, product adviser at Softplan and a part of the Apresente-se team, noted that being present before a court can oftentimes be an arduous and time consuming endeavor because of his country's overburdened judicial system.

“Nowadays in Brazil going to the court, they have long lines and the court has to have available employees to check them and say everything is OK,” he said.

The solution uses an array of technologies, including voice recognition, to authenticate a person's location. “A judge could sentence a person to be at this house at 8 p.m., and they can assess his voice, his photo, and his location,” through the solution to be able to prove it is him,  Krammes said.

Apresente-se, however, didn't need win the Global legal Hackathon to get its solution off the ground. “Before the final, we got a client so we have a greater challenge to do,” Krammes added.

A Lagos, Nigeria-based team also found success for its solution, named Lemon Aid, before the end of the hackathon competition. Acting as a type of pro bono management app, the solution uses algorithms to analyze existing magistrate cases and match them with pro bono lawyers, who have profiles on the app.

Lemon Aid “suggests lawyers for four or five cases based on their profile,” said Deborah Patrick-Akhaba, associate at Goldsmiths Solicitors and member of the Lemon Aid team. She added that the solution will look to connect with pro bono lawyers at law firms as well as freelance lawyers and  senior advocates who “need to do a level of pro bono work” by law in Nigeria.

Lemon Aid, which specifically aims to solve prison overcrowding and lack of legal representation in Nigeria, has already caught the attention of some in the country's government. Patrick-Akhaba noted that the Federal Ministry of Justice of Nigeria has agreed to partner with the young company. What's more, the team is looking at a “partnership with legal aid organizations, and we are looking to also expand to the broader African market,” she said.

Meanwhile, an Ottawa, Canada-based team sought to tackle access to justice in a different way through its 2Sign app. The solution works to automatically draft contracts for consumers in a variety of situations, offering agreements such as leasing or buy and sell contracts. Users can input voice answers to promoted questions, and the app will automatically draft a pre-selected contract.

Ahmed Asif, chief technology officer at 2Sign, explained that there will also be accountability and security features built in to verify the parties who entered into the contract.

“It will look at the location of the buyer and seller, so if they are within 20 meters of each other” when the contract was automatically drafted and signed, they can be verified, Asif said. He added that his team also plans to add other authentication features in the near future, such as requiring users and parties to register with the app before they draft a contract.