CodeX, with its erudite and almost-dusty official name of the Center of Legal Informatics, was founded as an academic research center. But, perhaps with its prime tech-friendly placement within Stanford Law School, CodeX has become what its executive director Roland Vogl calls “an inadvertent incubator.”

What was originally an academic research center has sparked the imagination of those who dream of bringing the law out of the Stone Age.

Stanford owns and licenses any (and many) innovations born out of CodeX, which receives funding and fundraising support from the school. Perhaps its greatest success story so far has been Lex Machina, an analytics database for IP litigation. Started by Stanford Law professor Mark Lemley and legal tech entrepreneurs George Gregory and Joshua Walker, it spun out in 2009 and now counts patent litigation firms and corporate legal departments as clients. In 2011, CodeX spun out LawGives, a platform that matches those in need of legal help with lawyers willing to provide it. In 2012 it spun out the Stanford Intellectual Property Exchange as SIPX Inc. SIPX, which Vogl himself co-founded, is a database of copyright licenses that allows universities to track and manage rights to copyrighted material used in course readers.