The Future: Innovation = Law Students
The New York State Bar Association, along with the Maurice A. Deane School of Law, and Hofstra’s School of Engineering, created a law student event never previously put together by a bar association. The Section’s former chair, Mark A. Berman, created a virtual innovation tournament, which was co-organized by John Tsiforas, director of law and technology at Hofstra Law School, with Dr. Richard Hayes, executive director of Hofstra’s Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. The tournament was sponsored by JAMS, the American Arbitration Association, and NYSBA’s Dispute Resolution Section. Next year, ComFed will also be a co-sponsor. The tournament has now become an annual event, and we are proud that this year two of the final judges were the Hon. Anthony Cannataro, Acting Chief Judge of the State of New York, and Christine Sisario, the director of technology for the New York state Office of Court Administration.
The theme of the tournament was for law students to create “apps” that would bridge the justice gap and improve dispute resolution processes for the everyday person. The interdisciplinary tournament brought together law and computer science students from across the country to compete to design “apps” that would seek to help change the face of dispute resolution. The tournament was open to law and computer science students, as well as LLM students. Students were teamed with computer science students from Hofstra University and legal experts in the fields of dispute resolution, as well as seasoned commercial litigators. Finalists would work with Hofstra University’s computer technologists to develop a prototype of the “app.”
One winning “app” in the first year of the tournament sought to simplify the complex debt collection process that the underserved have difficulty navigating. This year, the winning “app,” designed by the St. John’s Law School team of Ramona V. Miller and Michael L. Quintman, sought to create a free social media platform for crowdsourcing conflict coaching and user-based dispute evaluation, with an added paid option for real traditional asynchronous mediation. The winners were presented with plaques honoring their win at the Executive Committee meeting of the Dispute Resolution Section held in January at NYSBA’s Annual Meeting.
“The law students who competed in this year’s technology innovation tournament are the future leaders of the bar and our courts,” said Acting Chief Judge Cannataro. “As the current leader of the New York courts, I am always on the lookout for innovative ways to expand the delivery of justice services, especially in the area of ADR, and so I was grateful for the opportunity to explore the creative and cutting-edge solutions devised by the next generation of legal professionals with a uniquely technological perspective. Listening to their ideas and evaluating their solutions to difficult access to justice challenges left me with a great sense of confidence in the future of the legal profession.”
The tournament is an example of how lawyers can come together to improve the use of technology in the legal profession. The tournament advanced the legal profession by providing students with new perspectives and tools for problem solving, who proactively identified problems to solve in the area of dispute resolution through technology-based solutions. The tournament brought real-world relevance to law students. The legal profession is now a technology-driven world, and it needs to embrace technology to bring it to the people in order to help them with their everyday problems. Students left to their own devices saw the need to improve mediation processes using an “app” that everyday people could use to resolve their disputes virtually in a fair and efficient way.
Mark A. Berman is a former chair of the Section, the founder of Innovation Tournament, and co-chair of the Section’s Commercial Division Committee.
