lawTechcamp a Success

Omar Ha-Redeye gave an excellent write-up of some of the ideas explored at last weekend’s lawTechcamp in (and after) the sessions, but I want to make note of the event itself.

About 100 people from the law and tech industries attended the free half-day event, held at the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto. The event was organized by Monica Goyal, owner and CEO of My Legal Briefcase, Sapna Mahboobani, principal of Sapna Law Professional Corporation, and lawyer/writer Mitch Kowalski.

lawTechcamp took an informal approach, taking cues for topics from ideas submitted by registrants. Focus was more on conversation than having a “sage on the stage” passing down advice from on high. Up to three concurrent sessions were held at any one time, with eleven sessions in all. As far as we know, this is the first event of its kind anywhere; certainly the first of its kind in Toronto.

I attended:

• Colin LaChance’s session on free access to the law and implications of “born digital” documents (Colin is the new President and CEO of CanLII)
• the discussion on lawyers working in the area of technology with panelists Monica Goyal, Michael Carabash, lawyers and founder of www.dynamiclawyers.com, and Terry Taoussanopoulos, associate with Brooks Barristers & Solicitors who is also working on a law-related technology application, moderated by Jordan Dolgin, founder and CEO of Dolgin Professional Corporation. To me this session captured the essence of lawTechcamp. They discussed the challenges of being on the fringe as both lawyers and technologists or developers. This entire lawTechcamp event was designed to help them find a community, whether from the tech or law world.
• a discussion on knowledge management solutions for small law firms (which I also moderated) with panelists Natalie Worsfold, tax lawyer, Ron Carriere, CEO of Cirilab, and Sanjeev Arora, founder of Tabillo and Principal Consultant at Quasar Apps.

Other sessions included:

• Computing the Law presented by Prof. Daniel Katz of Michigan State University
• Privacy Considerations in Contracts presented by Gavin Magrath, founding partner of Magrath O’Connor LLP
• Social Media and the Courts presented by Slawyer Omar Ha-Redeye (click on the link for blog post with Omar’s presentation slides)
• An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure: Key Elements for Social Media Policies presented by Lorraine Fleck, lawyer and trade-mark agent at Hoffer Adler LLP
• Domain Name Disputes presented by Rosario Cartagena, associate in Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP’s Toronto office.
• A Non-Traditional and Open Analysis of Intellectual Property Law presented by Felix Tang, partner and co-founder of Innovate LLP
• To the Cloud presented by Mitch Kowalski
• Developing a Marketing Plan presented by Queen’s University law student Joy Wakefield

Response to the day by attendees and speakers alike was excellent. Everyone I spoke with was keen on seeing another event like this. It will be interesting to see if other lawTechcamps pop up in other cities.