Last year, recode.law turned 5 years old and, in April, we were able to celebrate this anniversary in Cologne, together with numerous current and former members.
Now, it’s time to look back on five wonderful years:
Our locations and our vision
recode.law was founded in Münster in 2018 to offer interested parties a platform to engage with legal tech and legal innovation. We are now active at eight locations across Germany. While we were able to open additional locations in the Rhineland (Cologne, Düsseldorf and Bonn), Hamburg and Berlin at the beginning of 2020, we added Passau in 2021, which is now our largest location in terms of members. We opened a location in Leipzig in 2022 and have also been represented in Munich since the end of 2023. We are delighted that we have been able to grow as an organization in this way over the past five years and have been able to reach a total of over 130 members.
Our events
The “Legal Innovation Talk” in January 2020 was one of the kick-off events of our organization. At the 1648 Café in Münster, we were able to talk to legal tech start-ups and the BRAK (the German Federal Bar) about legal tech regulation and reach numerous interested parties.
However, this was quickly followed by the coronavirus pandemic, which forced us to expand our online formats. Despite the pandemic, our organisation was able to grow steadily and welcome numerous new members as well as establish new event series.
Our Digital Justice Conference was held in three editions: In September 2020, October 2021 and October 2022. The recode.law team was able to gather at the Reach in Münster and make the digitalisation of justice and the legal sector the main topic of the conference. We offered panel discussions and numerous lectures, for example on the future of the courts. In January 2022 and February 2024, we were also able to organise two editions of the AI&Law Conference and thus talk about the potential uses of artificial intelligence in the legal sector before and after the publication of large language models such as ChatGPT and during the drafting process of the EU AI Regulation. We were also able to address our international audience with English-language content.
In addition to one- or two-day conferences, we were able to organise various workshops and events with our cooperation partners Noerr, and later also Bird&Bird and YPOG. These enabled the participants to expand their knowledge on topics such as design thinking, agile working, artificial intelligence, contract drafting or founding a limited liability company.
In addition, we were able to provide insights into various professions in the legal tech sector through the online event series “Faces of Legal Tech”. Through our ongoing “recode.talks” series, we were able talk to various experts about topics such as the assertion of claims for damages under Art. 82 GDPR by legal tech companies. On top of that, we were able to familiarise numerous students with legal tech through our introductory lectures “WTF is Legal Tech” and “Legal Tech 101”.
Publications, podcast and newsletter
We aim to offer those interested in legal tech further opportunities to inform themselves. Over the past five years, we have been able to establish various formats for this purpose.
Currently many articles by our members can be found in the CTRL, as the journal as one of our cooperation partners. And, in addition to the numerous publications by our members in various journals, we have a blog on our website with articles on legal innovation.
On top of that, there are now over 50 episodes of our recode.law podcast. The topics “Legal Tech Introduction”, “Start-ups in the Legal Tech sector” and “Digitalisation in the judiciary” are just some of the topics that we have been able to cover in our podcast with exciting guests.
There are also already over 70 issues of our newsletter, the “New Law Radar”. There, we update our subscribers on the state of digitalisation in the legal sector and legislative innovations and have also been able to share numerous event recommendations.
Internal events
At our locations, we regularly organize meetups for our local members. In addition, we have also been able to arrange two member retreats, one in Berlin and one in Hamburg, during which we got to meet across locations and discuss the future and projects of the organization. We have also organized three Christmas parties and other location events, during which, among other things, our members were able to go sailing or climbing together.
In addition, our alumni organization was founded, in which the members who are no longer active continue to support the active members.
Our “SDU”
Our SDU – the Student Driven University – has been taking place for 7 semesters now. Our members meet in small groups and work on a legal tech topic. As part of the SDU work, we have been able to implement various projects in areas such as artificial intelligence, legal design, e-government and legal entrepreneurship. Some examples are: Setting up a Startup Academy, researching the state of legal tech at universities and developing strategies to improve it; analysing of the election programmes for the 2021 federal election, researching areas of application of artificial intelligence, working on legal design using the example of our organization statutes; and trying to find ways to improve access to justice in Africa.
As part of the Student Driven University, we were also able to address the digitalisation of legal education and contribute to legal policy. Among other things we were able to give a statement in the Justice Committee of the North Rhine-Westphalian State Parliament and act as members of the “JURTECH:JURSTUDY” specialist congress.
Our goals
Through five years our organization’s goal has remained the same: We want to continue to shape the legal tech world in the coming years and offer our members and also those interested in legal tech a platform to engage with current and future developments in the field of legal tech.
Last Updated on 14. September 2024
