Welcome to GROWL – The Global Rise of Women in LegalTech Initiative

8th January 2019 artificiallawyer Women in LegalTech 2

The Global Legal Hackathon (GLH) has today announced the launch of GROWL, or the Global Rise Of Women in LegalTech initiative. Its goal is to ‘support up-and-coming women leaders in legal innovation around the world‘ and will be an integral part of this year’s event taking place February 22-24.

The GROWL initiative will be chaired by Nita Sanger, Chief Strategy Officer at legal blockchain company, Integra Ledger, and previously Global Head of Innovation for Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory.

Nita Sanger, GROWL Chair.

Commenting on the project Sanger said: ‘The Global Legal Hackathon is the largest legal technology innovation event in the world [and] a powerful platform for women that want to bring their unique perspectives and skill sets to lead the transformation of legal services and legal service delivery.’

‘I am excited to lead the GROWL initiative, working with women leaders in the legal industry to support thousands of women innovators around the world,’ she added.

The organisers of GROWL added that: ‘Extensive research has shown that women tend to approach problem solving differently than men, typically in a more collaborative and social way, talking through the problem, discussing the situation in detail, and collaborating effectively with a complex array of stakeholders. As the legal industry evolves to become more responsive to client requirements for innovation and value, women are ideally suited to lead the legal innovation movement around the world.’

GROWL will be providing an ‘enhanced track’ for women-led teams in this year’s GLH. Before the hackathon weekend begins, the initiative will also work with legal industry organisations, including law firms, corporate legal departments, legaltech companies, bar associations, and law schools, to identify and engage women leaders in legal innovation around the world, the GLH organisers said.

A globally-located panel of senior women leaders in the legal industry drawn from the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa, will also support the many women-led teams that participate in the GLH 2019.

And the GLH will give a new GROWL award to the top three women-led teams from the around the world, as judged by a panel of women legal leaders and investors.

Beyond the GLH, GROWL will work throughout the year to ‘support women-led legal innovation around the world, building a global community of mentors, advisors and investors to propel the next generation of women legal innovation leaders to the forefront of the industry’, the organisers concluded.

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How To Get Involved

If you and/or your firm/company would like to know more, then please email Nita Sanger (nsanger@globallegalhackathon.com).

Also, if you are an organisation and would like to participate in GROWL, the GLH recommends the following steps:

  • Appoint a GROWL coordinator who can help to distribute information and materials to interested women in the organization.
  • Encourage senior women leaders (and not just leaders in the legal department) in the organization to volunteer as mentors during the Global Legal Hackathon. Their contribution to the global legal innovation community is invaluable, and the global nature of the hackathon event means that their impact can be felt all around the world – it’s likely that they will find themselves interacting with amazing women innovators from many countries.
  • Encourage women at all levels – first year associates, paralegals, technology staff, partners, legal operations personnel, and marketing managers, can get involved. The full weekend hackathon on February 22-24 may be the first time that many participants will have the real-world experience of pitching an idea, forming a team, and then leading that team on an intense, 54-hour innovation sprint that will result in a fully developed minimum viable product (MVP).
  • Support the local venues of the Global Legal Hackathon – with volunteers and financial support. For global legal organizations, a benefit of the GLH is that there are abundant opportunities to participate in cities around the world. So, if your organization has women leaders in New York, London, and Hong Kong, for example, all of them can support their local venues of the GLH.
  • Work with GROWL and the GLH to schedule one or more internal briefing/training webinars, to prepare interested women to make the most of the #GLH2019 experience.