Exciting news: CodeX—The Stanford Center for Legal Informatics and legal industry giant Thomson Reuters have just announced the 2015 Legal Tech Open Innovation Challenge—Docket Analystics. It’s an “open call” to develop technology that can advance the legal system, and it comes with three prizes: a $20,000 top prize, $15,000 (2nd place) and $10,000 (3rd place) for granting the “seeker” a non-exclusive license to use the winning technologies. In addition, there will be four honorable mention awards.

The contest is hosted by InnoCentive, which offers crowdsource innovation services, and is open now—and runs through Sept. 15. Winners will be invited to the 2015 Thomson Reuters/CodeX Legal Tech Showcase event that will be held at Stanford in Nov. 2015, and they will provided a $2,000 stipend to attend the event.

The organizers framed the competition by reminding everyone that “the practice of law involves various forms of prediction and analysis, and historically, legal professionals have relied on personal professional experience to attempt to accurately predict various outcomes. Data analytics enhance attorneys’ ability to recognize business opportunities and to provide effective representation by arming them with better predictions about the future,” the press release said.

“We’re delighted to work with Thomson Reuters on this initiative,” said Dr. Roland Vogl, founder of CodeX. (He and Michael Genesereth are CodeX’ two directors). Vogl is also the executive director of the Stanford Program in Law, Science and Technology.  “To my knowledge, it’s the first ever Open Innovation Challenge addressed to all legal tech innovators around the world. We believe there are many individuals and organizations around the world with great insights into how the legal system can be made more efficient through information technology,” said Vogl. “At CodeX we strive to promote legal tech innovation that not only increases efficiency for those within the legal profession, but also provides for new ways for regular people to interact with the law.”

“Participants in the 2015 Legal Tech Open Innovation Challenge–Docket Analytics will get access to years of federal court dockets made available by our partner Thomson Reuters,” said Vogl. “We are very much looking forward to seeing the novel applications that utilize those docket data, outside data, and Thomson Reuters’ PermID. I’ll be interested to see what results from the businesses’ spirit of partnership and openness in making this massive, interrelated data set available to a diverse universe of innovators,” Vogl said.”

The goal is to develop new applications that “can create or identify useful metrics, trends, patterns, projections and predictions to support the practice and business of law,” the press release explained. “Entries will be judged on their ability to innovate Big Data analytics to address practical or professional needs of the legal marketplace. Submissions will be evaluated for novel combination, integration and application of data analysis.”

Thomson Reuter’s team was equally enthusiastic. “Innovation and partnership are at the heart of our business,” said Susan Taylor Martin, president of the legal business of Thomson Reuters. “We are pleased to celebrate these values in this challenge that opens our content to the entrepreneurs and innovators who will experiment with new approaches to how legal work gets done. We are especially pleased to work again with Dr. Roland Vogl and his team at CodeX.”

“This challenge is a unique opportunity for participants to access the resources of Thomson Reuters and develop new [technologies] that can benefit the legal marketplace,” said Karl Florida, managing director, small law firm, and innovation champion at Thomson Reuters. “Litigators rely on analytical information to plan case strategy, make more informed decisions about litigation and help manage their clients’ expectations. We’re looking forward to the combination of Thomson Reuters resources in Big Data with the energy and passion of Challenge participants to spark new levels of innovation and develop new tools for legal practitioners.”

Watch Florida’s video here.

LEGALTECH WEST

P.S.  If you want to get inspired to create the next best app, join us on July 14 at Legaltech West, at the Hyatt Regency [Embarcadero] in San Francisco for our all-day startup. We’ll have three sessions, in a “Shark Tank” style parade of startups.

Monica Bay is a Fellow at CodeX and a member of the California bar. In February, she retired from ALM where she was Editor-in-Chief of Law Technology News. Her profile of Thomson Reuters’ Susan Taylor Martin, “The Need for Speed,” is a finalist in the American Society of Business Publication Editors 2015 awards.