Great news from Fastcase: Both directors of CodeX: The Stanford Center for Legal Informatics, Roland Vogl and Michael Genesereth, have been chosen for the 2016 Fastcase 50. The annual roster, which launched in 2011, has become the Oscars of our legal technology community (arguably in a tie with the American Bar Association’s ABA Journal’s Legal Rebels).

“The Fastcase 50 has honored a diverse group of lawyers, legal technologists, policymakers, judges, law librarians, bar association executives, and people from all walks of life,” said Fastcase CEO Ed Walters in the press release. “In many cases, honorees are well known, but in many others, the award recognizes people who have made important, but unheralded contributions.”

“Every part of the legal market is changing right now—from law school through every part of the practice,” he said. “That change can be daunting or discouraging to many people. And that’s one reason that our team enjoys celebrating the accomplishments of the Fastcase 50. These are people who inspire us by their intelligence, creativity, and leadership. We hope they will inspire others as well, especially during a time of great change for the profession.”

 

But Vogl and Genesereth are not the only CodeX story. The 2016 class is crammed full of people who are active in the CodeX community!  I was blown away when I saw the 2016 list, because it signifies expotential growth of CodeX’s agenda.

 

 

The Woodstock of Legal Technology

Here’s what Fastcase said about our directors:

• Vogl: “Although Roland’s ‘credit line’ indicates that he is executive director of CodeX, that is only a very small part of his activities aimed toward building a new way to look at and use legal information. After early stints with the European Commission and the European Parliament, Roland began the United States phase of his career in California. He joined Stanford in 2003, where he became head of the Stanford Program in Law, Science & Technology.

Five years later he became the executive director of CodeX, the Stanford Center for Legal Informatics, and a hotbed of legal innovation. Within Stanford he spearheaded the development of the Stanford Intellectual Property Exchange (SIPIX), which addressed content licensing issues in legal education and was eventually spun off from Stanford. In his work at Stanford, Roland has had as his aim what has become the aim of CodeX: “[T]o advance the frontier of legal technology, bringing new levels of legal efficiency, transparency, and access to legal systems around the world.”

 

• Genesereth: “The Stanford Center for Legal Informatics (CodeX, for short) is the Woodstock for legal technology—some of the most interesting projects in legal tech have come from, or through, CodeX, which Michael Genesereth directs (with fellow Fastcase 50 honoree Roland Vogl).

At a time when artificial intelligence has captured the collective imagination of legal tech, Genesereth has literally written the book on it—The Logical Foundations of Artificial Intelligence, and he teaches a class in Legal Informatics at Stanford Law School. Genesereth is a Swiss army knife of the tech world, combining work on Computational Logic and applications of that work in Enterprise Management, Electronic Commerce, and Computational Law. Genesereth serves as the director of the Stanford Logic Group, and was one of the founders of Teknowledge, CommerceNet, and Mergent Systems.”

 

Evidence that CodeX’s agenda is exploding!
The roster includes many friends of CodeX!

• Andrew Arruda, CEO and Co-Founder, Ross Intelligence. (Speaker at CodeX FutureLaw 16.)

• Alma Asay, Founder and CEO, Allegory. (Speaker at CodeX FutureLaw 16.) ALM: Women of Legal Tech.

• Tim Baran, Content Director, Rocket Matter.

• Mark A. Cohen, CEO and Founder, Mosaic.

• Mary Juetten, Founder and CEO, Traklight; Co-Founder, Evolve Law.

• Nehal Madhani, CEO and Founder, Alt Legal (CodeX Fellow)

• Jules Miller, Co-Founder and COO,  Hire an Esquire; Co-Founder, Evolve Law.

• Donna Payne, Author and CEO, PayneGroup

• Julia Shapiro, Co-Founder and CEO, Hire an Esquire.

• John Simek, Vice President, Sensei Enterprises.

Take a look at the roster—if I missed anyone who has been active in CodeX,  email me: mbay@codex.stanford.edu. Full 2016 List.

Monica Bay is a CodeX Fellow and was in the 2011 inaugural Fastcase 50 class. Twitter: @MonicaBay 

Cover image: Clipart.com