Law School Students Challenged to Help Design Next Generation of Legal Technology Products
Since I started working with the Thomson Reuters law school business, I have been struck by the diversity of ideas and fresh solutions coming from students, faculty, clinical professors and other leaders, including a genuine curiosity for how to use technology to advance the practice of law. That’s why I was so excited when our Innovation group approached the Law School team about joining up to find a way to bring a law student perspective to some of our most cutting edge legal product development work.
On Friday, Nov. 4 we’re partnering with law schools, start-ups and design experts to conduct a unique design thinking challenge.
Student teams from five law schools will develop proposals to expand the capabilities of Thomson Reuters Practice Point. We’re looking to gather ideas that help us deliver products reflecting the needs and habits of young attorneys and reflect the ways technology has found its way into our everyday lives. We’re hoping to encourage ideas that help us see ways to improve the user interface design, integrate with third-party tools and applications, or innovate new ways to create, aggregate and deliver content.
Proposals will be presented and judged at both the school level and nationally. The winning team will receive a five thousand dollar prize, with the runner-up team receiving a three thousand dollar prize. Even more exciting, we hope, is the chance to give participants an active voice in our future product development: several Product Design Challenge participants will be invited to participate in a six-month engagement as design advisors with Thomson Reuters to provide input to our product teams.
The participating law schools are Duke University School of Law, University of Missouri-Kansas City Law School, Suffolk University Law School, Brooklyn Law School and LegalRnD at Michigan State University College of Law. Thomson Reuters is also partnering with Evolve Law which helps law firms enhance their unique value propositions and transform business models.
Watch for the announcement of the winners, along with videos of the teams in action as they race to work together to create their winning ideas.
Katie Walter is director of marketing at Thomson Reuters
