Today’s post is a guest post from Sergio Herrera. Sergio is an attorney who provides legal counseling and business strategy advice to entrepreneurs in New York.  He attended the BLIP Legal Hackathon on behalf of Freedom Is The New Rich and reports on his experience below. You can find him on Twitter at @HerreraEsq or on his blog.

On April 15th, 2012, the Brooklyn Law School Incubator & Policy Clinic (BLIP) hosted the first-ever “legal hackathon.” The hackathon is the result of a growing awareness (and concern) among lawyers, technologists, artists, and entrepreneurs that technology – particularly the evolution of the internet – is far outpacing the development of law in that area.

So how do a bunch of people who need no explanation of what it means to “troll” a website approach such a concern? Naturally, the only way they know how – by bringing a community with varying perspectives, backgrounds, and expertise together, and encourage creativity and outside-the-box problem solving for a short, but intense, period of time. The concept should ring familiar to coders and developers. The term “hackathon” is borrowed from that community, which often hosts these events as a more effective way of problem-solving; in their case writing software or building an application. Many developers found through their experience that an intense 48-hour period where coders lock themselves in for two days and work together with little sleep and lots of caffeine yield better results from working alone on a project at a more leisurely pace.

The “legal hackathon” is more of an homage to the spirit of collaboration and creative synergy of these coding hackathons than an attempt at a replica – none of us lawyers missed a meal or wink of sleep that weekend. However, this legal hackathon, one of the first of its kins, was deemed successful. Professor Jonathan Askin, faculty advisor of the BLIP clinic at Brooklyn Law School, and driving force behind the event, called the 8-hour symposium and workshops experience a “valid proof of concept.”

The legal industry is notoriously conservative and reticent to change. And understandably so. The practice of law is an old profession with practitioners who are taught through experience to be cautious and tread carefully; to be the thoughtful objector and voice of reason in the room.

But, alas, social as well as digital revolutions wait for no one.

As a common theme heard from the various panelists illustrates, the profession is at a point where it must adapt to a rapidly changing world. It must, as the introductory paragraph in our legal hackathon brochure pointed out, “adapt new perspectives and modes of practice.” As one presenter put it, in referring to traditional firms that are reticient to this type of change, “if you can bring the horse to water, but can’t make it drink…get a new horse.”

The issues that require a new framework, make no mistake, are real. For example, does Facebook have a moral obligation to keep your account active or preserve the content that you have posted in all those hours on their site? And if there is a moral obligation (it would really suck to lose all of that), will the corresponding legal obligation be couched in corporate law, copyright law, or something else?

This vacuum that already exists creates risk, confusion, and essentially, chaos. The lack of direction has caused some free culture activists to live and work on a principle of “intellectual disobedience.” Nina Paley, a critically-acclaimed cartoonist, spoke about her reaction to what she considers clumsy and inadequate copyright law regarding the use of works found on the internet. “I found myself spending more time looking at the type of license an image had than looking at the image as an artist.” Her solution was to disregard licenses that were disruptive to her work and in turn compromised her art. Her “intellectual disobedience” is a direct reference to Ghandi’s practice of simply disobeying unjust laws. In her view, the disruptive nature of copyright is unjust.

These are not easily-solvable issues, and unlike coder hackathons, there likely won’t be a prototype to present to the legislators or the powers that be by the end of a session. But coming together offers a fresh perspective, especially to lawyers and policy makers. Copyright is one of those areas that balances competing interests in the abstract. The mechanics artists must go through to ensure compliance – the transaction costs if you will – are often overlooked by people that do not live with the burden.

The purpose, then, at least from the legal industry’s perspective is to bring about Lawyer 2.0, presumably a new and improved version that is equipped to confront and address the issues of the digital age. There is not a shadow of doubt there are big issues with potentially far-reaching and impactful ramfications. Facebook’s “population”, for example, is set to excede China’s population sometime next year. As Professor Askin points out, if Facebook was a country, it surely would come under much greater scrutiny for its practices. Nevertheless, looking at these issues intelligently inevitably leads to big thinking. They are tied to larger discussions about corporate responsibility, which at times makes proposed solutions seem unwieldly.

The initiative is here, though. The PriView Project is a perfect example. A spin-off of the BLIP clinic, a handful of law students have dedicated themselves to initiating and sustaining a discussion about how to address the problem that privacy policies (as found on almost every digital product) fail to provide meaningful information to users. The information in this case is what will happen to the user’s personal data that is tracked, stored, and then sold to third parties. The details of the problem are set out on PriView’s site, but the proposed solution is illustrative of the potential of Lawyer 2.0. Instead of trying to lobby for legislation or litigation (read: suing), the students’ aim is to create an online tool that will rate websites on their privacy policies available to the user at a glance. Pretty cool, right?

It is uncertain whether this project will reach its ultimate goal, or whether any of the solutions/proposals/ideas thrown around in the workshops at the hackathon will gain traction. However, one thing is for certain. As surprise guest, Andrew Mclaughlin, General Counsel at Tumblr and holder of all sorts of other impressive titles, poignantly said at the close of the day,

“the legal profession has not only an opportunity, but a mandate to be enablers” in the digital age, and “adopting the hacker mentality is central to that.”

After “deeply alarming” inaction by the legal profession to prevent Wall Street’s ethically dubious practices that led to the economic collapse a few years ago, Mr. Mclaughlin believes that “this moment in time has more need for thoughtful legal leadership since the civil rights.”

Legal hackathons are a big step in the right direction. And for attorneys and policy makers, a special opportunity to make their mark and help unmuddy the waters.

Earlier this week, I hosted a webinar on The 8 Steps to Build a Profitable Virtual Law Office. For those that missed it, I promised to share the slides and audio with everyone here on the blog.

In this presentation, I take you through the 8 steps to building a thriving virtual law office. This webinar is packed with strategies you can use right now.

We dive into each of the 8 Steps with real life examples and suggestions.  There was even some live Q&A from the participants that you won’t want to miss!

During the presentation I referenced a post on Tools I Use to Operate My Virtual Law Office.

I also introduced my latest course, 21st Century Lawyer: 8 Steps to Build a Profitable Virtual Law Office. Registration for this class will close on Monday so if you’re interested check-a, check it out!

“Keep it pointed to where you want it to go.” – Danielle Laporte

Last Fall, I had the pleasure of working with 32 lawyers and soon-to-be-lawyers on creating their own virtual law offices in my 21st Century Lawyer class. It was so inspiring to work with a group of lawyers that are willing to take risks and say no to the status quo in order to reach their career and lifestyle goals. These lawyers came from every corner of the profession including in house counsel of a major corporation, established solos, a mediator, an actor-lawyer, several recent law grads, a therapist-turned-lawyer and even a young man trying to decide if he should go to law school in the first place!

I loved teaching this class because the participants were passionate and enthusiastic about creating a virtual law practice that really served the needs of their clients while also meeting their own needs. They were also extremely generous in sharing resources, ideas and feedback with each other. It was like an innovation in law practice think tank for 4 weeks and I was so excited to be a part of it.

The goal for each lawyer and soon-to-be-lawyer in the class was to have a plan to launch their virtual law office by the end of the course. Some of the participants are waiting to be sworn in, waiting for contract jobs to end or for big cross-country moves (one participant is relocating to Hawaii!) before they launch. Others launched their new VLOs shortly after the class ended. I am proud to say that they are rockin’ it.

Nicole Rustin-Paschal started a VLO in estate planning with a desire to help minority members of the LGBT community. Yvonne Ike started a virtual law office providing estate planning for young professionals in New York and started an active estate planning blog. Ethan Huizenga’s Iowa Virtual Law Office is the first one in that region! Adrianne Thompson took her Georgia practice virtual so she could spend more time at home with her family in Tennessee; it makes sense that her VLO is “designed to protect the integrity of the family unit.” Ruth Carter, who recently appeared on the local news here in Arizona, has a virtual law office that handles flash mob law and is speaking at Phoenix ComiCon this year. Andrew Legrand started a VLO serving locally-owned New Orleans businesses and recently landed a regular writing gig for the Silicon Bayou News.

Here’s what a few of the class participants had to say:

“Your class was fantastic. It was exactly what I was looking for. I was thrilled to find a class explaining how to start a VLO, especially because it is relatively new. I very much enjoyed the class, the resources are excellent and I also like the Facebook group. Not only did I come away from the class with valuable information, but also with a network and support group of like-minded lawyers.” - Current In House Counsel & Soon-to-be Virtual Attorney

“Before taking the 21st Century Lawyer course with Rachel Rodgers, I was in the process of creating a virtual practice, A.G. Thompson Law, LLC for the lifestyle flexibility. This class gave me the tools I needed to create a practice and a lifestyle that met my needs, and fulfilled my dreams.” - Adrianne Thompson, A.G. Thompson Law LLC

“Rachel Rodgers provided a wealth of information in such a short amount of time. This class was truly invaluable!” - Irena Purves