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The UWA Law School held its inaugural Disrupting Law Hackathon last month, with 35 students working over 54 hours to create software solutions for the legal industry.

Seven teams of students were mentored by lawyers from leading law firms and community legal centres. In the space of one weekend, they brainstormed an idea, validated it and built a business model to present to judges.

Ideas generated by the teams included apps to resolve neighbourhood disputes, capture more civil litigation data, track case progress in real time, and protect the elderly from financial abuse.

The overall prize went to LawLink, which aims to connect people to the best community legal centre (CLC) to solve their legal needs.

LawLink proposes using a plugin on CLC websites that uses an avatar to guide consumers through a series of questions, so they can identify the correct CLC to help them. The plugin’s creators estimated that 37,000 hours of time could be saved this year if CLC staff didn’t have to answer phone calls from consumers calling the incorrect CLC.

The judging panel included representatives from the Blackstone Society, Herbert Smith Freehills, King & Wood Mallesons and the UWA Law School.

Run by the Law School with support from The Legal Forecast and The Piddington Society, the event was made possible by support from Platinum Sponsors Herbert Smith Freehills and King & Wood Mallesons, Gold Sponsors Hall & Wilcox, HBA Legal, MKI Legal, Jackson McDonald and Pragma Legal and Silver Sponsors Allens, Blackwall Legal and Corrs Chambers Westgarth. Proceeds from the event were donated to the Piddington Justice Project, supporting Perth's community legal centres.