Milan Gandhi, a self-described ‘torrid optimist’, is a final year law student at the University of Queensland and Director of The Legal Forecast (TLF). Milan also sits on the Centre for Legal Innovation Advisory Board and is known as a “Legalpreneur.” 

In this Happy Lawyer, Happy Life podcast recap, Insights explores what motivated this filmmaker-turned-legalpreneur to muster teams of law students, creatives and technologists to work with law firms on Disrupting Law, a ‘legal hackathon’ to improve the business and practise of law.

“The Legal Forecast began with a few friends and I having this idea that we should try to bring law into the new age. We were very naïve,” admitted Milan. He was also inspired by Richard Susskind’s book, ‘Tomorrow’s Lawyers’, which he stumbled upon while in England. “I read the book within a sitting. What Susskind very reasonably argued is that fundamentally what we learn at law school should change. As a law student reading it, it was clear that so much of what we learn was about to be disrupted.

“So a year and a half ago, we started practically as a discussion group about this book,” said Milan. From there, The Legal Forecast and the Disrupting Law event developed.

“Our aim is to advance legal practice through technology and innovation. Who should do this but for us? As students, we’re entering the legal profession with a big stake in the future.”

To achieve this aim, The Legal Forecast sought stakeholders from different industries, focusing in particular on the pure stream of technology and the role it could play in the future of the legal profession.

“Lawyers need to be skilled in more than law. Disrupting Law brings people together who might not even think about how they can improve the system. I wanted to create a community of people, a collaborative undertaking that I felt was a gap in my law school experience. We have over thirty volunteers nationwide, and we interact on Slack. In 2016, we were looking for something big to sink our teeth into, which became Disrupting Law.

“Disrupting Law partnered with QUT Starters, which had run similar events focused on innovation and entrepreneurship across QUT, to run a legal hackathon. In the STEM world, the original version of a hackathon is for technically-minded, creative programmers. It became apparent to us that no one had done this for law. What would be the effect of forcing a whole bunch of student to find a novel way to advance legal practise?”

“We created teams of law students, creatives and technical students and partnered them with law firms. We made it completely free for law firms to participate. Teams were given 54 hours from Friday to Sunday, and on Sunday night, all the teams pitch their ideas – like Shark Tank.”

Disrupting Law produced a number of notable ideas, including a chatbot powered by artificial intelligence which could communicate with prospective clients via an instant messaging system on Facebook. Through the course of the chat, clients are directed to the right lawyer for their problem; thereby saving time spent vetting preliminary enquiries and allowing clients all-hours access to legal assistance. Another idea involved an interactive platform to gamify pro bono legal services so that firms could compare how many pro bono hours they had completed within a set time frame.

The Centre for Legal Innovation at the College of Law (CLI) sponsored the event.  Director, Terri Mottershead joined fellow judges Steven Wilson, Chief Operating Officer of the Office of the Queensland Chief Entrepreneur; Julian Uebergang, Managing Director of Neota Logic; and Alison Laird, Principal of Laird Innovations and Innovation Manager, Asia-Pacific, at Pinsent Masons in the difficult task of identifying an overall winner of the event. Ann-Maree David, Executive Director, COL Queensland acted as a mentor for teams at the event.

The College of Law and CLI  continues to actively support the growth of  The Legal Forecast, most recently, it hosted the launch of its chapters in Melbourne and Sydney. Since its initial launch in Brisbane, TLF  has become a company limited by guarantee and achieved not-for-profit status.

“We used to be proud of calling ourselves a start-up. Now we have so much support from the community and we’re relatively sizeable, which is scary, because you can’t rest on the easy excuse of ‘we’re just students, we don’t know what we’re doing!’”

Upon graduation, Milan will assume a graduate role with McCullough Robertson, where he has worked for three years in their construction and litigation team.

He admits, however, that he can feel at times overwhelmed by his workload.

“I’ve suffered immensely from overloading my plate,” said Milan. “I’ve achieved some interesting stuff and I’m ultimately very grateful, because you don’t achieve anything without the support of the community. I’ve definitely bitten off more than I can chew at times and it’s landed me in periods of great unhappiness and stress. But I am an optimist. I always hope I can break down any challenge into its component parts. Nothing is too difficult. Everything can be worked out.”

However, it was the multiple pressures of law school and side hustles like The Legal Forecast that made Milan concede he needed to take some time off and “let go of this torrid optimism.”

“My number one tip for law students: just apply. No one applies. If you actually apply, you can go to the next step. I’ve failed a tonne, fallen down and made a fool of myself. These sorts of failures have shown me that no one really cares and you can move on from mistakes.”

For more information on The Legal Forecast and its events in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, click here. For the full Happy Lawyer Happy Life podcast with Milan Gandhi, click here. For more information on the Centre for Legal Innovation, click here.