These Legal Operations Pros Hacked the House. Now You Decide Which App Wins.

Three weeks ago, Onit kicked off its inaugural legal operations hackathon – Hack the House. The friendly competition, which includes Onit customers, partners and staff, has one goal: to see who can best use Onit Apptitude to solve challenges faced by legal departments and the business units they support.

Now, we need your vote to determine who will win Hack the House.

Five teams of legal operations experts have created Onit Apptitude Apps that address challenges in areas such as HR, IP, data breaches, diversity and Pro Bono work. (You can see demos of each App here.)

App: Data Breach Incident Reporting

Team Name: Team EU

Members:

• Robert Johnson, Onit
• Claire Banham, Onit
• Alyssa Kokilah, Cognia Law
• Ed Rastelli, Standard Chartered Bank
• Lee Harrison, BT Group
• Tyler Reno, Onit

Organizations must take immediate action to report potential data breaches to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) within 72 hours. Team EU created joined the legal operations hackathon to build an App that reports, manages and tracks data breaches and notifies regulators. It collects data breach information, automatically sends a notice to the security and compliance team and offers a rules-based dashboard and a quick entry point to review records. It even generates ICO reports and submits them in addition to collecting feedback from the organization.

App: Mentorship and Career Development

Team Name: Team HR

Members:

• Weston Wicks, Morae Global
• Brett Baccus, Morae Global
• Dipish Parmar, Morae Global
• Curtis Batterton, McDonald’s
• Chris Hultgren, Deere and Company
• David Duffey, Onit

Team HR, or rather “Hackathon Royalty,” created an App that allows people seeking professional development to connect to people who can offer it. Mentors and mentees can access the App to fill out a short intake form and provide information about themselves, their areas of interest and hobbies. It alerts users of new projects that align with their interests, giving them the ability to review and apply. Overall, it enables self-serve professional development while allowing a central administration to oversee the process.

App: Trademark Renewals and Trade Secrets Access Management

Team name: Team IP

Members:

• Nadine Stuttle, Duff and Phelps
• Rebecca Cotton, Duff and Phelps
• Matt Burdman, Colgate Palmolive
• Ken Capece, Colgate Palmolive
• Atlantis Langowski, Onit
• Larry Gianneschi, Colgate Palmolive
• Josie Johnson, Onit

 Team IP, who consider themselves the “dark horse” in this legal operations hackathon, has used Apptitude to automate the annual trademark renewal process. This exercise typically includes highly manual work and often relies on stakeholders in various regions and departments to decide whether to renew or not. The App streamlines the process, providing visibility into the status of each trademark renewal and automating some of the communications and reminders involved while gathering decisions.

App: Vendor and Law Firm Diversity Tracking

Team name: Team Diversity

Members:

• Eric Kabot, Royal Caribbean Cruises LTD.
• Michele Compasso, Corteva Agriscience
• Gregg McConnell, Corteva Agriscience
• Jesse Viani, Onit
• Sam Lu, Consilio
• Lisa Morris, Consilio
• Debby Young, Consilio
• Rhonda Oliver, Onit

Team Diversity has devised an App-based solution to help expand opportunities for diversity and an equal opportunity workspace. Using the App, a legal operations professional can gather a high-level view of each of their law firm’s diversity efforts, as well as track historical progress and report on efforts. The App sends law firms a survey to gather the information, where they can share their diversity status and initiatives.

App: Pro Bono Program Management

Team Name: Team Pro Bono

Members:

• Nick Panagoplos, Chubb
• Kim Takacs, Chubb
• Paige Edwards, Onit
• Massimo Penzo, Morae Global

For decades, lawyers have volunteered their time and expertise to donate legal services to those in need. In recognition of this effort, Team Pro Bono has built a solution to help Pro Bono leadership track, manage, recognize and report on time spent by attorneys of these programs. The App provides details for Pro Bono opportunities, including the location and can volunteer via the App. Using the App, Pro Bono program administrators can generate thank you notes to participants and review and report on all Pro Bono activities employees participated in.

Vote now!

Now it’s your turn. Choose the team you think has built the best App and vote for your favorite! Voting closes on Friday, December 11 at 5 p.m. EST, so vote soon.

As a thank you for your vote, we will enter you for a chance to win an electric scooter –  the same grand prize the hackathon winners will receive. The winner of the scooter will be selected at random from the public voting pool.

We invite you to join us on December 15 at 11 a.m. EST for the Hack the House winner announcement.

Many thanks to Cosmonauts, who collaborated with us on Hack the House. And many thanks to everyone who participated. All the teams and their Apps are already considered winners!