The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HiiL) has announced the Southern African finalists for its annual Innovating Justice Challenge.
Now in its seventh year, the Innovating Justice Challenge seeks out and supports those who are working on solutions to help people prevent or resolve their most pressing justice needs.
Through the challenge, HiiL identifies organisations which can provide scalable, sustainable solutions to justice needs and will benefit from a mix of seed funding and support through its Justice Accelerator programme.
HiiL received more than 400 applications to the Innovating Justice Challenge, which were assessed with five criteria in mind: impact, sustainability, scalability, uniqueness and team. It has now selected seven finalists from Southern Africa for the challenge, which was won by a South African team last year.
The finalists are real-time legal document automation platform Epoq Legal, legal tutorials service Baobab.law, legal education service Masenze Strategic Advisors, mediation court Buyisa Soul and Spiritual Centre, contract and legal support service Portable Lawyer, case management system PhoenixCMS, and IP services platform IPassist-zw.
“This year’s challenge was the hardest for us to judge yet,” said HiiL Southern Africa’s Adam Oxford. “We were overwhelmed with high quality applications from a huge variety of innovators, and there are many who aren’t on the final list that we hope to work with in the future. It’s exciting that there are so many people in the region working to bring access to justice for all.”
Finalists will be invited to a special training “boostcamp” day on September 3 in Johannesburg, after which they will pitch their ideas to a panel of judges at the Leaderex conference at the Sandton Convention Centre on September 4.
