§Second Edition/Amsterdam/November 2026
Build the future of law in a weekend.
Our Legal Hackathon is back for a second edition. Over one weekend, mixed teams of students take on challenges set by the law firms and legal tech companies we work with, and build something that runs.
Sign-up on Luma · teams formed at the event · open to every faculty
Countdown to kick-off
27–29 November 2026 · dates provisional, to be confirmed
§The format
What is a legal hackathon?
A student-run event where mixed teams get a single weekend to turn a legal problem into something that works. Law students sit next to programmers and designers, and by Sunday every team has to demo what they built.
The challenges come from the law firms and legal tech companies we work with. You form a team on Friday, build through Saturday, and pitch to a panel of judges on Sunday.
Most people come from law, PPLE, computer science, AI, design, and business, but the door is open to anyone who finds this interesting. You do not need to have been to a hackathon before, and you do not need to code.
- Format
- One weekend, 48 hours
- Teams
- 2–5 people · formed on-site
- Who
- Any faculty, anyone curious
- Where
- Amsterdam, The Netherlands
- When
- November 2026 (provisional)
- Sign-up
- Individually, via Luma
§Why we run it
What a weekend is for
What we want people to get out of it.
Work on real problems
The challenges come from practising lawyers, not from us. Nothing here is a toy exercise.
Work across disciplines
Put law students, programmers, and designers on one team and see what they make together.
Meet the others
Find the other people in Amsterdam who care about where law and technology overlap.
Get your hands on the tools
Try the software that is changing how legal work actually gets done.
Meet the industry
Spend the weekend with mentors, judges, and speakers from the firms taking part.
Go to Cambridge
Overall winners represent the Netherlands at Hack the Law with Cambridge & Stanford.
§Taking part
How to take part
Sign up on your own, sort your team at the event, submit before the deadline.
Sign up as yourself
Sign-up runs on Luma, one ticket per person. You do not need a team yet. We will send you the venue details, the schedule, and a reminder when team registration opens.
Register your team, pick a challenge
The challenges are announced on the Friday. After that, one person per team fills in the roster (2–5 people) and picks the challenge the team will work on. You get a team code back, and that code is how you submit.
Build, then submit
One submission per team, for the challenge you picked. You can resubmit as often as you like before the deadline. The judges only see your latest version.
Coming on your own?
Most people are. On the Friday evening we run a round of team matching before registration closes: tell us what you can do, and we will introduce you to people looking for it. The teams that do well usually mix someone who knows the law, someone who can build, and someone who can present.
§What's at stake
Prizes
The headline prize, plus what our partners are putting up.
Represent the Netherlands at Hack the Law
The overall winners get a sponsored place at Hack the Law, the international competition run with the University of Cambridge and Stanford CodeX, where they compete for the Netherlands.
Keep building
Some teams get to carry on with their project alongside a partner firm after the weekend.
Office visits & mentorship
Some categories come with a day at a partner firm, lunch, and time with their lawyers.
More to come
Our partners are still putting their prizes together. We will announce them closer to the event.
§The programme
One weekend, start to finish
Roughly how last year ran. Final timings closer to the event.
Friday
Kick-off- 17:00Doors open
- 18:00Welcome by the Futurist Law Lab
- 18:10Talks & challenges revealed
- 19:00Drinks · team formation · networking
- 21:00Venue closes
Saturday
Build day- 09:00Doors open · hacking begins
- 09:30Breakfast
- 11:00Partner talks begin
- 13:00Lunch
- 18:00Dinner
- 20:00Networking drinks
- 00:00Submission deadline
Sunday
Pitch & judge- 09:00Doors open
- 09:30Breakfast
- 10:00Pitching
- 12:00Judging
- 13:00Award ceremony & closing
- 14:00Networking drinks
- 15:30Venue closes
§Partners
Backed by leading firms
Our partners from the first edition. More are joining for 2026.
§For firms
Partner with us
Set a challenge, mentor teams, or judge on Sunday. Involvement runs from sending one mentor for an afternoon to co-organising the whole weekend.
Talk to us- Watch students work on a hard problem under time pressure. It tells you more than an interview does.
- Put up a challenge your firm is actually facing and get working prototypes by Sunday.
- Get your name in front of the next generation of lawyers and builders.
§Amsterdam · November 2026
Ready to build?
Sign-up runs on Luma. Get a ticket, turn up on the Friday, and sort your team out there.
Tickets are not live yet. The Luma link will appear here as soon as they are.