Tech Challenge 2023 | A review

It is the autumn of 2022. The kick-off of the Legal Tech Colab has just taken place, and our Venture Manager Victor Monsees has to come up with an idea for the Tech Challenge.

What is the Tech Challenge?

Every semester, students at TUM have the unique opportunity to work on a Tech Challenge and produce a prototype by the end of the semester. For each Tech Challenge, the students have partners who come to them with a specific request. The variety of Tech Challenges is quite wide: from chem tech to agriculture and from robotics to aerospace. And this year, for the first time, the Legal Tech Colab came up with two legal  tech challenges.

So Victor did some research, talked to different people in our network and came up with two ideas.

1. Create a digital sokution for legal aid

The problem behind this challenge: German Prozesskostenhilfe is an invaluable support for those who find themselves in a legal dispute but lack the financial means to fight it. However, the application process can be overwhelming. The form has to be filled out in German, it is confusing and full of legal terminology. Most would need a lawyer to help with the application, which they probably can’t afford – that’s why they apply in the first place. The barriers and hurdles are therefore huge and make it even more difficult for those in need to ask for help.

2. Create a digital assistant for victims of crime

The starting point for this challenge: Unfortunately, there is still a high number of unreported crimes in Germany. There are many reasons for this: language barriers, shame, lack of knowledge and many other factors. Technology could be a solution to reduce the barriers to reporting crime and provide guidance. So, the second challenge should be to help victims of crime and empower them to get the help they need and to be able to report their crimes.

These two challenges were presented to the students, who were then able to choose from all the Tech Challenges presented by different partners. A real surprise for us was that about 25% of the students chose the legal tech challenges over the other challenges.

Prototyping and Pitch

The students, who were a mix of tech, management and IT students, now had the chance to come up with solutions to the challenges. They were supported by coaches who helped them to form teams, create ideas, develop prototypes and plan their pitch. But something was clearly missing: Knowledge of the German legal system. None of the students had any background in law or the judiciary.

Victor decided to give a brief overview of the German legal system and give the students an idea of what they might need to know before developing a solution.

In order to make it even more practical, Victor also invited two experts, Derk Strybny and Johannes Obenauf, who gave an insight into their daily work and the requirements of the German legal system. Both experts really enjoyed working with the students and Victor was able to persuade them to be co-judges in the final Pich sessions.

After about three months of really hard and creative work, the teams presented their solutions to a panel of judges consisting of the Tech Challenge coaches, Victor and the two experts.

Each team did a great job and made it really difficult for the judges to come to a decision. And the decision had to be made quickly, as the final pitch night took place the day after the pitching sessions, so the winning teams had to be chosen.

And the winners are….

…Team Rannstein: Congratulations to Nikola Tomic, Raphael Stief, Nicole Wenger-Wong and Yung-Yi Wang.
They developed an app that uses a chatbot to provide a preliminary legal analysis, focusing on sexual and physical violence. The app also provides community resources to get in touch with support organisations like “Der Weisse Ring”.

…Team LegalAiders: Congratulations to Dominik M. Aulinger, Nicolas Ebner, Henrik P. Mader, Max Rosenblattl, Olivia Steen and Daniel Wiedenmann for winning this Challenge and the TC Audience Award.

They created an app that guides you through the legal aid form and tells you what information is missing, and is also available in different languages.

Out of all winning teams we are proud that LegalAiders also managed to win the Tech Challenge Audience Award at the pitch night which is a testament to their passion as a team and the increasing importance of Legal Tech Solutions. 

We cannot emphasise and repeat often enough how incredibly impressed we were with the two teams and all the other participants. To perform such great results in such a short time is a great achievement and we are delighted that we were able to offer the two winning teams €1000 each in prize money. We hope this was a way for them to celebrate themselves and their great achievements. Perhaps it was also the first investment in their new start-up. Potential, talent and enthusiasm are definitely what they all bring to the table and we are happy to have met these talents and hopefully have them in our network for a long time to come.