Although media coverage of hackathons designed to spur innovation in the legal industry would seem to be an entirely positive thing, an ABA article on the topic somehow manages to sound dated and out-of-touch. The article, ‘Hackathon’ movement may jump-start a legal career, depressingly spends half of its focus addressing the problem of the negative stigma surrounding the word term “hacker.” This would indeed be a useful topic – about a decade ago. I am sure there are plenty of older lawyers that still view the term negatively, but they must be a minority (even in law) and it seems sad to waste half of the media coverage to address the fears of a uninformed lawyers. An article that offered more specifics on the utility of these events in this specific industry would have been a million times better. Too me, this article was depressing because it read like a piece about about sailing that wasted its time on the fear that people might sail off the horizon. In the end, if you are the type of lawyer that fears the term hacker, you probably will not be going to any hackathons anyway.
