Legal Software: Free Law Innovation Fellowship, Washington, DC: Applications invited

luni, 22 septembrie 2014

Free Law Innovation Fellowship, Washington, DC: Applications invited

A call for applications for Free Law Innovation Fellowship, has been issued by the Office of the Chief Counsel of the Council of the District of Columbia, in Washington, DC, USA.

The application deadline appears to be 15 December 2014.

A video describing the fellowship is available at: http://ift.tt/1Ds4qmX

Here is a description of the fellowship, from the announcement:

[...] I am delighted to announce the establishment of the Free Law Innovation Fellow.

The Innovation Fellow is as much an experiment as anything else: can developers, working in the open and side-by-side with practicing lawyers, make government work better and more accessible? Can lawyers learn to improve their practices by observing and integrating collaborative methods and tools that developers have mastered over the years? And can we do this in a sustainable way, engaging fully with the open-source community?

My theory is that developers can help make government data more accessible—through proactive disclosure of datasets and through smarter internal policies. My theory is that developers can build tools to help government lawyers work more effectively and with a greater focus on serving the public interest.

Let me be blunt: if my theory is right, the Innovation Fellow can be a complete game-changer for the public sector. But, for this to work, we need the right person for the job. We need a civic-hacker-in-residence who has the ability to understand a problem, ship code, and to get the job done. Most importantly, we need a person who wants to make a difference—in our nation’s capital and beyond.

If you are that person, please consider applying to be the first ever Free Law Innovation Fellow. I look forward to working with you. [...]

For more details, please see the announcement.

HT @JoshData