Each team will be formed by five students and three Linklaters lawyers from the same country. The number of local teams will vary by country.

It’s an opportunity for team members to work together to generate innovative ideas while forming a network of students and lawyers across Europe. Each participant will receive support and coaching throughout the Linkathon as well as unique opportunities to take part in exclusive training sessions.

While each team will decide how to structure their work, we anticipate that each participant will spend 15 hours on the Linkathon.

The Linkathon is open to all current law students in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia and Sweden. The selected students will be contacted via email. As all regional webinars as well as the submissions will be in English, excellent English skills are desired to get the maximum value out of the experience.

With its roots in industrial design, design thinking involves idea generation, prototyping and empathy for your end-user. Legal design's defining characteristic is its radical human-centred approach, putting the user at the heart of the design process.

As part of the Linkathon experience, you’ll be invited to a fast-paced design thinking workshop. This is an opportunity to apply design thinking principles on a ‘real-life’ problem; giving you experience and skills that you can then put directly to use when developing your team’s Linkathon solution.

During the Linkathon, you will have access to Linklaters’ LegalTech Curriculum, which we’ve developed in collaboration with Swansea University to ensure our current and future lawyers are equipped with the knowledge and skills they need to enhance their professional development in the tech-space.

The curriculum is made up of six bitesize modules covering topics such as AI and the Law, to blockchain and data for lawyers.

The ever-increasing importance of innovation and legal tech means that we’re seeing a number of new roles in law in addition to the traditional lawyer career path. As part of the Linkathon, you’ll get to hear from a panel of Linklaters lawyers discussing opportunities and challenges in these new roles and sharing their best tips for how to prepare for the legal career of tomorrow.

You will also hear from our experts on how we’re adding value to our client relationships by supporting clients beyond legal advice, as well as hear from our clients on what they want from their law firm of tomorrow.

All ideas will be reviewed by our judges; a panel of lawyers passionate about innovation and senior marketing, HR and innovation professionals. Each team will also get to share and pitch their idea to their fellow Linkathon participants and vote for the winning idea alongside our expert panel during a virtual event. Each member of the winning team will be awarded a €60 gift voucher.