Bottom-up justice innovation in Ukraine

Now, an elucidation: bottom-up and top-down are not strangers. In Ukraine, the Ministry of Justice has been proactively supporting justice innovations from the citizenry that address peoples justice-needs.

Early this year, the Minister of Justice of Ukraine signed an MoU with HiiL to help facilitate the continued development of a justice innovation ecosystem in Ukraine.

Last year, Ukranian innovation Axdraft applied to the Innovating Justice Challenge and reached the finals. They have since received 1million dollars in funding from the world-renown accelerator, Y-Combinator.

“When funding priorities for donors change, there is a critical need to continue sustaining the community,” says Dmitry Foremnyi, HiiL’s Innovating Justice agent in Ukraine. “That is vital to keep up knowledge exchange as well as other forms of practical support.”

Foremnyi has been working to secure the necessary support on the ground. Thanks to support of local activities from USAID, and the shared labor of organising the Innovating Justice Challenge activities with 1991 Open Data Incubator expect more top-quality justice innovations from Ukraine to be creating impact.

There will be six weeks of business development and pitch training supported by a network of Ukrainian mentors.

This is the first year we have decided to offer pre-finalists exclusively local-mentor support and we are very excited to communicate the results of how this pans-out.

Here is the list of 10 finalists (selected out of 48!) who will go through the local acceleration program:

inhouseyurist.com
FastDoc
StaffBot
PravoMan 
Legal literacy through gamification 
Law Finder
CONSULTANT
Dumka.ua
ReporTax
AirLaw.Pro

To follow the events online, 1991 Open Data Incubator are posting regularly about the timeline of scheduled activities on their Facebook page.

Announcing the winners of the Innovating Justice Challenge Regional Finals Ukraine
Winners of the Innovating Justice Challenge Regional Final Ukraine: Axdraft
Innovating Justice Challenge alumni share their support of the next wave of promising justice innovations in Ukraine