# Legal Hackers 2020 Reflection

***What is your name?*** My name is Bryan Wilson.

***What is your profession/role?*** I primarily identify as a Legal Engineer -- I work almost exclusively in the interdisciplinary (antidisciplinary) spaces between law, technology, and design. I currently am a fellow in MIT's Connection Science Research group under Alex "Sandy" Pentland. As part of my research there, I serve as the founding Editor in Chief of the MIT Computational Law Report and am a colleague instructor for the Media Lab's Global Ventures course. In addition to research, I also do consulting. In that domain, I am working on a project to improve community equity outcomes with the Kauffman Foundation and vertically integrate legal processes for a company that is exploring data collaboratives and data trusts.

***What chapter/student group do you organize?*** I founded and co-manage KC Legal Hackers; while in the Boston area last year, I also helped out with some Boston Legal Hackers events.

***Why did you decide to join Legal Hackers?*** I decided to join Legal Hackers back in 2015 after attending a legaltech hackathon and being exposed to such an open, inviting, and generative community. At that point in my life, I was actually quite disillusioned with law school. I was not a fan of how formal everything had to be and saw some of the formalism as being detractive to the actual purposes law and justice were meant to serve. Finding a community that aligned with these values was honestly a life changing event.

***What is your favorite thing about Legal Hackers?*** There are a number of things that I love about Legal Hackers. The biggest one is community. Some of my absolute favorite people are Legal Hackers. I've actually gotten multiple jobs because people either know me directly through Legal Hackers or knew I was associated with Legal Hackers. Pre-COVID, I actually had the opportunity to speak on different continents based on connections from Legal Hackers. I also love (and will dearly miss) being able to do karaoke with everyone at the Legal Hackers Global Summit with such an incredibly wonderful collection of humans. In short, I think the Legal Hackers community shows the future that is possible by connecting with each other and approaching the biggest problems of society undaunted with the humility to break a problem down into manageable pieces and tackle each one of those pieces a day at a time.

***What are you excited about for the future of Legal Hackers?*** I am quite excited about some of the work coming out of the Open Education Resources Virtual Forum. I've been working with some folks at the American Bar Association and the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System and we'll be launching a new initiative through this collaboration in 2021.