On 11 June 2025, HiiL joined Wolters Kluwer and the American Arbitration Association–International Centre for Dispute Resolution (AAA–ICDR) for the Open Innovation Hackathon in The Hague. This one-day event brought together legal technologists, dispute resolution professionals and innovators to explore how AI can improve access to justice. Ten multidisciplinary teams competed to design AI-driven solutions for real-world legal challenges, with a strong focus on collaboration experimentation, and user-centered design. Among the ten challenges presented, two were developed in partnership with HiiL and E-Arbitrator, a participant in HiiL’s Justice Accelerator Programme in 2023. These cases spotlighted how targeted collaboration between justice organizations and tech experts can produce tangible, impactful solutions.
Supporting MSMEs in Tunisia and Streamlining Arbitration
HiiL’s hackathon challenge focused on micro, small and medium-sized enterprises in Tunisia. These businesses are vital to the country’s economy but frequently face legal barriers, from navigating complex regulations and contracts to resolving disputes. Our goal was to create a tool that could help MSMEs prevent and resolve everyday legal issues before they escalate. Ahead of the event, HiiL partnered with Agami to develop a prototype: a multilingual chatbot on Telegram. Combining AI tools like Weaviate (a vector database), Claude (a large language model), and ElevenLabs (for text-to-speech), the chatbot could answer legal questions in Arabic, French or English.
In parallel, the E-Arbitrator challenge invited participants to enhance its AI assistant, Salomon, which supports users on its online arbitration platform. During the hackathon, the team expanded Salomon’s functionality to allow users to upload a contract and describe their legal situation following which the assistant suggests whether to pursue negotiation, mediation or arbitration, and then helps initiate that process. This feature made arbitration pathways more accessible, especially for small businesses and self-represented individuals, by integrating legal triage with case submission into a single user journey.
A Stronger Partnership for People-Centred Innovation
One of the key success factors was our collaboration with Agami. Agami is an India-based non-profit that supports innovation and collaborative leadership to advance new ideas in law and justice. Prior to Hackathon, Agami had developed a working prototype – a multilingual, AI-driven chatbot – which shaped the solutions design direction and technical architecture, allowing the teams to focus on refinement and innovation during the competition, rather than starting from scratch.
The HiiL–Agami partnership exemplifies a shared ambition: to create locally relevant justice tools that (in this case) underserved entrepreneurs and small businesses can easily access and benefit from. The collaboration is part of a broader strategy HiiL and Agami are pursuing: building open-source digital AI tools that are grounded in real legal needs, and that communities can adapt and own. We call this approach Digital Public Infrastructure for justice, technology that’s not only effective, but equitable and open to all.
By combining HiiL’s experience in justice innovation with Agami’s frontline justice and technical expertise, we are demonstrating how practical, people-centred solutions can emerge when legal insight and technology work hand-in-hand.
From Prototype to Practice: Building Tools That Last
While the Open Innovation Hackathon was a fast-paced, one-day event, its outcomes are designed for long-term impact. For HiiL the work is just beginning. The next step is to bring the MSME chatbot from concept to community. We will explore if a local institutional partner in Tunisia is interested in piloting the tool, adapting it further to the country’s legal landscape, and supporting its rollout to small business owners. This partnership is essential: it ensures the solution remains grounded in local realities, meets actual user needs, and gains the trust of the communities it is designed to serve.
In parallel, we’re exploring how to integrate aspects of E-Arbitrator’s AI assistant into the chatbot. This would combine two key justice functions in one tool: early legal guidance and accessible dispute resolution. Imagine a small business owner receiving not only legal information to avoid conflict, but also immediate support if a dispute does arise, all within the same digital interface. This kind of user journey reflects our goal of delivering justice services that are not only intelligent but also intuitive.
A Shared Vision for People-Centred Justice Innovation
The hackathon clearly demonstrated the value of cross-sector collaboration. When technologists, legal experts and community-driven organizations come together around a shared purpose, a path to meaningful change emerges. For HiiL, the experience reaffirmed our core belief: that scalable, open and locally grounded justice tools are essential infrastructure in the digital age.
