The Better Angels of Technology & Law in Africa
A Nigerian hero is an inspiration to the world
With all the talk about Google’s AI fail and the anti-Elon Musk attorneys who persuaded a judge to toss out the Musk pay package 80% of the Tesla board approved, only to turn around and ask the judge to fork over to them $6 billion in legal fees—in Tesla stock, no less!—some news out of Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, is a welcome reprieve and important reminder of the wonderful things service-oriented lawyers have done and can do by harnessing technology for the Greater Good.
The basics are: a bright and compassionate lawyer named Nelson Olanipekun left corporate law to help unjustly detained indigent victims by marshaling a pro bono network of volunteers to take on a Nigerian justice system plagued by corruption and dysfunction. (Transparency International ranks Nigeria 150th worst out of 180 countries.) The result was the app Gavel. You can read more on Quartz.
The engine under Nelson’s hood? “The initiative was born from a personal experience a long time ago when my father desperately needed legal aid but was only able to get it through a lawyer who had volunteered.”
Hooray for Nelson!