newtech.law

Posted on Categories creative industry, IT, startups

Can you sign a contract without reading it?

The third post-hackathon interview: After InteliLex and DoxyChain, it’s time for bSure, the team that took third place in the Polish phase of the Global Legal Hackathon.

Justyna Zandberg-Malec: During the hackathon you worked on an application that points out to freelancers contractual provisions that are disadvantageous to them. Where did you get this idea?

Sabina Łobocka: A colleague who wasn’t taking part in the hackathon suggested it to me (and allowed us to use it). He was signing a contract with a residential real estate developer and didn’t entirely understand all the clauses. It took him a long time to check whether any of the clauses were unfavourable to him. That’s why we thought of an application that ordinary people could use to protect against irregularities and negative legal consequences for them.

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Posted on Categories fintech, startups

Cross-sector regulatory sandbox

Last year I proposed that Poland should take a broader approach to the issue of regulatory sandboxes, not merely copying solutions adopted in other countries. Now we see the first steps towards creation of multi-sectoral (not exclusively financial) regulatory sandboxes.

The trend started by the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK of creating regulatory sandboxes for the financial sector has spread around the world, including Poland. Although many voices from major jurisdictions, such as the United States and Germany, are skeptical, this solution undoubtedly has its advantages. Market participants usually rate this concept very highly, even if in reality the sandbox does not deliver immediate regulatory benefits (for example, it does not enable limited operation of regulated activity without a licence, which would be difficult in EU member states due to the harmonised regulatory regime).

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Posted on Categories creative industry, IT, startups

InteliLex speeds up the work of lawyers

An interview with Karol Kłaczyński, Agnieszka Poteralska, Artur Tanona and Maciej Zalewski, members of the team that won first place in the Polish phase of the Global Legal Hackathon.

You won the Polish phase of the Global Legal Hackathon with a solution that you yourselves describe as “a plug-in to Word,” but which has the chance to truly expedite the work of lawyers. What is your concept all about?

Karol Kłaczyński: InteliLex provides quick access to the document database created at the given organisation. In our discussions with lawyers this problem often comes up. The knowledge exists, it has been developed, but searching for it is time-consuming and inefficient. InteliLex helps improve the efficiency of the search.

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Posted on Categories fintech, startups

Effective regulatory sandboxes: not only financial regulations, but also personal data protection

Regulatory sandboxes usually focus on financial regulations. However, these are not the only obstacle holding back innovative fintech start-ups. More extensive sandbox solutions that also cover data protection issues could make Poland a pioneer on the attractive global market supporting fintech.

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Posted on Categories electronic identification, privacy/personal data protection, startups

Small firms, big data

Many startups offer their clients big data analysis services based on machine-learning algorithms. The results of such analyses can be of interest to any companies profiling their products or marketing campaigns. But for the analysis to be reliable, it takes data—the more the better. Algorithms using machine learning must have something to learn from. The accuracy of the forecasts subsequently developed for business aims will depend on the scope of the training data fed to them. If the algorithm is limited from the start to analysis of an abridged sample of observations, the risk increases that it will incorrectly group data, overlooking important correlations or causal connections—or see them where they don’t exist. Only training the algorithm on large datasets can minimise the risk of shortcomings in diagnosis and prognosis.

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