Law firm Mason Hayes & Curran has created a portal called Co Deploy to assist “enterprising and altruistic businesses” in linking up to develop solutions to the challenges posed by Covid-19.

The portal was created by a team from MHC that participated in the Financial Times Innovative Lawyers Global Legal Hackathon Challenge, an event that ran from April 17 to May 22 and whose purpose was to “unleash the talent and creativity of the world’s legal industry” to collaborate in finding innovative answers to the Covid-19 challenge.

More than 170 projects were submitted during the challenge, involving more than 2,700 people from around 225 law firms across the world.

The MHC hackathon team focused on businesses that are adapting their operations to meet urgent market needs created by Covid-19. The Co Deploy portal they came up with aims to match-make businesses to allow them collaborate, or simply share experience and knowledge, to deliver solutions to Covid-19 issues, “enable businesses to redeploy their businesses and workforces and equip companies with basic legal know-how and understanding of the pitfalls” that may arise in adapting their businesses and skill sets.

Partner Muireann Dennehy said: “We have advised a number of businesses during this time, and understand the difficulties they face in terms of pivoting their operations in a safe and lawful manner. Our submission for the Hackathon Challenge, Co Deploy, is a user-friendly and secure online space for information sharing and collaboration.

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“Businesses can join the platform and team up with other likeminded businesses and individuals, sharing information in order to support a safe and lawful business pivot.”

She added that Mason Hayes & Curran would like to hear from other organisations that may wish to join in further developing the portal: As we start to build out the portal into a functioning marketplace for businesses, we are looking for other organisations with the technological expertise to assist with further developing the key features of the platform. 

”This is an exciting opportunity to further develop a resource that will be able to assist companies in surviving through this crisis and beyond.”

Enterprise Ireland IP manager Joe Doyle added: “There are risks to pivoting rapidly into new fields, products and markets. SMEs might not be aware of some of these risks and in the rush to create solutions they may also create problems that may only materialise down the line. 

“The Co Deploy initiative by MHC is certain to be a valuable resource to help these companies understand and address IP, legal, regulatory and other risks in good time so they can deliver their solutions with more confidence, efficiency and impact.”

There’s full information about the Co Deploy portal and the FT legal hackathon here.

Photo: Mason Hayes & Curran's Muireann Dennehy and Maurice Phelan