It all started with a simple request. When LexisNexis General Counsel Ian McDougall joined the company, his boss pointed to the company’s existing corporate social responsibility efforts and said, “We’re doing a lot of great stuff around the world, is there a way we can coordinate this better?” Now, years later, McDougall has had the honor of announcing the LexisNexis Rule of Law Foundation, a non-profit entity coordinating rule of law initiatives all over the world.
It’s an ambitious program that goes beyond the traditional fundraising effort that form the core of most social responsibility efforts. The two driving principles behind the LexisNexis Rule of Law Foundation are, first, to deploy the core skills of LexisNexis where possible and, second, to work with partners that can bring skills to the table that LexisNexis can’t. Fundamentally, LexisNexis isn’t the world’s leader in raising money from charity bike races, it’s a world leader in the legal sector… and now it wants to use those skills for good.
This is a message I’ve been pushing in these pages for years. Firms love pro bono work, but parachuting a commercial real estate attorney into a death penalty case isn’t necessarily helpful. Public service should be based around core strengths — if you’re in real estate, help a homeless shelter secure a new location and save the capital cases for the folks still in that practice. With a little imagination, lawyers can come up with ways to best target their skill sets for the public good.
The mission of the LexisNexis Rule of Law Foundation revolves around four components that define the rule of law: Equality Under the Law, Transparency of Law, an Independent Judiciary, and Accessible Legal Remedies. Coming up with a definition of the rule of law is no easy task. It’s a phrase that can easily lend itself to political and cultural biases. In these four pillars, McDougall hopes the entity has found an apolitical and culturally neutral definition.
“This is why we always say that we’re ‘global’ rather than just working with the ‘developing world,'” McDougall pointed out. “The rule of law can be under threat in developed as well as developing nations. Our message is we have to be on our guard no matter what country we’re in.”
One of the Foundation’s key tools is the Rule of Law tracker, demonstrating the value heightened rule of law can bring across a number of well-being metrics from declining homicide to improving infant mortality rates to increasing GDP. “One thing we don’t shy away from when talking to the business community is that it’s not just the right thing to do, it’s the right thing for your pocket too,” McDougall said. “When you’re a company operating in an environment where GDP is growing, the chance of having a successful business increases. Businesses should be self-interested in the rule of law.”
Homicide rates and rule of law via LexisNexis Rule of Law Foundation
“I want to grandly say, we’re going to change the world for the better,” McDougall said. “We’ve made a good start already — we’ve done some great stuff.”
One of the concrete accomplishments LexisNexis points to — that actually predates the Foundation, but is a solid proof of concept for the work the group is doing — is a tech product it put together and distributed to users around the world. Are you witnessing a war crime? There’s an app for that! While that may be a glib callback to an old smartphone ad campaign, it’s actually true. Leveraging its technical knowhow, the Rule of Law Foundation partnered with the International Bar Association to create the eyeWitness to Atrocities app. While viral videos of crimes against humanity are constantly uploaded around the world, many are useless in terms of evidence. McDougall explained the genesis of the application:
How can we do something to help the submission of video evidence to a court? So with the International Bar Association, we used our tech to create an app that allows people to record video evidence of crimes against humanity that date and time stamps the video and then encrypts it to prevent it from being altered. That video is then sent to a LexisNexis server where it remains until reviewed by appointed international lawyers.
The app leaves no trace on the user’s smartphone that a video was uploaded — to protect them from reprisal.
So far, the app has over 10,000 downloads and has been used in 130 countries and has already successfully aided in the conviction of war criminals.
The Foundation conducts judge training in Africa, working on developing a land registry (potentially blockchain-based) to protect rural farmers in Myanmar, digitizing court systems, using seasoned attorneys to help draft laws. Wherever LexisNexis sees an opportunity to use the skills the company excels in to help the cause, the Rule of Law Foundation is eager to get involved.
And, as its driving principles dictate, LexisNexis is working to develop partnerships. At the Foundation’s press unveiling, it announced a partnership with the Global Investigative Journalism Network to provide LexisNexis research data to help them journalists around the world access deep background information and keep their investigation going. Many other entities are in the MOU stage and will be announced in the near future. It’s an exciting time for McDougall and the Foundation he helped get going based on that simple conversation all those years ago.
“From a response perspective, I’ve been overwhelmed by the response we’ve received from this. People are seeing this as a major initiative. People are coming to us to ask how they can help.”
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
