"How did a random guy in Hungary lead a social media influencer to a legal tech AI company?" he said. "That's a good one."
The database, which is connecting lawyers with refugees seeking asylum in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, was set up at the start of this week. Behind it are Koppany's firm in Budapest, the popular meme Instagram account BigLawBoiz, and Los Angeles-based legal technology company HyperDraft. They told Law360 that over 1,000 lawyers have already signed up to be paired with a refugee fleeing Ukraine in need of immigration or any other kind of legal help.
Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP has agreed to donate its resources to the database and reach out to more firms to get them involved, Willkie confirmed.
Koppany, HyperDraft CEO Tony Thai, and the 20-something associate behind BigLawBoiz, who asked to remain anonymous, told Law360 they're hoping to get even more lawyers and law firms involved to respond to what Koppany anticipates will be an overwhelming need for legal services in the weeks to come.
"The volume that we're going to be hit with in the United States — and we're expecting some legislation on Ukrainian refugees soon — is going to be huge," Koppany said. "Even if every pro bono law department in every BigLaw firm in the world took on 10 cases, it's nowhere near enough. So we need BigLaw, but we also need the individual attorneys."
The BigLawBoiz founder likened the database to a decentralized law firm, bringing together attorneys from all over the world who are working at firms big and small.
"I don't have any firm affiliation to Oliver or Tony," he said. "We do totally different things in totally different parts of the world, but here we are able to literally in a moment's notice start working together and get thousands of attorneys not affiliated with each other on the same project, doing the same thing."
The database came together almost entirely because of social media. The BigLawBoiz founder, who has 125,000 followers on Instagram, most of whom are lawyers, was looking for a way to utilize his platform to bring awareness to how attorneys can help in the crisis. He put out a blast, asking followers to send him any information about pro bono projects. Someone sent him a screenshot of Koppany's LinkedIn post.
Koppany, also turning to social media, had posted that his firm KNP Law in Budapest would be "converting its purpose to providing pro bono assistance to those fleeing the war in Ukraine." In the post, he invited other lawyers in the area to help the firm in its efforts to reach people at the border.
The BigLawBoiz founder reached out to Koppany and offered to help get even more lawyers involved. He shared Koppany's post on his Instagram page. While the social media post began circulating, both men worked on spreading the word to refugees as well.
The attorney behind BigLawBoiz said he found most of the refugees in the database through scouring social media. But Koppany also went to the border in person, holding up a large poster with the words "legal assistance" written in Ukrainian, Hungarian and English.
Soon they had more interested lawyers than they knew what to do with, the pair said. That's when the BigLawBoiz founder decided to reach out to his friend Thai.
Thai and his company HyperDraft helped develop a code to match lawyers with refugees in need of help. And now, Thai says he is working alongside another legal technology company to build a vetting system that can confirm whether both the lawyers and the refugees signing up for the database are who they say they are.
"The system that Tony's team is building doesn't exist, not just for this crisis but for any crisis," said Koppany of KNP Law.
The BigLawBoiz attorney said he hopes the database can be a model for future crises, getting lawyers and refugees connected as quickly as possible. He said he also wants to get more BigLaw firms and some nongovernmental organizations involved to offer training and assistance to lawyers who want to help but might not be expert in immigration matters.
"A lot of us became lawyers because we want to help people," he said. "We didn't necessarily go to law school with the intentions of being M&A deal attorneys or class action litigators. We went to school because we want to help people, and then you end up down a path that may not necessarily be filling that need and a lot of people use pro bono opportunities to do that."
--Editing by Jill Coffey.
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