Creating bold legal solutions to tackle the climate crisis with Lawhack 2026

LawHack 2026 brought together a powerful group of legal experts committed to climate justice, and from the outset, there was a clear sense of shared purpose in the room.   

Co-hosted by the National Justice Project and the Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education and Research, the event saw 30 participants take on some of the most urgent climate justice challenges facing Australia today.   

Teams, made up of legal experts from Hicksons, Gadens, Shine Lawyers, Grata Fund, Wotton Kearney, Macquarie University and the National Justice Project, spent the day developing and refining ideas supported by a group of mentors.   

Experts Katrina Bullock, Prof. Beth Goldblatt and Dr Keely Boom, worked alongside the participants to test ideas and offer insights before their final pitches. 

Read more: How we catalysed legal action through LawHack 2023: Rights of the Child

After hours of hard work, the teams presented their final pitches to our two incredible judges, Dr Bal Kama and Dr Marcelle Burns, who are leading voices in human rights, law and climate justice. Read more about the judges and mentors here. 

Innovative climate justice solutions

A key part of the judging criteria stated the team’s ‘solution’ be novel and courageous, and we saw this in the creativity of the ideas presented, from class actions to compensation schemes.  

One team focused on the disproportionate impact of extreme weather on people with disability, designing legal pathways to improve access to evacuation, housing and recovery support.   

Another team looked at how to shift the legal profession itself, proposing a Climate Collaboration Hub to help lawyers embed climate-conscious thinking into their everyday work.  

Other teams explored ways to hold corporations accountable for environmental harm and to break down barriers to justice for communities most affected by it. Details of the proposals will be released in a report in April. 

Read more: LawHack 2026: Legal strategies to tackle the climate crisis in Australia

Climate justice compensation scheme

Congratulations to the winning team, Gadens, who put forward a compensation scheme to support communities affected by climate harm, improving critical access to support.  

This stood out to the judges as a bold and practical idea, grounded in lived experience and focused on real-world impact. 

LawHack is a collective effort. We are grateful to our sponsor, the Knights Family – Jabula Foundation, for sponsoring this event. A special thank you to International Towers for generously hosting us.   

A huge thank you to Hicksons who developed the detailed Hack Pack outlining the legal, social and historical context of climate justice and resources to assist in preparing for their challenge.  

If you would like to support this work and help bring ideas like these to life, you can reach out to learn more about how you can work with the National Justice Project.  

Read more: The climate crisis is one of the greatest human rights challenges of our time