We are very excited to be bringing back DFF’s litigation retreat in an online format between 12 and 18 November 2020 (excluding the weekend), and we welcome applications from litigators across Europe working on digital rights issues to join us.

In 2018, we ran litigation retreats in Montenegro and Belgrade. You can watch a video of our first retreat here. These were great opportunities for digital rights litigators to spend time together, sharpen their litigation skills, and share knowledge, experiences and tactics that others could use in their own litigation.

During these retreats, a variety of cases were workshopped from challenges to police use of facial recognition technology to litigation against Facebook’s censorship of user content. 

At our retreats, we aim to create a co-learning environment where participants can concentrate their time, energy and attention to further developing and working through challenges in relation to an ongoing piece of digital rights litigation.

Through creating this space, and holding focused discussions, we hope that participants can come away from these retreats with an enhanced litigation strategy and plan for their cases. As a participant from a previous retreat said: “it is a unique opportunity to stop and reflect on what can be done better when you’re trying to achieve change using strategic litigation.”

…“it is a unique opportunity to stop and reflect on what can be done better when you’re trying to achieve change using strategic litigation”

We have remodeled our previous retreats in order to hold this one virtually. It will include strategic litigation training and workshopping components in a collaborative online environment. The four-day programme will comprise sessions on building skills for developing a litigation strategy, case planning, and advocacy, and will include dedicated sessions on thematic areas relevant to litigating digital rights cases in Europe.

Built into this agenda will be dedicated group work, where participants will work on strategic litigation plans for case studies that they have brought to the virtual retreat. We will also have some time to get to know each other with some informal online social activities.

The four-day programme will comprise sessions on building skills for developing a litigation strategy, case planning, and advocacy, and will include dedicated sessions on thematic areas

As with past retreats, the aim of the four days is to give participants time to do deep work on their case studies. Therefore, even though the online sessions across the four days will be short and intensive, we encourage those attending to use the rest of the time across these four days to disconnect from other ongoing projects and think through aspects of their cases in light of conversations they will have with the group. Therefore, we would recommend that all those who attend treat the four days as a real retreat, away from other work pressures and external realities. 

If you are interested in joining us, please get in touch with us and we will send you a short application form to fill out. The deadline for applications is 16 October 2020.

The main thing we ask for is that all participants come to the retreat with a digital rights case study – whether existing or hypothetical – that they would be interested in litigating. Ideally, the case study would fall within DFF’s thematic focus areas, which you can read more about here, but we are open to other strategic case ideas as well. 

We hope you will be able to join us!