Wouter
Dammers
Lawyer
What is so interesting about Legal Tech?
The combination of legal issues and data analysis comes together in Legal Tech, an umbrella term for all kinds of software technical solutions. As a lawyer you are not necessarily trained to perform data analysis, but you can often use it to make faster and often more accurate estimates. Then ‘legal tech’ is not a threat, but a tool.
What, in your opinion, is the most interesting aspect of law?
It enables individuals and companies to do things. On the one hand, it provides freedoms such as fundamental rights and international treaties, and on the other it provides tools for how we do things.
Copyright is a good example for this: It arises when something is created and is sufficiently creative. If that is the case, we have agreed that someone else will not run off with it without permission, earn money, or reuse it without you wanting it for purposes that you do not support. It therefore provides guidance: commercial as well as idealistic.
How are you being so passionate about intellectual property law?
The creativity and the many manifestations. By investing time (and money) you try to build up an appreciation for a certain form of expression. I think it’s great that artists, stage animals and entrepreneurs do what they are good at and can build appreciation for it. The law helps them with this. I now also notice that when building my own lacrosse club that with a nice sport you have a good logo and many positive messages that you are trying to build an environment, a sport and a name. So I have this entrepreneurial spirit in common with our customers. They want to do what they can do well and we support them in this.
What else are we allowed to know about you?
For a few years now, I have been actively teaching Lacrosse sports and have set up my own club for this in a region where the sport had not yet been introduced. The name ‘Ogers Lacrosse’ has been suggested by Wouter Dammers as an alliteration Ossendrecht Ogers. This has led to a new movement towards’ youth lacrosse in the Netherlands and Belgium with its own competition. It is a broadening of the existing sports offer and we see many non-athletes picking it up quickly. With a ‘grass roots lacrosse project’ I take care of part-time that Lacrosse is much better known, in the Southwest Netherlands and beyond.
