Miami law alumna Emily Cabrera wins hackathon with artificial intelligence tool protecting attorney-client privilege
University of Miami alumna Emily Cabrera won a hackathon with Privilege Sentinel, an AI tool designed to protect attorney-client privilege.Summary
Emily Cabrera, an alumna of the University of Miami School of Law and legal counsel at IRG Ventures LLC, won the April 2026 HeyCounsel Claude Cowork Hackathon. Her winning project, "Privilege Sentinel," serves as a "pre-flight checker" that prevents lawyers from accidentally disclosing privileged information when using AI prompts. The tool identifies risks before a prompt is sent, addressing a critical vulnerability in AI-driven legal workflows.
Despite having no formal computer science background and only two months of AI experience, Cabrera's tool was quickly integrated into open-source legal ecosystems like Lawvable and LegalQuants. She credits her success to her legal training, noting that building AI tools feels similar to drafting legal documents because both require precision, clear definitions, and the anticipation of edge cases. She emphasizes that her approach was shaped by her education at Miami Law, specifically through programs that treated law as a design discipline.
Cabrera's achievement highlights a growing trend where legal professionals, rather than just software developers, are becoming the architects of legal AI. She encourages law students to solve specific, "narrow and irritating" legal problems by building small, functional tools. Her next project, "Counterweight," aims to analyze contract risk by examining bargaining-power asymmetry.
(Source：Complete Ai Training)
