We’re excited to be hosting a workshop focusing on Computational Legal Studies here at HKU next June (http://www.lawtech.hk/cfp-computational-legal-studies-2018). Details from the CFP below. We’ve already put together an exciting bunch of researchers. Don’t hesitate to submit something if you’d like to attend.
CFP: The Emergence of Computational Legal Studies:
The Promises and Challenges of Data-Driven Legal Research
In recent decades, technology has had a profound influence on the practice of law, and the legal education landscape. Meanwhile, it has also begun to transform the way that scholars perform empirical legal research. Improved access to data, increased computational power, and the development of new analytic techniques have led to the emergence of a body of work that some refer to as “Computational Legal Studies.”
Much of the scholarly discourse surrounding “Law and Technology” has focused on either the doctrinal issues raised by technological developments, or the impact of legal technologies on the practice of the law. Meanwhile, comparatively little attention has been paid to Computational Legal Studies as such.
The Department of Law at the University of Hong Kong, in conjunction with the University’s Law & Technology Centre, is excited to provide a venue for computational legal scholars to come together and discuss the promises and challenges facing this emerging body of research.
We seek papers or presentations broadly related to Computational Legal Studies. Our definition of Computational Legal Studies is expansive, including:
- Research that applies computational data processing or analytic methods to questions of interest to legal scholars
- Work that explores computational legal studies as a sub-discipline
- Methodological work that develops or assess computational methods of interest to legal scholars
We are interested in hearing from scholars using any-and-all computational methods including: machine learning, natural language processing, large-data set analysis, network analysis, computer simulation and modeling, computational data collection, etc.
The workshop will be held on June 28–29th at the University of Hong Kong. Some financial assistance may be available to partially offset travel costs.
To submit work, or inquire about the workshop please contact Ryan Whalen (whalen@hku.hk). Submissions can include drafts of papers or extended abstracts (~500 words) about research projects you would like to undertake and present at the workshop. Submissions should be received by February 28th 2018. Papers from the workshop will be made available in an edited volume.