The event was organized by the Open World Forum (OWF), la Direction de l’information légale et administrative (DILA), Etalab, and NUMA.
The event Website is at: openlaw.fr
The event program is at: http://ift.tt/106R5AP
One Twitter hashtag for the event is: #openlaw
Click here for a storify of images and Twitter tweets from the event.
Here is a description of the event, from the event’s Website:
Open Law est un programme de cocréation juridique organisé par l’Open World Forum (OWF), la Direction de l’information légale et administrative (DILA), Etalab et le NUMA et lancé le jeudi 30 octobre 2014 lors de l’Open World Forum 2014. Placé sous le signe de l’innovation et de lacollaboration, il a vocation a être alimenté durant toute une année par une multitude d’événements périodiques permettant d’approfondir, préfigurer et prototyper les différents projets et scénarios de services susceptibles d’être coconstruits.
Le programme s’appuie sur les jeux de données récemment diffusés en Open Data en France et a pour ambition de stimuler et dynamiser la réutilisation des données juridiques dans le cadre d’une innovation juridique collaborative et ouverte qui réunit le secteur public et privé.
Les objectifs de ce programme sont de :
- réfléchir à l’exercice, la place et les pratiques entourant le droit dans notre société numérique ;
- rendre plus accessibles certains jeux de données juridiques nouvellement ouverts ;
- créer une communauté de « hackers (coconstructeurs) du droit » ;
- mener des expérimentations autour du cadre juridique de ce type d’événement qui regroupe des acteurs de tout milieu.
Ce programme est ouvert à toute personne désirant contribuer, quelle que soit sa formation, son expérience ou encore ses compétences. [...]
Click here for a description of the event at the DILA Website.
Bruno Mathis has posted a description of the event: Comment le web peut profiter de l’ouverture des données juridiques
NAIL 2014: International Workshop “Network Analysis in Law”
SW4Law 2014: International Workshop on Semantic Web for Law
CMNA14: International Workshop on Computational Modeling of Natural Argument
MET-ARG2014: International Workshop for Methodologies for Research on Legal Argumentation
For more details, please see the calls.
HT Rinke Hoekstra and Radboud Winkels
Several papers on legal informatics or legal data analysis are scheduled to be presented at ICEGOV 2014: International Conference on the Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance , being held 27-30 October 2014 in Guimarães, Portugal.
Here are the legal informatics or legal data analysis papers that I’ve been able to identify:
For abstracts or full text of papers, please contact the authors.
If you know of other legal informatics papers being presented at ICEGOV 2014, please let us know in the comments to this post.
The conference Website and program are available at: http://ift.tt/1iRlxFE
One Twitter hashtag for the event was: #linkrot
Click here for a storify of images and Twitter tweets from the event.
Here is a description of the event, from the event’s Website:
The Web is fluid and mutable, and this is a “feature” rather than a “bug”. But it also creates challenges in the legal environment (and elsewhere) when fixed content is necessary for legal writers to support their conclusions. Judges, attorneys, academics, and others using citations need systems and practices to preserve web content as it exists in a particular moment in time, and make it reliably available.
On October 24, 2014 Georgetown University Law Library in Washington, D.C. will host a free symposium that explores the problem of link and reference rot.[...]
The event was Webcast, and video of the event may become available shortly.
HT @GtownLawLib
The event Website is at: iposgoodehackathon.ca
The co-hosts included:
The challenges addressed at the event are listed at: http://ift.tt/1ztrhir
The event program is available at: http://ift.tt/1ztrhit
One Twitter hashtag for the event was #iphack
Click here for a storify of images and Twitter tweets from the event.
HT @StephKimbro
Daniel Martin Katz of Michigan State University has posted The MIT School of Law? A Perspective on Legal Education in the 21st Century , forthcoming in University of Illinois Law Review .
Here is a portion of the abstract, from Dan’s post about the article at Computational Legal Studies :
[...] This essay is offered as part of a symposium honoring the work of the late Larry Ribstein. It is a thought exercise about a hypothetical MIT School of Law—an institution with the type of curriculum that might help prepare students to have the appropriate level of substantive legal expertise and other useful skills that will allow them to deliver value to their clients as well as develop and administer the rules governing markets, politics, and society as we move further into the 21st Century. It is a blueprint based upon the best available information, and like any other plan of action would need to be modified to take stock of shifting realities over time. It is not a solution for all of legal education. Instead, it is a targeted description of an institution and its substantive content that could compete very favorably in the existing and future market. It is a depiction of an institution whose students would arguably be in high demand. It is a high-level sketch of an institution that would be substantively relevant, appropriately practical, theoretically rigorous and world class.
Part I offers an introduction to the question. Part II sets the stage by highlighting several recent trends in the market for legal services. Taking stock of those trends, Part III highlights an alternative paradigm for legal education and describes the polytechnic style of legal education that students might obtain at an MIT School of Law. Part IV carries through on that basic thought experiment by describing the process of attracting, training, and placing students that would occur at MIT Law. Part V provides some concluding thoughts.
Click here for slides of Dan’s presentation on this topic.
William P. Li , Pablo Azar , David Larochelle , Phil Hill , and Andrew W. Lo have posted Law is Code: A Software Engineering Approach to Analyzing the United States Code , at SSRN .
Here is the abstract:
The agglomeration of rules and regulations over time has produced a body of legal code that no single individual can fully comprehend. This complexity produces inefficiencies, makes the processes of understanding and changing the law difficult, and frustrates the fundamental principle that the law should provide fair notice to the governed. In this article, we take a quantitative, unbiased, and software-engineering approach to analyze the evolution of the United States Code from 1926 to today. Software engineers frequently face the challenge of understanding and managing large, structured collections of instructions, directives, and conditional statements, and we adapt and apply their techniques to the U.S. Code over time. Our work produces insights into the structure of the U.S. Code as a whole, its strengths and vulnerabilities, and new ways of thinking about individual laws. For example, we identify the first appearance and spread of important terms in the U.S. Code like “whistleblower” and “privacy.” We also analyze and visualize the network structure of certain substantial reforms, including the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, and show how the interconnections of references can increase complexity and create the potential for unintended consequences. Our work is a timely illustration of computational approaches to law as the legal profession embraces technology for scholarship, to increase efficiency, and to improve access to justice.
Tom Bruce of the Legal Information Institute has posted Caselaw is Set Free, What Next? , at the Google Scholar Blog .
Here are excerpts from the post:
[...] Google Scholar’s caselaw collection is a victory for open access to legal information and the democratization of law. [...]
Five years ago, when Google Scholar added judicial opinions to its portfolio, it created an immediate sensation among lawyers. Small-office and solo practitioners were the most vocal about it; they had always had a difficult time affording the services of commercial publishers, even in print. And now there was access to a significant chunk of material that had previously been lodged firmly behind paywalls. It was linked and searchable, and still better, it offered a version of the citation-tracking and evaluation features that lawyers knew and loved in expensive commercial systems. It had first-class sorting and filtering features. It had Bluebook-form citations for each case [...]. Nobody in the open-access arena had tried such a thing, and probably only Google could have. One commentator said that, “Google fired (arguably) the loudest…salvo in the battle for free access to caselaw… and it apparently came as a tweet”.
Scholar’s immediate impact on the legal profession was owed in large part to its technical virtuosity. It was an unusual display of ingenuity used to democratize services and features whose value had mostly been known only to lawyers. [...]
[...] it was a sign that freely accessible legal information was technically advanced and more than sufficient for many if not most professional needs. Most of all, it signaled that free legal information was something to be taken seriously. It sent that signal at a time when circumstances compelled the profession to pay far more attention than it otherwise might have. Scholar not only brought us a new and capable collection, it brought a new level and quality of attention to the entire open-access enterprise. [...]
Google Scholar’s caselaw collection offers features — such as citators — that are a step toward the “system of books” that would fully integrate primary legal sources and commentary into a practical resource for public understanding and professional practice. The legal-information ecosystem on the Web as a whole is moving in that direction. As that progresses, the benefits to everyone affected by law — which is to say, everyone, period — will be enormous. We will move beyond making law available on the Web to making it truly accessible on the Web — not just discoverable, but understandable. [...]
For more details, please see the complete post.
HT @LIICornell
Parelon is the subject of a new article in Wired Italy : Guido Romeo: Ecco Parelon, il parlamento elettronico è operativo in Lazio .
Parelon seems to be a new and augmented version of the legislative crowdsourcing platform, Sistema Operativo , developed by Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement.
Here is information about the technology of Parelon, from the platform’s Website and from Monica Palmirani of CIRSFID at the University of Bologna, which is participating in the development of the platform:
Professor Palmirani also says: “Davide Barillari, member of the Regional Council of Lazio, presented Parelon’s architecture in Summer School LEX2014.”
Click here for an earlier post about Sistema Operativo .
At least four legal technology panels appear to have been accepted for SXSW 2015 Interactive , scheduled to be held 13-17 March 2015 in Austin, Texas, USA:
For more details, please click the links above to see panel descriptions.
The complete list of accepted panels is posted at: http://ift.tt/1Fv5RCf
If you know of other legal technology panels accepted for SXSW 2015 Interactive, please feel free to describe them in the comments to this post.
Tim Hwang of the Data and Society Institute invites participation in a new project: The Legal Innovation Defense (LID) Fund , described in a new post at Robot Robot and Hwang .
Here are excerpts from the post:
[...] Today, I want to propose an idea [...]: The Legal Innovation Defense (LID) Fund. The idea is simple: the LID Fund will create a collective insurance program that provides a defense system against the low probability, high impact possibility that a new technology in the legal space will be later discovered to have engaged in UPL [unauthorized practice of law].
There are three components to this project. First, the money: LID would be funded by two main types of actors. There would be a set of smaller startups, non-profits, and other organizations experimenting in legal technology that would pay a small monthly fee for membership in the coalition. We also envision a group of larger institutional supporters and investors with interests in shaping the overall landscape of law around UPL.
Second, the shield: upon facing an UPL action, coalition members would be permitted to trigger the assistance of the LID Fund. The program would deploy not only a preset insurance payment to support the litigation effort, but also would supply legal experts well versed in the law around UPL to guide the challenge. The upshot of this is that the LID Fund would provide insulation to its members from the risks around UPL, and assurance to their stakeholders. Simultaneously, it would support impact litigation in the legal technology space.
Third, the research: LID would be the center of a network of organizations working in legal technology and would be an organization involved in UPL challenges nationally. To that end, it would be able to provide ongoing research and policy work on the evolving state of technological innovation in the legal industry and the landscape of law surrounding the use of those technologies. [...]
So with that, this blog post officially puts out the call for willing hands to help launch this initiative: Would you support an initiative like LID? Would you take advantage of the kind of insurance that LID would offer to pursue a legal technology project or business? Do you know of an institutional supporter that would join this effort?
RR&H is seeking any and all assistance and advice as we make a push to turn this into a reality. We also intend to convene a meeting of interested parties in the near future – so get in touch by dropping a line to tim@robotandhwang.com. Keep your eyes on this space! [...]
For more details or to contact Tim, please see the complete post.
Papers are invited on any of the topics described in the main conference call for papers, concerning the theory, technology, or application of artificial intelligence and law.
An award will be given to the submission featuring “the most original and groundbreaking research.”
For more details and submission instructions, please see the complete call for papers.
Olivia Salamanca and Mireille van Eechoud have posted Open Legal Data for Europe , a report on a workshop organized by openlaws.eu and LAPSI, at the University of Amsterdam, 4 September 2014.
Here is a description of the report, from a post at the openlaws site:
Open Legal Data for Europe: The EC funded openlaws.eu project and the LAPSI thematic network project joined forces for a workshop on open legal data for Europe, hosted by the Institute for Information Law of the University of Amsterdam on Sep 4 2014. About 25 participants from academia, government, business and civil society discussed what the drivers are for opening up legal data for re-use in different jurisdictions and what barriers (perceived or real) exist. The outcome of the discussion will feed into the on-going work in the LAPSI network on legal barriers to re-use, and in the vision for Big Open Legal Data that will be developed as part of Openlaws.eu . [...]
HT @openlaws
The event Website and program are available at: http://ift.tt/1tPp2O7
The Webcast link for the event was here.
One Twitter hashtag for the event was #colpm2014
Click here for a storify of images and Twitter tweets from the event.
Ron Dolin has posted slides of his presentation at the event, concerning recommendations for technology-based reforms to “law schools, legal clinics, law firms, courts, in-house, and legal regulatory bodies”.
Seattle LegalTech Startup Weekend was held 10-12 October 2014 in Seattle, Washington, USA.
The event Website is at: http://ift.tt/1ndIg3a
The pitches made at the event are listed at: http://ift.tt/1p25yV8
The winners of the event were:
Twitter hashtags for the event included #swlegal and #seattlelegalsw
The Twitter account for the event is @seattlelegalsw
Click here for a storify of images and Twitter tweets from the event.
Click here for a list of the organizing team members for the event.
Click here a list of other upcoming and recent legal hacking events.
