Computational Legal Studies 2024
The Centre for Computational Law (CCLAW) is pleased to announce that the 3rd Computational Legal Studies workshop 2024 (CLS2024) will be held in its usual hybrid form on 12–13 September 2024. This year’s workshop was intentionally scheduled to coincide with the Singapore Academy of Law’s (SAL) TechLawFest, one of the largest legaltech industry conferences in Asia. Delegates attending CLS or TechLawFest in person could therefore take the opportunity to attend both events.
This year’s theme is “From Shannon to Opus: Legal Studies in the Age of Large Corporate Models”. The goal is to invite introspection on how legal scholarship (computational or conventional) might, and should, proceed in a field that’s increasingly enamoured with closed-sourced paid APIs and large models requiring substantial resources to experiment with.
The workshop theme above invites scholars to consider the implications of three converging trends in AI (and law) research:
(1) the proliferation of large language and multimodal models which are costly to develop and run,
(2) the transition towards corporatised AI models with closed-sourced datasets and training methods, and
(3) unprecedented levels of legal industry interest in and experimentation with AI
What is the proper role of the computational legal scholar amidst these trends? How might (and should) we best harness the emerging class of large corporate AI models to discover new insights about law? What insights could the field offer for the safe and reliable use of AI models in the legal profession?
Please use this form to submit your abstracts.
Submissions targeting the workshop theme will be favoured, regardless of whether they adopt a theoretical, computational, empirical, or doctrinal approach. Nonetheless, we warmly welcome submissions of on all aspects of computational legal studies and/or computational law, including but not limited to, and in no order of preference:
- Machine learning and law
- Legal outcome prediction
- Legal text analytics, information extraction, summarization, etc
- Legal network analytics and complexity science
- Legal data visualization
- Causal inference in law
- Empirical and statistical legal studies
- Modelling legal rules and systems
- Ethics, fairness, safety, and legality concerns
- Analyses of the legal issues raised by impending AI and other legislation, particularly but not necessarily for CLS researchers
- Position and review papers
- Resources papers including code libraries and notebooks
- Software applications and demos
We stress that the theme is an inspirational prompt and not a strict requirement. Abstracts may describe either completed (including published) or ongoing work. We welcome submissions from scholars at all career stages.
As with last year, we are exploring the possibility of a workshop publication and will update colleagues if and when more details become available.
The deadline for submitting abstracts (of no more than 500 words) is 31 July 2024, at 2359 AoE. Please submit your proposed abstracts via this form. Acceptances will be sent out no later than 8 August 2024. Scholars whose abstracts are accepted will be asked to submit a draft manuscript, which need not be final, prior to the first day of the workshop.
As usual, CLS2024 will be conducted in hybrid fashion. The physical venue will be the Yong Pung How School of Law in Singapore. Each workshop day will last from 1000–1800 hours Singapore time. In-person attendance is encouraged, as we at CCLAW would love to meet others working in the space. A workshop fee meant to cover logistical costs such as the workshop dinner will apply for in-person attendees. These fees will not apply to speakers and paper presenters.
In view of rising travel costs and the growing need to reduce carbon emissions, however, we would be glad to host scholars online as a second-best option. As the workshop days will run from 0400-1000 Central European time, and 2200-0600 US Eastern time, we will try our best to accommodate your time zones should you be presenting your paper virtually.
Any enquiries may be sent to Asst Prof Jerrold Soh <jerroldsoh@smu.edu.sg> or CCLAW Centre Manager Lis Kho <lskho@smu.edu.sg>. More details on registration will be communicated as they become available.
We would greatly appreciate any assistance with sharing this event/call with your associates and students as well, and look forward to your enthusiastic participation.