Introduction: Law as Data, Data as Law
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University of Galway
Ireland -
Trinity College Dublin Ireland
Abstract
The datafication of law is requiring a reconsideration of approaches to legal research and education. The academy is in an uncomfortable place, with new disciplines claiming to have analytical tools to offer and to be able to replace some or all of the traditional work of lawyers and teachers. This symposium provides an opportunity for reflection and contains contributions that range from a call to action which embraces the new technologies, critical perspectives on the proper place of data in legal research or in governmental practices, and empirical explorations of the effectiveness of large language models. It highlights themes of diversity, rigour and engagement as key issues for lawtech scholars to bear in mind in their future work and recommends that we embrace the discomfort so that we can mature with the field.
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Author Biographies
Dr Rónán Kennedy is an Associate Professor in the School of Law, University of Galway. He has written on environmental law, information technology law, and other topics, and co-authored two textbooks. He spent much of the 1990s working in the IT industry. He was Executive Legal Officer to the Chief Justice of Ireland, Mr Justice Ronan Keane, from 2000 to 2004. In 2020, he was a Science Foundation Ireland Public Service Fellow in the Oireachtas Library and Research Service, writing a report on ‘Algorithms, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence in the Irish Legal Services Market’.
Dr Brian Barry is an associate professor in the School of Law, Trinity College Dublin. He teaches AI regulation and Intellectual Property Law, and researches the impacts of technology on courts, dispute resolution and legal practice. He is the author of How Judges Judge: Empirical Insights into Judicial Decision-Making (Informa Law from Routledge, 2021) and of numerous peer-reviewed articles and other published works. His research has attracted large-scale funding and has been cited by leading courts such as the Irish Supreme Court and the Australian Federal Court. He regularly advises judiciaries and other justice system actors on decision-making and their operations, including technology deployment.
