In Braga, Portugal on 19 June 2023 with colleagues Pauline McBride and Masha Medvedeva I ran an interactive workshop on the COHUBICOL Typology of Legal Technologies entitled “Method of Evaluating Legal Technologies”, or MELT.

This was a great opportunity to interact with computer scientists working in the legal tech field building the very technologies we are interested in. The workshop was a great success and, although small, we do think it contributed to the ‘method and mindset’ that we hope the Typology will encourage.

Here’s the abstract:

The impact of Artificial Intelligence on law is underexplored. There is not enough consideration at present of how AI technologies affect (i) legal outcomes, (ii) the legal protection of citizens, and (iii) the institutions and practices that underpin legal procedure and the Rule of Law. This tutorial is focused on the use of AI systems in legal practice, on the merits of constructive communication across communities, and on ethics and transparency. In this tutorial, participants will employ the method set out in the COHUBICOL Typology of Legal Technologies to reveal the wider impacts of AI technologies on law and legal protection, and to generate insights relevant to their design and deployment. The tutorial is built around The Typology as a novel, systematic, and cross-disciplinary method and mindset that is sensitive to the unique nature of the legal domain. Its message will be crucially important to legal tech developers and providers who are interested in the responsible design and deployment of their products.