Seminar: ‘How to further (semi-) automate Legal Research?’

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Practical information

During this seminar, Stijn van Deursen and Han Gulyás focussed on the practical needs of legal scholars while working with big datasets and ways to further (semi-)automate the processing of such data.

As legal scholars, we are used to working with documents, such as legislation, case law, and literature. However, with increasing case law publication rates and a growing body of literature, we are sometimes confronted with the limits of our human capabilities to go through all such documents manually. Moreover, as a result of the expansion of empirical research methods, we want our research to be as representative as possible and therefore want to be able to rely on a bigger body of case law. Many of us are therefore looking for ways of (further) automizing and structuring research methods.

For developing such methods, we took recourse to other disciplines. UU data specialist Ruben Schalk shared his experiences and lessons learned as an Information Specialist, both in the field of History and Digital Humanities. Ruben is, among many other things, specialised in quantitative methods, working with large datasets, and Linked Data Techniques. Many of such strategies can also be used in order to conduct legal (also doctrinal) research in a more structured and thorough way, so this is a great opportunity for truly interdisciplinary learning.