Student conference ’empirical-legal research and private law’

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Why is empirical-legal research important for legal practice and scientific research? Master’s students from the fields of civil law, corporate law and financial law received answers to that question during the congress on empirical-legal research and private law on October 1st.

During the conference, students gained insight into the different ways in which empirical research can be useful and necessary for the law.

The kick-off of the afternoon was provided by Helen Pluut, project leader Empirical Legal Studies. She gave students a brief introduction to the initiatives that play a role in the field of Empirical Legal Studies, both at the Leiden Faculty of Law and nationwide. The students were then shown four beautiful examples of empirical-legal research.

Defensive action by doctors empirically examined

The first speaker of the day was Shosha Wiznitzer, legislative advisor to the Council of State. She talked about her doctoral research (at Utrecht University) for defensive doctors. Shosha went into the way in which she applied empirical research in her research. She then talked about the added value of empirical research in the legislative process.

Empirical dilemmas in the use of market research in IP cases

Subsequently, Gitta Veldt, associate professor of private law and affiliated with the ELS project, went into her research into the use of market research in IE cases about danger of confusion. Gitta showed that in order to judge the usefulness of market research, it is necessary that lawyers and judges can at least understand empirical research.

The importance of financial and business economic research in legal practice

Jan Adriaanse, professor of Turnaround Management and co-founder of BFI, continued with a presentation about the need for thorough and independent (financial) research to support (legal) conclusions. Based on his experiences in practice, Jan has explained what pitfalls occur when doing research and how these errors can be avoided.

How to get away with… ‘bankruptcy fraud’?

In conclusion, Jessie Pool, PhD student in Enterprise and Insolvency Law and also affiliated with the ELS project, showed on the basis of the results of her doctoral research that the legal framework contains such gaps that malicious administrators can get away with bankruptcy fraud.

Following the presentations, the speakers discussed with the students the importance of empirical-legal research. Statements such as ‘Laws should for the most part be based on empirical data’ and ‘In legal education there is insufficient attention to empirical research methods’ were reviewed. The students shared their vision of how they would like to see empirical-legal research come back into education. It was perhaps not surprising that this is not due to making a statistics- subject mandatory.

All in all, a successful afternoon in which students gained insight into the usefulness and necessity of empirical-legal research for the law. Something that was talked about in detail at the drinks.