Computational Law
The Lawyer's Guide to Digital Technology
Denne bog beskæftiger sig med Computational Law, som er den gren af juridisk informatik, der bl.a. handler om automatisering af juridisk begrundelse. Bogen gennemgår emner som teknologi, juridisk designtænkning, algoritmer, kunstig intelligens, legal tech og meget mere. Bogen er på engelsk.
"During the process of writing this book, as I learned more about computational thinking and technology, it became clear that lawyers regulate technology in much the same way that technology controls lawyers and the law. The law, originally designed to regulate relationships between individuals and also between individuals and organisations, such as churches, states or a corporation for centuries, suddenly had a new party – a computer."
– Author, Alexandra Andhov.
This book explains how computational law is a developing field of law which specialises in utilising computational methods and logic when applied to legal analysis and reasoning across legal fields.
The author has three main goals with this book:
- To bring technology closer to anyone who chooses to embrace it.
- To provide lawyers with the necessary vocabulary to work with scientists, data specialists, blockchain architects, developers of Artificial Intelligence, and other tech experts to be in a position to collaborate with them.
- To expand how we think and to bring some innovation and imagination into law.
There are several activities spread across the book that can be undertaken individually or in groups, and they are supposed to make us think about law entirely differently.
Audience
It is a standing invitation for everyone to join in and learn about computational law. Whether you are a high school student who wishes to study law, a second-year law student, a senior partner in a law firm or a judge or a computational scientist who would like to know more about how lawyers think – welcome!
About the author
Alexandra Andhov is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen. She is a lawyer and an innovator whose primary focus is on how technology can help change markets and corporations to become more innovative, sustainable, inclusive and democratic. Alexandra published the open-access book Start-up Law. She founded the Copenhagen Legal Tech Lab at the Faculty of Law and actively contributes to building the legal industry's future in the Nordic region. Alexandra lives in Copenhagen.
Index
Chapter 1 Introduction: Technology and Law
Chapter 2 Computations, History of Computers and the Basics of Computing
Chapter 3 Computational Logic, Thinking and Law
Chapter 4 Legal Design Thinking
Chapter 5 Algorithms
Chapter 6 Automation and Artificial Intelligence
Chapter 7 Machine Learning, Deep Learning and Natural Language Processing
Chapter 8 Data
Chapter 9 Distributed Ledger Technology: Blockchain
Chapter 10 Legal Tech and Future of Legal Industry
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Extract from the book
Chapter One Introduction: Technology and Law
Start with Why.
It is Tuesday, 6:30 am. Ella has just opened her eyes, realising that in less than 60 minutes, she needs to leave her apartment and get to her office. By 7:15 am, she is on her bike, and despite the rain and wind, she arrives at the office in twenty minutes. She quickly grabs another coffee, and after a short pleasant morning chat with her colleague, she starts reading her emails a bit before 8:00 am. The morning so far has been successful.The email box is full of new emails. The calendar is colour-coded and already shows five reminders. Ella quickly peeks at the management tool that the law firm uses and checks her tasks, additional due dates, and whether a new client has been assigned to her. She also likes to review the work and the hours billed by junior associates to be kept in the loop, as she needs to sign them at the end of the week. After review-ing the calendar reminders, the emails, and the management tool, her game plan for today is clear.First, she needs to review a multi-party contract and see the com-ments and changes the other party’s lawyers have made. There are a few sections on liability and applicable jurisdiction that she needs to double-check with the existing regulations and practices. She might call a junior associate, Ida, to review those two sections and prepare sugges-tions. That should streamline the process. Before noon, Ella needs to send out the memo that she and Carl, a colleague from the tax depart-ment, prepared. They have analysed the most recent jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union regarding double taxa-tion of corporate subsidiaries. They have used a new Natural Language Processing (NLP) tool, that the law firm purchased a month ago, which helped them to find the most relevant court decisions. However, Ella and Carl still need to review them and prepare a draft for their client. Given that they need to send the memo before noon, they will work on the document simultaneously.After lunch with her friend Rachel, Ella needs to draft a response to the appeal received three days ago. The client has lost the case, and wished to appeal against a decision rendered by an AI system called ‘AI-Courts.’ It is a new automation tool that aims to unburden the first instance courts. Firstly, she needs to petition the court to issue in-depth reasoning for the decision, as the AI-Courts commonly issue the deci-sion with only ‘concise reasoning’. The party needs to petition the court within the next five working days to obtain in-depth reasoning. In addi-tion to this, Ella aims to request the underlying data and the AI-Courts’ code. Ella’s law firm has hired a team of software engineers that helps with the code review. Ella has been working on these cases for some time and enjoys the technical part. There is always something new.Fifteen minutes before Ella needs to leave for her Krav-Maga class, the management tool pops up a new client that has just been assigned to her. It is a pro bono client, a small blockchain start-up that needs help with applying for a cryptocurrency trading license. The client has developed a solution that allows investors to support sustainable small and medium enterprises in selected countries in South America. The solution claims to check the financial backgrounds and secure the infor-mation about the entire supply chain through DLT technology while providing necessary funding through green bonds for chosen compa-nies. Ella is immediately excited, as usual, when she is to work with novel technology and start-ups, but she does not want to be late for her class, as that would mean 50 additional burpees. So she quickly turns her computer off and is out of the door.
As you can see, this is not a traditional introduction to a law book aimed primarily at an audience consisting of law students, attorneys, judges, governmental officials or in-house counsel, and anyone who would like to know more about law and technology.The brief Introduction above depicts a lawyer’s working day. Whether one works in a law firm, a courthouse, or a multinational corporation, many tasks will be similar. As we start this book together, I will be asking various questions as I would like you to engage with me in an imaginary discussion or an actual discussion in class or workshop. The questions I would like you to start thinking about are:
a) How many different technologies did Ella use?
b) Was she an active user or a passive one?
c) Would you describe Ella as tech-savvy?
d) What kind of knowledge did Ella need in order to work with these legal issues?
e) How did Ella learn about technology?
f) With whom and how did Ella work on her cases?
g) What kind of skills does Ella have in addition to the classical ‘legal’ skills that the majority of the legal students are trained when attend-ing law schools?
h) Does Ella need to use any hardware other than a computer?
i) How many tools did Ella use?
As the book develops, we will touch upon all these questions and con-sider what this means for you and your work as lawyers. In addition, we will expand your technical knowledge, how you understand technology and innovation and how to approach developing your tech skillsTechnology, particularly computers, has become intrinsic to our everyday lives and work. We cannot do much without access to phones, computers, or the Internet. Yet, even though we rely on these technologies, we rarely think about them and how they work. We fail to consider the effects of these technologies on our work, behaviour, communication, and critical thinking. Thus, this book aims to help you understand various technologies and their underlying logic, while assessing the plausible benefits and risks. This book also aims to help you acquire the necessary understanding how to work with diverse specialists, in case you need their expertise. The following sections of this Introduction introduce the areas and elements this book is built upon.