Online Workshop on the Computational Analysis of Law
OWCAL gives scholars who use computational tools to study the law a regular place to present work, receive feedback, and encounter new techniques and questions. The digitization of legal texts and advances in statistics, computer science, and data analytics have opened new methodological approaches to the study of law, building on empirical legal studies by treating the text of legal documents as data. The workshop's purpose is to highlight the best scholarship in this field and to build an intellectual community around it.
To join the participant list, email owcal@law.virginia.edu with the subject line “OWCAL RSVP”. Please circulate to colleagues and graduate students who may be interested.
Schedules
2025–26
T, 20 Jan. 12–1:20 pm Renana Keydar and Or Cohen Sasson, From Margins to Mainstream? A 70-Year Empirical Study of Gendered Authorship in U.S. Law Reviews. Christoph Engel, Yoan Hermstrüwer, and Johannes Kruse, The Judicial Mind of Large Language Models: Legal Decision Aids Guided by Legal Doctrine.
T, 24 Feb. 12–1:20 pm Kevin Cope and Elliott Ash, Judicial Dimensions. Charlotte Alexander et al., Automated Event Log Creation from Spanish-Language Judicial Opinions.
T, 24 March 1–2:20 pm James Tierney and Geeyoung Min, Measuring the Market for Corporate Charters. Jens Frankenreiter, DECODEM: Data Extraction from Corporate Organizational Documents via Enhanced Methods.
T, 21 April 12–1:20 pm Jon Choi, Empirical Tax Complexity. Aileen Nielsen, Chelse Swoopes, and Elena Glassman, Language Diffusion as Distinct from Policy Diffusion: A Case Study of Recent State Data Privacy Reform.
Presenters in bold. All times U.S. Eastern.
2024–25
T, 21 Jan. 12–1:20 pm David Stein, Rethinking the Patent Bargain: Empirical Evidence of Low Patent Quality under Existing Inventiveness Standards. Amit Haim and Christoph Engel, Assessing Large Language Models for Legal Aid Triage.
Th, 20 Feb. 12–1:20 pm Douglas Rice and Christopher Zorn, Disagreement or Dysfunction? Using LLMs to Measure Disagreement on the U.S. Supreme Court. Peter Grajzl and Peter Murrell, Measuring Institutional Innovation: Recombinant Novelty in Early-Modern English Caselaw.
Th, 20 March 1–2:20 pm Dane Thorley et al., Deriving Quantitative Data from the Text of Warrant Applications, Approvals, and Executions. Jon Choi and David Abrams, Are Police Biased? An NLP Approach.
T, 22 April 12–1:20 pm Jens Frankenreiter and Scott Hirst, Moving Goalposts in Corporate Elections: Measuring Advance Notice Bylaws at Scale. Jeremy McClane, Text and Context: Tracing the Evolution of Language in Loan Contracts.
Presenters in bold. All times U.S. Eastern.
2023–24
W, 10 Jan. 12–1:15 pm Jed Stiglitz. Historical Trends in Macro-Jurisprudence: A Language Model Assessment, 1870–2014. Discussant: Lincoln Mullen (George Mason).
W, 31 Jan. 12–1:15 pm Hajin Kim. Machine Reading ESG Disclosures. Discussant: Jens Frankenreiter (Washington University).
Th, 22 Feb. 12–1:15 pm Jon Choi. Citation Sentiment in the U.S. Supreme Court. Discussant: Nina Varsava (Wisconsin).
T, 12 March 12–1:15 pm Florencia Marotta-Wurgler. Machines That Think Like Lawyers: Issues, Methodology, and Evidence from Privacy Policies. Discussant: Adam Badawi (Berkeley).
W, 3 April 12–1:15 pm Morgan Hazelton. Facts as Slippery Things: The Supreme Court and Factual Presentations. Discussant: Amit Haim (Stanford).
Th, 25 April 12–1:15 pm Felix Chang. The Strength of Bad Ties: Modeling Tying Caselaw Since the Sherman Act. Discussant: Josh Fischman (UVA).
W, 15 May 12–1:15 pm Taylor Dalton. Measuring Treaty Obligation. Discussant: Wolfgang Alschner (Ottawa).
Th, 30 May 12–1:15 pm Elliott Ash. Public Reason in the Public Square? Automating Legal Accessibility. Discussant: Richard Re (UVA).
All times U.S. Eastern.
2022–23
6 Sept. 12–1:15 pm Nina Varsava. The Gender and Racial Composition of Federal Appellate Panels. Discussant: Sean Farhang (Berkeley).
13 Oct. 12–1:15 pm Renana Keydar. Rethinking Human Rights Proliferation as Norm Density: A Computational Study of 180,000 UN Recommendations. Discussant: Kevin Cope (UVA).
16 Nov. 12–1:15 pm Ryan Whalen. The Innovation Glass Ceiling: How Women Are Penalized for Boundary-Spanning Research. Discussant: Jonathan Mauser (Chicago).
1 Dec. 12–1:15 pm Wolfgang Alschner. A Divided Court? Using Citation Analysis to Track Jurisprudential Change at the Supreme Court of Canada. Discussant: Albert Yoon (Toronto).
16 Feb. 12–1:15 pm Jordi Goodman. Strength in Numbers: Analyzing Group Dynamics of the Patent Gap. Discussant: Melissa Wasserman (UT Austin).
16 March 12–1:15 pm Kellen Funk and Lincoln Mullen. Making Law Modern: Discovering the Restructuring of Law through Legal Citations in Anglo-American Treatises. Discussant: Jens Frankenreiter (Washington University).
13 April 12–1:15 pm Parth Sagdeo. Measuring the Work of the Federal District Courts. Discussant: Jonathan Petkun (Duke).
11 May 12–1:15 pm Amit Haim. Computational Text Analysis of Binding Language in Administrative Guidance. Discussant: Jed Stiglitz (Cornell).
All times U.S. Eastern.
2021–22
15 Sept. 12–1:15 pm Paul Collins. The Effect of Judicial Decisions on Issue Salience and Legal Consciousness in the LGBTQ+ Community. Discussant: Keith Carlson (Dartmouth).
14 Oct. 12–1:15 pm Peter Grajzl. A Macrohistory of Legal Evolution and Coevolution: Property, Procedure, and Contract in Pre-Industrial English Caselaw. Discussant: Kellen Funk (Columbia).
16 Nov. 12–1:15 pm Janet Freilich. Is the Patent System Sensitive to Information Quality?. Discussant: Ryan Whalen (NUS).
16 Dec. 12–1:15 pm Charlotte Alexander. Introduction to the SCALES Open Knowledge Network. Discussant: Jon Ashley (UVA).
13 Jan. 12–1:15 pm Fabiana Di Porto. Talking at Cross Purposes? A Computational Analysis of the Debate on Informational Duties in the Digital Services and the Digital Markets Acts. Discussant: Jens Frankenreiter (Washington University).
10 Feb. 12–1:15 pm Jonathan Choi. Computational Corpus Linguistics. Discussant: Stephen Mouritsen (Parr Brown; BYU).
10 March 12–1:15 pm Elliott Ash. What Goes On in the Courtroom? Audiovisual Analysis of Ninth Circuit Oral Arguments. Discussant: Daniel Rockmore (Dartmouth).
14 April 12–1:15 pm Renana Keydar. How Does the Law Imagine Sexual Victims? Computational Analysis of Sex Crime Cases from the Israeli Legal System. Discussant: Nina Varsava (Wisconsin).
All times U.S. Eastern.
2020–21
17 Sept. 12–1:15 pm Elliott Ash. A Machine Learning Approach to Analyze and Support Anti-Corruption Policy. Discussant: Aniket Kesari (Berkeley).
22 Oct. 12–1:15 pm Julian Nyarko. Legal Interpretation as a Translation Problem. Discussant: Justin Grimmer (Stanford).
16 Nov. 12–1:15 pm Jens Frankenreiter. Privacy’s Great Shock. Discussant: Florencia Marotta-Wurgler (NYU).
10 Dec. 12–1:15 pm Michael Livermore. Political Shifts and Public Responses to Agency Action: A Text Analytic Approach. Discussant: Rachael Hinkle (University at Buffalo).
14 Jan. 12–1:15 pm Nina Varsava. What Judicial Opinions Can Tell Us about the Gender Roles and Biases of Judges on the Federal Courts of Appeals. Discussant: Doug Rice (UMass Amherst).
11 Feb. 12–1:15 pm Anne Tucker. It Ain’t What the Funds Disclose (It’s the Way That They Do It). Discussant: Timothy Loughran (Notre Dame).
18 March 12–1:15 pm Runar Hilleren Lie. Tracing Change: A Computational Analysis of Treaty-Making Practice in International Investment Law. Discussant: Allen Riddell (Indiana).
15 April 12–1:15 pm Adam Badawi. What Is Legal Similarity and How Do We Measure It?. Discussant: Tom Ginsburg (Chicago).
All times U.S. Eastern.
2019–20
19 Sept. 12–1:15 pm Anne Tucker. Investment Company Disclosures: Qualities, Content, and Compliance. Discussant: Quinn Curtis (UVA).
16 Oct. 12–1:15 pm Elliott Ash and Daniel L. Chen. Implicit Bias in the Judiciary. Discussant: Ryan Copus (Harvard).
12 Nov. 12–1:15 pm Jed Stiglitz. Observability and Reasoned Discourse: Evidence from the U.S. Senate. Discussant: Susan Navarro Smelcer (Georgia State).
4 Dec. 12–1:15 pm Julian Nyarko. Do You Ever Read the Fine Print? The Potential and Limitations of Text Analysis for Consumer Contracts. Discussant: Frank Fagan (EDHEC).
25 Feb. 12–1:15 pm Magnus Esmark. Sectorising the European Court of Human Rights: A Data-Driven Analysis of the Effects of Organisational Changes on the Coherence of Jurisprudence. Discussant: Jens Frankenreiter (Columbia).
17 March 12–1:15 pm Joseph Scott Miller. “Justice X, dissenting”: A Citation-Network Approach to Mapping Ideology. Discussant: Sofia Amaral-Garcia (KU Leuven).
7 April 12–1:15 pm Charles Crabtree and Kevin Cope. Are Lawyers Biased Against Female Judges? Evidence from Thousands of Anonymous Evaluations. Discussant: Marion Dumas (LSE).
5 May 12–1:15 pm Peter Grajzl and Peter Murrell. The Early Character and the Subsequent Evolution of English Common Law: A Machine-Learning Investigation. Discussant: Lincoln Mullen (George Mason).
All times U.S. Eastern.
2018–19
20 Sept. 12–1:15 pm Jens Frankenreiter. Deliberately Opaque? Analyzing the Determinants of the Use of Complex Language by the European Court of Justice. Discussant: Joe Sutherland (Columbia).
17 Oct. 12–1:15 pm Jessica A. Schoenherr. Does the Argument Matter? Using Text Analysis of Merits Briefs to Study U.S. Supreme Court Decision-Making. Discussant: Mike Livermore (UVA).
13 Nov. 12–1:15 pm Joe Miller. IP Law's Semantic Self-Portrait: A Co-Citation Analysis. Discussant: Eugenie Dugoua (LSE).
4 Dec. 12–1:15 pm Kevin Cope. Dynamic Ideology. Discussant: Kristen M. Renberg (Duke).
22 Jan. 12–1:15 pm Bernhard Ganglmair. Complexity, Standardization, and the Design of Loan Agreements. Discussant: Elliott Ash (ETH Zurich).
15 Feb. 12–1:15 pm Robert Sprague. One Hundred Twenty Years of U.S. Privacy Law Scholarship: A Latent Semantic Analysis. Discussant: Janet Freilich (Fordham).
5 March 12–1:15 pm Karl Branting. Prediction and Decision Support for Routine Administrative Adjudications. Discussant: Daniel Rockmore (Dartmouth).
16 April 12–1:15 pm Charlotte Alexander. Plaintiffs' Attorney Networks as Litigation Drivers. Discussant: Anthony Niblett (Toronto).
14 May 12–1:15 pm Frank Fagan. Contractual and Corporate Good Faith: A Unified Perspective from Big Data. Discussant: Anne Tucker (Georgia State).
All times U.S. Eastern.
2017–18
15 Feb. 12–1 pm Elliott Ash. Legislative Complexity and Economic Growth: Evidence of Bidirectional Causality in U.S. States, 1963–2012. Discussant: Jens Frankenreiter (Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods).
15 March 9–10 am Michael Livermore. Strategic Publication and Opinion Text on the U.S. Appellate Courts. Discussant: Marion Dumas (LSE).
10 April 10–11 am J.B. Ruhl. Topic Modeling the President: Conventional and Computational Methods. Discussant: Kira Pronin (University of Pittsburgh).
15 May 10–11 am Adam Feldman. Opinion Clarity in State and Federal Trial Courts. Discussant: Kevin Cope (University of Virginia).
All times U.S. Eastern.