Online Workshop on the Computational Analysis of Law
There is a growing interest among scholars from across a variety of disciplines and around the globe in the use of computational tools to study the law. Unfortunately, researchers in this field sometimes lack a critical mass of colleagues with similar interests. The Online Workshop on the Computational Analysis of Law (OWCAL) was created to help remedy this situation by providing a regular opportunity for scholars to receive feedback and gain exposure to new techniques and questions.
The purpose of the workshops is to highlight the best and most innovative scholarship in computational legal studies and to build an intellectual community in support of this new field. In recent years, the digitization of legal texts and developments in statistics, computer science, and data analytics have opened entirely new methodological approaches to the study of law. These new methods build on traditional empirical legal studies by treating the information contained in the text of legal documents as data that can be subjected to quantitative analysis.
One workshop is held each month. Each workshop is based on a draft paper (to be circulated a week prior) and consists of a presentation as well as short comments from a named discussant, with the majority of time reserved for a question-and-answer session with workshop participants.
If you are interested in participating, send an email to owcal@law.virginia.edu with the subject line “OWCAL RSVP” and you will be added to the participant list. By responding, you agree to participate on a regular basis, and at a minimum you commit to make a reasonable effort to participate in half of the workshops that are scheduled during work hours in your time zone.
Please feel free to circulate this notice to colleagues or graduate students who may be interested.
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