The Legal Data Science courses introduce students to the questions and techniques employed by social scientists and legal technology start-ups to retrieve, analyze and work with legal data. Are judges biased? What is the economic impact of a legal reform? How can we use modern technologies, such as artificial intelligence, to predict judicial decisions or to recognize patterns in thousands of contracts? The objective of the course is to appreciate the contribution of other disciplines in order to better understand the law and to transmit the basic tools needed to evaluate and conduct interdisciplinary research. It will (1) introduce fundamental concepts of empirical and social science for the analysis of legal documents, (2) enable students to understand and evaluate studies and procedures that rely on social science and computational approaches for the analysis of law and legal outcomes and (3) provide students with the skills to perform basic programming tasks in order to engage in legal search, automation, analysis and prediction. The course is aimed at students who want to work in an interdisciplinary context, whether in consulting firms, public policy, or legal tech start-ups.
Courses will be offered by Prof. Wolfgang Alschner.
First year students can enroll in a First Year Thematic Course:
- CML 1105 K – First Year Thematic Course: Legal Data Science (in English)
Upper year students can choose between:
- CML 4514 – L’analyse de données juridiques (in French, all upper years)
- CML 3351 K Legal Research and Writing: Legal Data Science* (in English, 3rd years only)
*Please note that for 2017-2018 academic year, the upper year course in the English program (CML 3351 K) is restricted to 3rd year students and is offered as a "directed research". Students should fill the "directed research" form available at the Common Law Student Centre and send it to Prof. Wolfgang Alschner for approval.