AUD Events

Dr. B. R. Ambedkar University Delhi, School of Law, Governance and Citizenship

National Workshop on Is Indian Law Computable? Using Artificial Intelligence for Legal Research and Analysis in India

Organized by Internal Quality Assurance Cell (IQAC) and School of Law, Governance and Citizenship (SLGC), AUD in collaboration with Indian Kanoon

Date:- 5th February 2024 (Hybrid Mode) 

School of Law Governance and Citizenship (SLGC), jointly with the IQAC, AUD, is pleased to announce a National Workshop on “Is Indian Law Computable? Using Artificial Intelligence for Legal Research and Analysis in India” in collaboration with India’s leading legal database Indian Kanoon (https://indiankanoon.org/). IK is currently used by millions of professionals and researchers in India and has recently launched a set of advanced AI driven legal research and analysis tools.
Developments in technology and particularly the digitization of vast amounts of text, has transformed the landscape of research in social sciences and humanities, particularly literature. Similarly, the world of law is primarily textual and the archive of law consists of a vast body of rules, statutes and judicial precedents, all of which are now available in digitized form. Like its literary cousin, Legal Studies has also been marked by an emphasis on close reading of the judgments to discern the doctrinal principles embedded in cases. These analytical skills have hitherto been the exclusive domain of human effort and mastering them often involved strenuous human effort. But with the development of AI models, its believed that we are entering into a new era of legal research and analysis. This workshop seeks to provide both a theoretical and a practical introduction to the use of AI tools within legal research. It will train scholars to adopt research methods and techniques with emphasis on AI driven sentimental analysis of court judgments in India. It is aimed at academic scholars, lawyers, students, researchers, as well as social scientists interested in law. Some of the themes that will be addressed include the following:

• Does AI hold the promise of a paradigmatic shift in legal research or is it merely a tool to increase the efficiency of research?
• How does artificial intelligence, machine learning models, natural language processing, and sentiment analysis impact legal research?
• Can machine models be trained to provide better search results that are dependent not just on names and words, but also provide useful conceptual results?
• How can sentiment analysis be deployed in legal research?
• Can machines be trained to provide better structural analysis of legal judgements?
• What does it mean to deploy techniques such as distant reading in legal research?
• How does a quantitative approach to the study of legal texts enable new research questions?
• How would these research tools impact the domain of social legal research, beyond the requirements of practitioners?

This workshop will examine these questions and more with resource persons from the leading legal search engine in India- Indian Kanoon.
Indiankanoon.org (IK) is India’s leading legal database, and its introduction radically revolutionized the manner in which scholars and lawyers alike could access legal information. In the past three years, IK has been working on developing machine learning tools to improve legal research and analysis, including deploying sentiment analysis, doctrine tracking, and precedent following in the vast database of legal cases in India. This is a considerable challenge given the complexity of legal cases as well as an incomprehensive tradition of judgment writing in India. IK’s work is at the cutting edge of legal and technical research with the possibility of transforming legal analysis in India and would consequently be of immense interest to students, faculty, and researchers.

Resource Persons & Topics to be covered
Machine Learning and Legal Research in India: The journey of Indian Kanoon

• Dr. Sushant Sinha (Founder of Indian Kanoon, Software Developer and specialist in Machine learning, and winner of multiple awards for technology innovation, PhD from University of Michigan)

From Jurimetrics to Digital Legal Studies

• Prof. Lawrence Liang (Professor and Dean, SLGC)

Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Legal Research

• Prof. Vasudha Bhatnagar (Professor of Computer Science, University of Delhi)

Reliability of Precedents in Judgments (Cite-text sentiment analysis project)

• Shruti Kaushik (Semantic Legal Analyst at Indian Kanoon)

Structural Analysis of Legal Judgments

• Himansh Wadhwa (Semantic Legal Analyst at Indian Kanoon)

Registration
The participants of the workshop will be presented with a Certificate of Participation
There is no Registration Fee for AUD participants
Registration Fee for external participants:

• Students enrolled in any Higher Education Institution: Rs. 1000
• All others including faculty members, lawyers, journalists: Rs. 2000

To register:
Step 1: Click on the link below, make payment and capture a screenshot of the payment done
https://eazypay.icicibank.com/eazypayLink?P1=c6VrE9NAT5gTH7MJWYZ6MQ==
Step 2: Click on the link below and fill out the Google Registration form and attach the screenshot
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1-SkXhyoBVscftIARBJS-Zacvjs5pkDALP-bD5Wfzjy0/edit
Once the registration is completed, all external participants will be sent an online link to join the workshop on their registered email.
AUD participants may join the workshop physically, on prior registration, in Room No. 117, Karampura campus, AUD.

For queries, write to[email protected]