information technology law research topics

Technology & the Law

Software, hardware, platforms, and networks are regulated by sometimes conflicting and overlapping sets of laws, policies, and norms. New technologies are constantly creating new frontiers for policymakers trying to understand and balance the costs and benefits to society. Through novel research and discussion across viewpoints and sectors, we seek to understand the complexities at play and help inform policy.

Our Work 173

Vectors of AI Governance

Juxtaposing the U.S. Algorithmic Accountability Act of 2022 with The EU Artificial Intelligence Act

This article juxtaposes proposed legislation in the US and EU for regulating AI and reflects on the future direction of AI governance.

BKC Comment to the FTC on Transparency and Commercial Surveillance

On behalf of BKC and its projects and associates, the Cyberlaw Clinic submitted a comment regarding the FTC's ANPR related to commercial surveillance and data privacy.

Digital Crime Scenes

The Role of Digital Evidence in the Persecution of LGBTQ People in Egypt, Lebanon, and Tunisia

Digital evidence has made it easier for law enforcement to identify, harass, and prosecute LGBTQ people...

Protecting and Promoting AI Innovation: Patent Eligibility Reform as an Imperative for National Security and Innovation

Three Part Virtual Symposium - Security, Privacy, and Innovation: Reshaping Law for the AI Era

VIDEO: Security, Privacy, AI, Law

Constitutional Values and the Rule of Law in the AI Era: Confronting a Changing Threat Landscape

Responding to AI Enabled Surveillance and Digital Authoritarianism

VIDEO: Security, Privacy, AI

Cyberlaw Clinic and EFF publish Guide to Legal Risks of Security Research

Guide provides pragmatic guidance for navigating today’s uncertain legal landscape

Cyberlaw Clinic weighs in on warrantless device searches at the US border

Mason Kortz discusses an amicus brief filed on behalf of the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic

Global Perspectives on Data Collection, Contact Tracing, and COVID-19

Network of Centers discussion focuses on uses of data to combat COVID-19

[Virtual] Why Fairness Cannot Be Automated

Video & Podcast: Bridging the Gap Between EU Non-Discrimination Law & AI

Fairness and discrimination in algorithmic systems are globally recognized as topics of critical importance. To date, the majority of work in this area starts from an American…

Cyberlaw Clinic turns 20

Founded in 1999, the first-of-its-kind clinical program based at the Berkman Klein Center celebrates two decades of perpetual adaptation

From clinical student to clinical instructor

Kendra Albert shares their Cyberlaw Clinic story

Kendra Albert

Napster@20: Reflections on the Internet’s Most Controversial Music File Sharing Service

Part of the Cyberlaw Clinic 20th Anniversary Event Series

VIDEO & PODCAST: Examining the direct and indirect legacy of Napster over the past two decades

Re-Framing the Frame

Preparing Justice-Seekers through Legal Education

Read more about the Re-Framing the Frame Workshop here.  This talk takes a critical look at the consequences of framing legal education as it stands now: as law from…

Clinic Releases Guide to Anti-Circumvention Exemption for Software Preservation

A new guide for preservationists who want to take advantage of the legal exemption to archive software

Harvard Law Just Released 6.5 Million Court Decisions Online

40 million pages of U.S. court decisions made available free and in-full online for the first time

Coming in from the Cold: A Safe Harbor from the CFAA and DMCA §1201

A proposal for a statutory safe harbor from the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and DMCA for security research activities.

Art that Imitates Art

Computational Creativity and Creative Contracting

Copyright in AI-generated works, the need for a shared understanding of what is and isn’t up for grabs in a license, and how forward-thinking contracts can prevent AI developers…

Governance and Regulation in the land of Crypto-Securities (as told by CryptoKitties)

featuring founding members, Dieter Shirley and Alex Shih

Join founding members of the CryptoKitties team, Dieter Shirley and Alex Shih, as they discuss the unique governance, legal, and regulatory challenges of putting cats on the…

AGTech Forum Briefing Book: State Attorneys General and Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence is already starting to change our lives. Over the coming decades, these new technologies will shape many of our daily interactions and drive dramatic…

The Law and Ethics of Digital Piracy

Evidence from Harvard Law School Graduates

When do Harvard law students perceive digital file sharing (and piracy) as fine?

Force of Nature

Celebrating 20 Years of the Laws of Cyberspace

Join us as we celebrate 20 years of the Laws of Cyberspace and the ways in which it laid the groundwork for our Center's field of study.

Tales from the Public Domain

James Boyle and Jennifer Jenkins discuss "Theft! A History of Music"

You can download the book here. Event Description This comic lays out 2000 years of musical history. A neglected part of musical history. Again and again there…

Remedies for Cyber Defamation

Criminal Libel, Anti-Speech Injunctions, Forgeries, Frauds, and More

“Cheap speech” has massively increased ordinary people’s access to mass communications -- both for good and for ill. How has the system of remedies for defamatory, privacy…

A talk with Marilù Capparelli, PhD

Legal Director at Google

Please join the Harvard Italian Law Association and the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society for a discussion on several legal and regulatory issues concerning digital…

The Right of Publicity

Privacy Reimagined for a Public World

Jennifer E. Rothman discusses her book, The Right of Publicity: Privacy Reimagined for a Public World (Harvard University Press 2018). She challenges the conventional story of the…

Big Data, Health Law, and Bioethics

This timely, groundbreaking volume explores how law promotes or discourages the use of big data in the health care sphere.

Follow-up Letter to the Members of the Massachusetts Legislature Regarding the Adoption of Actuarial Risk Assessment Tools in the Criminal Justice System

The following open letter — signed by Harvard and MIT-based faculty, staff, and researchers — is directed to the Massachusetts Legislature to inform its consideration of risk…

Health Care Costs and Transparency

featuring John Freedman, President & CEO of Freedman HealthCare

Health spending continues to outpace wages and GDP, while some new insurance designs transfer greater shares of that to patients’ own out of pocket costs. What is driving health…

The “Monkey Selfie” Case: Can Non-Humans Hold Copyrights?

featuring a panel of experts on copyright, cyber law, and intermediary liability issues

Can non-human animals own copyrights? Can artificial intelligence machines? Join the Berkman Klein Center, the Harvard Law School Animal Law & Policy Program, and the HLS Student…

Who Owns Your Ideas and How Does Creativity Happen?

A Conversation with Professor Orly Lobel

Who owns your ideas? How are cultural icons created and who gets to control their image and message? Orly Lobel’s new book You Don’t Own Me is about how intellectual property both…

Community-Owned Fiber Networks: Value Leaders in America

Pricing Review Shows They Provide Least-Expensive Local "Broadband"

Our examination of advertised prices shows that community-owned fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) networks in the United States generally charge less for entry-level broadband service than…

Accountability of AI Under the Law: The Role of Explanation

The paper reviews current societal, moral, and legal norms around explanations, and then focuses on the different contexts under which an explanation is currently required under…

Apply for a Spot in CopyrightX 2018

CopyrightX is a networked course that explores the current law of copyright; the impact of that law on art, entertainment, and industry; and the ongoing debates concerning how the…

An Open Letter to the Members of the Massachusetts Legislature Regarding the Adoption of Actuarial Risk Assessment Tools in the Criminal Justice System

This open letter — signed by Harvard and MIT-based faculty, staff, and researchers— is directed to the Massachusetts Legislature to inform its consideration of risk assessment…

Zero Rating & Internet Adoption

Workshop Paper & Research Agenda

In March of 2016, a diverse group of stakeholders gathered to discuss the use of zero rating as a means to improve Internet adoption in the developing world and how and when it…

Enabling Competition & Innovation on a City Fiber Network

The municipally owned fiber-optic network of Ammon, Idaho provides one model for U.S. public entities and policymakers seeking to increase service competition and innovation.

The Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence Fund Commits $7.6 Million to Support the Development of AI in the Public Interest

With the Berkman Klein Center and  MIT Media Lab as academic anchor institutions, the Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence Fund announced today funding for nine…

AI and the Law: Setting the Stage

We as a society are only beginning to understand the ethical, legal, and regulatory challenges associated with AI, as well as develop appropriate governance models and responses.

Open Data Privacy Playbook

This report codifies responsible privacy-protective open data approaches and processes that could be adopted by cities and other government organizations.

Internet Designers as Policy-Makers

Sandra Braman, Abbott Professor of Liberal Arts at Texas A&M University

Those responsible for technical design of the Internet are essential among the policy-makers for this large-scale sociotechnical infrastructure. Based on analysis of the…

Hyperloop Law: Autonomy, Infrastructure, and Transportation Startups

featuring General Counsel of Hyperloop One, Marvin Ammori

The future of transportation may include Google's autonomous vehicles, Uber's flying cars, and Amazon's delivery drones--all bound together by a high-speed hyperloop backbone. You…

Bottom-up Constitutionalism: The Case of Net Neutrality

with Christoph Graber, Berkman Klein Faculty Associate

Can we observe the emergence of a new fundamental right that is protecting the Internet? Can such a constitutionalisation process originate from civil society?

Citizens Take Charge: Concord, Massachusetts, Builds a Fiber Network

In this case study, the authors describe the municipal smart grid and fiber-to-the-home Internet access project in the town of Concord, Massachusetts, and quantify early paybacks…

Smart Grid Paybacks: The Chattanooga Example

After building a fiber optic network throughout its service territory, the city-owned electric utility in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 2010 became the first U.S. company to offer…

Free Independent Health Records

featuring Adrian Gropper, MD

Free Independent Health Records are an important use-case for self-sovereign technology that links individual people with licensed practitioners and connected services. Blockchain…

Berkman Klein Center and MIT Media Lab to Collaborate on the Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence

Supported by the Knight Foundation, Omidyar Network, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, Hewlett Foundation, and more

Several foundations and funders today announced the Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence Fund, which will support interdisciplinary research to ensure that AI develops…

Does Public Attention Reduce the Influence of Interest Groups?

Policy Positions on SOPA/PIPA Before and After the Internet Blackout

This paper investigates the role public attention plays in determining the effect that campaign contributions funded by interests groups have on legislators’ policy positions.

Apply for a spot in CopyrightX

CopyrightX is a networked course that explores the current law of copyright; the impact of that law on art, entertainment, and industry; and the ongoing debates concerning how the…

Networked Policy Making Avenues: Assessing the Role of Academics in Digital Policy

There are a growing number of examples that point toward a change in the way public policy is made in the digital age. This new context, which we refer to as networked…

Culture Change and Digital Technology: The NYPD under Commissioner William Bratton, 2014-2016

This white paper explores NYPD's adoption of Twitter and an ideation platform called IdeaScale that was aimed at allowing community members to nominate "quality of life" issues…

WiredWest: a Cooperative of Municipalities Forms to Build a Fiber Optic Network

Western Massachusetts Towns Create a New Model for Last-Mile Connectivity, but a State Agency Delays Approval and Funding

A new case study from the Berkman Center's Municipal Fiber Initiative profiles a group of Western Massachusetts towns who have created a new model for last-mile connectivity.

Cyberlaw Clinic and Lumen Project Reps Contribute to Section 512 Study

On April 1st, the Copyright Office closed the initial comment period for a public study undertaken to evaluate the impact and effectiveness of the Digital Millennium…

Maximizing K-12 Fiber Connectivity Through E-Rate: An Overview

An evaluation of self-construction, dark fiber, and lit fiber options for school districts following recent enhancements to E-rate

This new toolkit provides school system leaders the guidance to understand and leverage the federal E-rate program, which provides up to $3.9 billion annually to subsidize the…

Cyberlaw Clinic FAQ — 2016-17 Registration Starts Soon!

Harvard Law School 1Ls and 2Ls should now be aware that clinical registration for the 2016-17 academic year takes place this week, starting at 9:00 am on Wednesday, March 30 and…

Towards Digital Constitutionalism? Mapping Attempts to Craft an Internet Bill of Rights

The idea of an “Internet Bill of Rights” is by no means a new one: in fact, serious efforts to draft such a document can be traced at least as far back as the mid-1990s. In this…

Designing Successful Governance Groups

Lessons for Leaders from Real-World Examples

The Berkman Center for Internet & Society, together with the Global Network of Internet and Society Research Centers (NoC), is pleased to announce the release of a new publication…

Holyoke: A Massachusetts Municipal Light Plant Seizes Internet Access Business Opportunities

Holyoke Gas & Electric’s telecom division provides high-speed Internet access to local businesses and public agencies, bringing in revenue and profits while aiding in local…

Interoperability in the Digital Ecosystem

The Berkman Center is pleased to announce the publication of a new paper, "Interoperability in the Digital Ecosystem." The paper builds upon our previous interoperability work,…

Applications open for Advanced Copyright Practice, a new HLS Executive Education course

Faculty co-director William Fisher, together with five faculty, will teach Advanced Copyright Practice on May 7-9, 2015. The application deadline is April 15.

Update, April 14, 2015: this course has been indefinitely postponed. This intensive three-day executive education course is designed for lawyers who would like to deepen their…

Governance of Online Intermediaries: Observations From a Series of National Case Studies

This project examines the rapidly changing landscape of online intermediary liability at the intersection of law, technology, norms, and markets, and is aimed at informing and…

Multistakeholder as Governance Groups: Observations from Case Studies

The project explores existing multistakeholder governance groups with the goal of informing the future evolution of the Internet governance ecosystem. The research effort…

National Security and Cyberthreats

A Conversation with John Carlin, Assistant Attorney General for National Security

Join Assistant Attorney General for National Security HLS alumnus and Heyman Fellow John Carlin, together with moderator Jonathan Zittrain, for a conversation about significant…

Who Gets a Press Pass?

Media Credentialing Practices in the United States

This study, the first of its kind to perform a quantitative examination of media credentialing in the United States, surveys the experience of journalists throughout the country…

Ethereum: Freenet or Skynet ?

Primavera De Filippi, Berkman Center Fellow

Ethereum: smart contracts, distributed autonomous organizations, and the law. Can the dreams of an autonomous decentralized society be implemented through the tyranny of code?

Governments and Cloud Computing: Roles, Approaches, and Policy Considerations

In this paper, Urs Gasser and David O'Brien synthesize findings from a multi-year cloud computing research initiative led by the Berkman Center in close collaboration with the…

Cloud Innovation and the Law: Issues, Approaches, and Interplay

“Cloud Innovation and the Law: Issues, Approaches, and Interplay,” authored by Berkman Center Executive Director and Harvard Law School Professor of Practice Urs Gasser, draws…

Interoperability Case Study: From Crowdsourcing Potholes to Community Policing

Applying Interoperability Theory to Analyze the Expansion of “Open311”

Following the four primary applications of interoperability theory laid out by Palfrey and Gasser, this paper is organized into five Parts: (1) Part One introduces the topic; (2)…

Cyberlaw Clinic - Fall 2013

The Cyberlaw Clinic, based at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, engages Harvard Law School students in a wide range of real-world client counseling, licensing and…

Interoperability Case Study: The European Union as an Institutional Design for Legal Interoperability

This case study is part of an ongoing series developed in support of a larger text on interoperability by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser Interop: The Promise and Perils of Highly…

Filling the News Gap in Cambridge and Beyond: Citizen Journalism and Grassroots Media

The event will explore the quickly expanding world of citizen journalism: how technology is fueling its growth; how that growth is changing the way we see our world, enact change,…

Cyberlaw Clinic - Spring 2013

The Cyberlaw Clinic, based at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, engages Harvard Law School students in a wide range of real-world licensing, client counseling, advocacy,…

Music and Digital Media: Seminar - Spring 2013

This course explores a variety of legal issues relating to the creation, exploitation, and protection of music and other content. The seminar focuses on traditional legal regimes…

Cyberlaw Clinic - Winter 2013

Interoperability case study: electronic data interchange (edi), open wireless vs. licensed spectrum: evidence from market adoption.

The paper reviews evidence from eight wireless markets: mobile broadband; wireless healthcare; smart grid communications; inventory management; access control; mobile payments;…

Interoperability Case Study: Mobile Phone Chargers

Interoperability Case Study: Cloud Computing

This case study is part of an ongoing series developed in support of a larger text on interoperability by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser - Interop: The Promise and Perils of Highly…

Cyberlaw Clinic - Fall 2012

Interoperability case study: the bar code/upc, interoperability case study: the smart grid.

Interop: The Promise and Perils of Highly Interconnected Systems

In Interop, technology experts John Palfrey and Urs Gasser explore the immense importance of interoperability—the standardization and integration of technology—and show how this…

Interoperability in Information Systems in the Furtherance of Trade

Urs Gasser and John Palfrey have continued to contribute to the World Trade Institute’s NCCR Trade Policy project with a particular focus on the interoperability as an enabler of…

Fostering Innovation and Trade in the Global Information Society: The Different Facets and Roles of Interoperability

Mapping Cloud Interoperability in the Globalized Economy: Theory and Observation from Practice

John Palfrey and Urs Gasser

John Palfrey and Urs Gasser discussed their new book on Interoperability book and its themes.

Making large volunteer-driven projects sustainable. Lessons learned from Drupal

Dries Buytaert, original creator and project lead of Drupal

In this talk, Dries shares his experiences on how he grew the Drupal community from just one person to over 800,000 members over the past 10 years.

Rethink Music Conference 2012

Rethink Music is a hands-on conference designed to bring music stakeholders together to discuss business models for the future, examine copyright challenges in the digital era,…

The Growth and Decay of Shared Knowledge

Dennis Tenen, fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society

In this talk, Dennis will discuss our intuitions about knowledge domains and the methods by which such intuitions could be modeled empirically. Along the way, we will have the…

Guide to the IRS Decision-Making Process under Section 501(c)(3) for Journalism and Publishing Non-Profit Organizations

Until and unless there is action in Congress to facilitate tax exemptions for journalism non-profits, news organizations seeking 501(c)(3) status must learn how to structure their…

Interoperability Case Study: Internet of Things (IoT)

Interoperability case study: intermodal containers and global cargo transport.

Youth and Digital Media: From Credibility to Information Quality

Building upon a process- and context-oriented information quality framework, this paper seeks to map and explore what we know about the ways in which young users of age 18 and…

The Promises of Web-based Social Experiments

Jerome Hergueux, Berkman Center Fellow

In this talk, Jerome Hergueux will engage the audience in a discussion about the specificities, limitations and promises of web-based behavioral experiments for advancing social…

Designing for Remixing: Computer-supported Social Creativity

Andres Monroy-Hernandez, Berkman Fellow & MIT Media Lab

In this talk Andres Monroy-Hernandez presents a framework for the design and study of an online community of amateur creators. This event will be webcast live at 12:30PM ET.

The Spanish Revolution & the Internet: From free culture to meta-politics

Mayo Fuster Morell, Berkman Center Fellow

In the context of multiple crises – ecological, political, financial and geopolitical restructuring – large mobilizations are taking place in several countries. In the Spanish…

Media Law in the Digital Age: The Rules Have Changed -- Again

Co-produced by the Citizen Media Law Project at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society and Kennesaw State's Center for Sustainable Journalism, Media Law in the Digital…

The Penguin and the Leviathan: How Cooperation Triumphs over Self-Interest

Yochai Benkler, Berkman Center Faculty Co-Director

In his new book, Yochai Benkler uses evidence from neuroscience, economics, sociology, biology, and real-world examples to break down the myth of self-interest and replace it with…

Almost Wikipedia: What Eight Collaborative Encyclopedia Projects Reveal About Mechanisms of Collective Action

Benjamin Mako Hill, Berkman Center & MIT

Benjamin Mako Hill will present some preliminary findings from a qualitative, inductive, case-study based analysis of 8 early projects to create online collaborative encyclopedias.

Law School for Digital Journalists

A Pre-Conference of the Online News Association's 2011 Conference

The Online News Association, Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, and the UNC Center for Media Law and Policy present Law School for Digital Journalists, part of the…

Yochai Benkler draws on cutting-edge findings from neuroscience, economics, sociology, evolutionary biology, political science, and a wealth of real world examples to reveal how…

Global Interoperability and Linked Data Workshop

On May 16-17, 2011, the Berkman Center together with Open Knowledge Commons and the Institute for Information Law at the University of Amsterdam convened a group of technical and…

Rethink Music Conference

For the Berklee College of Music's Rethink Music conference, the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University hosted a Call for Papers seeking policy proposals that…

Rethinking Music: A Briefing Book

The Berkman Center for Internet & Society is pleased to present this briefing book to participants in the Rethink Music conference. The book includes the Center’s own framing…

Designing Incentives for Inexpert Human Raters

This paper presents the results of an experiment comparing the effects of social, financial, and hybrid incentive schemes on worker performance in an online labor market (Amazon's…

The Cablevision Case - 2 Years Later: A Conversation About Copyright, Content, and the Cloud

R. David Hosp, Goodwin Procter LLP & Ed Weiss, New England Sports Ventures

The Berkman Center's Cyberlaw Clinic and Harvard Law School's Journal of Law and Technology present a conversation about 2008's landmark "Cablevision" case, in which the Second…

Accountability and Transparency at ICANN: An Independent Review

In August 2010, selected faculty and researchers at the Berkman Center initiated an independent, exploratory study analyzing ICANN’s decision-making processes and communications…

The Online Laboratory: Taking Experimental Social Science onto the Internet

Dave Rand, Berkman Fellow & Research Scientist at Harvard's Program for Evolutionary Dynamics

In this talk Dave Rand will describe how to go about designing and running experiments using Mechanical Turk, some successful experiments that have been run (mostly involving…

Media Law in the Digital Age: The Rules Have Changed, Have You?

We're pleased to announce that the Citizen Media Law Project at Harvard's Berkman Center and the Center for Sustainable Journalism at Kennesaw State University are co-hosting a…

Hacking the Casebook

The H20 Development Team

Traditional law school casebooks are expensive, bulky and stagnant. With the support of the HLS Library, Berkman has been updating our suite of classroom tools, H2O. In this…

The Rise of the News Aggregator: Legal Implications and Best Practices

This white paper attempts to answer the question of whether news aggregators violate current law by examining the hot news misappropriation and copyright infringement claims that…

Best Practices in the Use of Technology to Facilitate Access to Justice Initiatives

Preliminary Report

The Cyberlaw Clinic undertook this study to help the Massachusetts Trial Court work toward a comprehensive, holistic strategic plan for maximizing technology’s role in the Access…

Sexting: Youth Practices and Legal Implications

This document addresses legal and practical issues related to the practice colloquially known as sexting. It was created by Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic, based at the…

Working Towards a Deeper Understanding of Digital Safety for Children and Young People in Developing Nations

An Exploratory Study by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, in Collaboration with UNICEF

This paper's main objectives are: to raise awareness about issues related to digital safety for youth in developing nations; to provide a tentative map of these issues and give…

Preliminary Conclusions from The Industrial Cooperation Project

Carolina Rossini, Berkman Fellow

Carolina Rossini, Berkman Fellow, will report initial findings and conclusions from the Industrial Cooperation Project...

How the COPPA, as Implemented, Is Misinterpreted by the Public: A Research Perspective

Statement to the United States Senate, Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Insurance of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation

Statement by danah boyd, Urs Gasser, and John Palfrey, urging consideration of the gap between the intentions of COPPA and how children and their parents perceive its…

A Tale of Two Blogospheres: Discursive Practices on the Left and Right

This paper compares the practices of discursive production and participation among top U.S. political blogs on the left, right, and center during the summer of 2008 and finds…

Youth, Privacy and Reputation (Literature Review)

The scope of this literature review is to map out what is currently understood about the intersections of youth, reputation, and privacy online, focusing on youth attitudes and…

Symposium: Journalism's Digital Transition: Unique Legal Challenges and Opportunities

The Berkman Center's Citizen Media Law Project and Cyberlaw Clinic are pleased to announce a one-day symposium and CLE program to celebrate the launch of the Online Media Legal…

Old Habits Die Hard: Can Technology Change Deception?

Jeff Hancock, Cornell University

In this talk, Jeff will consider some of the myths commonly held about deception, and use the intersection of technology and deception to surface and rethink our assumptions about…

Transforming the Last Mile State

How Vermont can leapfrog a technology generation and lead the nation in connectivity, transparency and innovation.

Matt Dunne, former State Senator, Head of Community Affairs for Google and current candidate for Vermont Governor will share his vision for Vermont becoming the first truly 21st…

The hierarchy of virtue: mutualism, altruism, and signaling in Martu women’s cooperative hunting

Rebecca Bliege Bird, Stanford University

Rebecca Bliege Bird will discuss the question "Why do Martu women hunt cooperatively when they don't seem to benefit economically from doing so?" and suggests that demonstrating a…

Response to FCC Notice of Inquiry 09-94 “Empowering Parents and Protecting Children in an Evolving Media Landscape”

The response synthesizes current research and data on the media practices of youth, focusing on three main areas -- 1) Risky Behaviors and Online Safety, 2) Privacy, Publicity and…

Whither Blind Justice? Effects of Physiognomy on Judicial Decisions

Leslie Zebrowitz, Brandeis University

Research shows that peoples’ facial appearance influences impressions of their honesty and judgments of their culpability, effects that have been shown to bias decisions in the…

Next Generation Connectivity

A review of broadband Internet transitions and policy from around the world

The FCC announced that the Berkman Center would conduct an independent expert review of existing literature and studies about broadband deployment and usage throughout the world…

Signaling Theory and the Evolution of Religion

Richard Sosis, director of the Evolution, Cognition, and Culture Program at the University of Connecticut

Researchers from diverse disciplines have suggested that rituals and other religious behaviors serve as signals of an individual's commitment to a religious group, and some have…

Transformed Social Interaction in Virtual Reality

Jeremy Bailenson, founding director of Stanford University's Virtual Human Interaction Lab and an associate professor in the Department of Communication at Stanford

In this talk, Jeremy will describe a series of projects that explore the manners in which avatars (representations of people in virtual environments) qualitatively change the…

Brain Bases of Deception: Why We Probably Will Never Have a Perfect Lie Detector

Stephen M. Kosslyn, Dean of Social Science and John Lindsley Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and Associate Psychologist in the Department of Neurology at the Massachusetts General Hospital

Different brain systems are used when one produces lies in different ways, such as by fabricating lies spontaneously "on the fly" versus fabricating them on the basis of a…

The Social Efficiency of Fairness

Marshall Van Alstyne, Associate Professor at Boston University and Research Scientist at MIT

Property rights provide incentives to create information but they also provide incentives to hoard it prior to the award of protection. Marshall Van Alstyne will propose a…

Kudunomics: Information and Property Rights in the Weightless Economy

Sam Bowles, Santa Fe Institute, Behavioral Sciences Program

Sam Bowles will discuss how an evolutionary model and computer simulations will show how systems of property rights might respond to the challenges of the weightless economy.

Big Data, Global Development, and Complex Social Systems

Nathan Eagle, Omidyar Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute

Petabytes of data about human movements, transactions, and communication patterns are continuously being generated by everyday technologies such as mobile phones and credit cards…

Cloud Law, Finance 3.0, and Digital Institutions: A Report from the Berkman Center's Law Lab

John Clippinger, Urs Gasser, and Oliver Goodenough

The Berkman Center Law Lab is a project devoted to investigating and harness the varied forces — evolutionary, social, psychological, neurological and economic — that shape the…

An Evaluation of Private Foundation Copyright Licensing Policies, Practices and Opportunities

This project undertook to examine the copyright licensing policies and practices of a group of twelve private foundations. In particular, it looked at the extent to which…

HIT me baby one more time, Or: How I learned to stop worrying and love Amazon Mechanical Turk

Aaron Shaw, Berkman Center Fellow

Aaron Shaw will discuss who's using Amazon's Mechanical Turk, its implications for social scientists, the future of labor markets, and life on the Internet as we know it.

The Second and Third Enclosures

Lewis Hyde, Berkman Fellow

In his lunchtime talk, Lewis Hyde will trace the roots of the second enclosure (it goes back at least to the invention of printing); he will describe traditional forms of…

Harvard-MIT-Yale Cyberscholar Working Group

Aaron Shaw - Polanyi's Penguin? Commons-Based Industry in the Neoliberal Knowledge Economy; Colleen Kaman - The World in the Network; Rasmus Kleis Nielsen - Mundane Tools and…

How Shall the Commons Be Governed? New Challenges Facing the Digital Commons Sector

David Bollier, Author of "Viral Spiral: How the Commoners Built a Digital Republic of Their Own"

David Bollier will discuss the rise of the commons paradigm in the digital environment, the subject of his new book, "Viral Spiral: How the Commoners Built a Digital Republic of…

The End of Lawyers? The End of Law Schools?

Professor Richard Susskind, Author of "The End of Lawyers?" and IT Adviser to the Lord Chief Justice of England

Professor Richard Susskind predicts that the legal profession will be driven by two forces in the coming decade: by a market pull towards the commoditization of legal services,…

Law for a Flat World: Building Legal Infrastructure for the New Economy

Gillian K Hadfield of USC

Gillian K Hadfield on how and why our legal infrastructure is outdated and ill-suited to the new economy, looking mostly to the non-market or protected-market mechanisms on which…

Dynamic remodeling of in-group bias during the 2008 presidential election

People often favor members of their own group, while discriminating against members of other groups. Such in-group favoritism has been shown to play an important role in human…

The "Internet" of the developing world: using GSM networks to secure information

Ashifi Gogo, Dartmouth College

Ashifi Gogo will discuss the growing demand for information services on GSM and the innovative services being developed around mobile phones in the developing world.

ISTTF: Enhancing Child Safety and Online Technologies

John Palfrey, danah boyd, Dena Sacco, Laura DeBonis

John Palfrey, danah boyd, Dena Sacco, Laura DeBonis, directors of the recently concluded Internet Safety Technical Task Force, discuss the findings and recommendations from the…

Child Exploitation, Pornography, and the Internet: Seminar - Spring 2009

This course addresses the complex legal, technological, and social questions created by the rapidly increasing distribution of both child and adult pornography on the Internet…

Enhancing Child Safety and Online Technologies

Final Report of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force to the Multi-State Working Group on Social Networking of State Attorneys General of the United States

The Internet Safety Technical Task Force was created in February 2008 in accordance with the "Joint Statement on Key Principles of Social Networking Safety" announced in January…

Intellectual Property Law: Advanced - Spring 2009

This course is intended for students who are already familiar with the main contours of intellectual property law and would like to explore the subject further.

The Commons: Celebrating accomplishments, discerning futures

Jamie Boyle, Lawrence Lessig, Joi Ito, Molly S. Van Houweling, and Jonathan Zittrain

Creative Commons and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society present "The Commons: Celebrating accomplishments, discerning futures" tonight.

Participatory Governance: In open source communities, companies and government

Irving Wladawsky-Berger

Irving Wladawsky-Berger is a Visiting Professor of Engineering Systems at MIT, where he is involved in multi-disciplinary research and teaching activities focused on how…

The Google-Publishers Copyright Lawsuit Settlement

Join Jeffrey Cunard, one of the lead counsel for McGraw Hill and other publishers in their landmark copyright lawsuit against Google for its Google Library book search project, as…

The Uncertain Internet: Core Net Values for the [TBD] Administration

Jonathan Zittrain (Professor, Harvard Law School), Susan Crawford (Professor, University of Michigan Law School), Rich Miner (Mobile Platforms, Google; co-Founder of Android) and Alec Ross (Tech Policy Advisor to Obama)

Now is a critical moment for defining and reinforcing the best features of our communications platforms. What do we value about the internet and what should be the focus of the…

Armchair Revolutionary: Crowdsourcing Global Social Change

Ariel Hauter and Ori Neidich

We all want to make the world a better place, but we're discouraged from giving money and volunteer time to charities due to several layers of obstacles: transparency, efficacy,…

Giant Robots, Circumvention, and the Digital Millenium Copyright Act

StorageTek v. CHE, a technical talk by Christian Hicks, Elysium Digital

Christian Hicks, founder of Elysium Digital, discussed the case StorageTek v. CHE. This talk was co-sponsored by the Berkman Cyberlaw Clinic, the Harvard Computer Society, and the…

Internet Safety Technical Task Force (ISTTF) Open Meeting

The Berkman Center hosted a day and a half-long public meeting of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force.

Practical Lawyering in Cyberspace: Seminar - Fall 2008

Using a variety of cyberlaw-related case studies drawn from recent, actual controversies, along with targeted readings, court filings, real-life testimony, deposition videotapes…

CyberOne: Law in the Court of Public Opinion - Fall 2008

This year's Cyberone will begin with empathic argument and programming from scratch, then segue immediately to projects.

Citizen Media Law Project @ 1

David Ardia, Sam Bayard, Tuna Chatterjee

David Ardia, Sam Bayard, and Tuna Chatterjee of CMLP discussed trends in online publishing and previewed the CMLP database of subpeonas, cease-and-desist letters, and other…

The Pros and Cons of an 'Educational Fair Use' Project

Lewis Hyde, Berkman Fellow, spoke on "The Pros and Cons of an 'Educational Fair Use' Project" and how fiar use can be reclaimed as an expressive right.

Breaking Down Digital Barriers

John Palfrey and Urs Gasser Present New Research on Interoperability

This joint report followed the Roadmap to Open ICT Ecosystems released in 2005, as it navigates the nuanced territory of consumer, corporate, and governmental interests in the…

Practical Lawyering in Cyberspace: Seminar - Fall 2007

Sacked by copyright: dmca takedowns and free expression.

Wendy Seltzer, Berkman Fellow

Wendy Seltzer, founder of Chilling Effects, discussed "Sacked by Copyright: DMCA Takedowns and Free Expression."

Innovation, Interoperability, and IP

Brad Smith, General Counsel of Microsoft

General Counsel of Microsoft, Brad Smith, discussed ", Interoperability, and IP"

Interoperability In the New Digital Identity Infrastructure

This paper maps out multiple dimensions of interoperability in the emerging digital identity management infrastructure, with a view to promoting openness in this infrastructure…

The Wealth of Networks

How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom

Book Description, from Amazon: With the radical changes in information production that the Internet has introduced, we stand at an important moment of transition, says Yochai…

H2O Playlists Public Beta Release

Berkman H2O Team

Berkman Luncheon Series: 7/12/05 - Berkman H2O team on H2O Playlists Public Beta Release

Berkman Briefing: Diebold vs. The Bloggers

When the National Archives needed new vaults to protect the country’s most precious documents – the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights – it…

Berkman Briefing: Averting the Internet Meltdown

The eye-catching conference title, Preventing the Internet Meltdown, brought a number of experts and Internet pioneers to Los Angeles recently to discuss the future of the…

Berkman Briefing: Inside the Courtroom - The Music Industry Takes on the Uploaders

The Berkman Briefing, Inside the Courtroom, gives a firsthand look at Wednesday's hearing in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts for one of the nearly 3000 lawsuits that the…

Berkman Briefing: Interacting at Interactive - Social Networks at SXSW

"Social Networks" was the hot topic at this year's Texas-based Internet conference, SXSW Interactive. The conference brought together leaders and innovators in the field on online…

Berkman Briefing: Rip, Mix, and Burn - Lessig's Case for Building a Free Culture

In a low-lit auditorium at Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig leaned against the podium and clicked a remote…

Berkman Briefing: Free Software, the Gospel

If Eben Moglen's recent address at Harvard could be condensed to bumper-sticker format, it might read: Free Software, It isn't just source code—It’s a way of life. Moglen is a…

Berkman Briefing: SCO vs. IBM - Questioning the Kernel

I went to see Darl McBride’s presentation, “Defending Intellectual Property in the Digital Age,” because I wanted to learn more about his company, SCO, and its challenge to open…

Berkman Briefing: WSIS – Conference Hype or Lasting Change?

In terms of size alone, the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) was a stunning achievement: 11,000 official participants representing 176 nations convened in Geneva for…

ICT and Education in Panama

Colin Maclay, Managing Director of the Berkman Center

Berkman Luncheon Series: 12/4/03 - Colin Maclay on ICT and Education in Panama

The Microsoft Case - Fall 1998

Professors Lessig and Zittrain will teach a research seminar on the Microsoft case. The seminar will meet at least once a week, beginning the week of 9/21. It will review the…

Community 169

Massachusetts high court issues ruling in online racial profiling case.

The Cyberlaw Clinic welcomes the SJC's holding that the BPD violated the law by refusing to turn over evidence of potential online racial profiling.

Zahra Stardust

Mike Bennett

Cyberlaw clinic supports public interest patent law institute w/comment to uspto re: patents and artificial intelligence.

The Cyberlaw Clinic aided the Public Interest Patent Law Institute in filing comments stressing the importance of human inventorship and urging the USPTO to remain vigilant about…

Christopher Bavitz

Blockchain governance.

A new book co-authored by Primavera De Filippi analyzes the reciprocal relationship between blockchain communities and politico-legal thought.

Primavera De Filippi

Candy crushed.

Harvard Law digital privacy expert Leah Plunkett says that children’s data safety is just one of many problems with kids’ use of popular apps like TikTok

Leah Plunkett discusses the evolving legal landscape of children's data privacy, including a recent US Department of Justice suit against TikTok.

Leah Plunkett

Takedowns: olympic edition.

Lumen uncovered evidence of a coordinated and potentially automated fraudulent DMCA takedown campaign targeting articles about a Russian Olympian.

European AI Act Training Disclosures Expose US Copyright Risks

Ruth Okediji notes that the EU's AI Act codifies value differences between the EU and the US.

Ruth L. Okediji

Experimentalism in Digital Platform Markets

Antitrust and Utilities' Convergence

Elettra Bietti suggests that antitrust break-ups and regulation do not operate in conflict.

Elettra Bietti

Data privacy and competition law in the age of big data.

Unpacking the Interface through Complexity Science

In a newly-published book, Samson Esayas offers concrete policy proposals to address the legal challenges of big data.

Samson Esayas

Revolution, Regulation, and Resistance

Zahra Stardust's new book is now available for pre-order from Duke University Press.

Lawfare Daily: Anupam Chander, Kyle Langvhardt, and Alan Rozenshtein on the Supreme Court's Decision in Moody v. NetChoice

Anupam Chander discusses the SCOTUS NetChoice rulings and the ramifications of the opinions.

Anupam Chander

Mechanical Intelligence and Counterfeit Humanity

Harry R. Lewis crafts a view of the future of AI and humanity by reflecting on the past six decades of computer advancement.

Harry Lewis

Global ai regulation: protecting rights; leveraging collaboration.

Policy experts from Africa, Europe, Latin America, and North America outlined next steps for global AI regimes and networked capacity building

BKC Senior Director of Programs and Strategy Lis Sylvan and former BKC Research Assistant Niharika Vattikonda summarize the Global Network of Internet and Society Research Center…

Elisabeth Sylvan

More Questions Than Flags: Reality Check on DSA’s Trusted Flaggers

Dylan Moses and Elodie Vialle react to the DSA's 100 days.

Dylan Moses

Elodie Vialle

What We're Talking About When We Talk About Rural AI

Jasmine McNealy checks in with Justin Hendrix on her two day workshop touching on topics such as discrimination in algorithmic systems.

Jasmine McNealy

I love facebook. that’s why i’m suing meta..

Ethan Zuckerman explains why he is seeking, with the Knight First Amendment Institute, a court ruling protecting the use of middleware apps that give users more agency over what…

Ethan Zuckerman

What's next for tiktok, and us tech policy.

Anupam Chander reacts to the new law that could ban TikTok, underlining the need for greater accountability in the US government's tech regulation.

Can an online library of classic video games ever be legal?

Kendra Albert testified in front of the Copyright Office over the DMCA and a potential exemption that would apply to video games.

ARTificial: Why Copyright Is Not the Right Policy Tool to Deal with Generative AI

Micaela Mantegna argues that copyright law is ill-equipped to deal with generative AI.

Micaela Mantegna

Cyberlaw clinic testifies before copyright office in dmca hearings.

The Cyberlaw Clinic testified before the Copyright Office on exemptions to §1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which prohibits the circumvention of certain technical…

‘The People’s Joker’ and the Perils of Playing With a Studio’s Copyright

BKC Director Rebecca Tushnet explains the fair use doctrine of copyright.

Rebecca Tushnet

152 Rebecca Tushnet, Of Bass Notes and Base Rates

Discussing her paper, Of Bass Notes and Base Rates: Avoiding Mistaken Inferences About Copying, BKC Director Rebecca Tushnet explains evidentiary challenges in copyright…

Cyberlaw Clinic Instructor Mason Kortz discusses the legal arguments, possible resolutions, and potential implications of the NYT v. OpenAI lawsuit.

Mason Kortz

Bulelani jili on technology in africa.

BKC Fellow Bulelani Jili explores the role of technology in Africa-China relations.

Bulelani Jili

The Bizarre Future of Batman Toys

BKC Director Rebecca Tushnet comments on familiar characters entering the public domain, losing copyright protection.

Online Harms Act: a step in the right direction to protect Canadians online

Florian Martin-Bariteau evaluates the Online Harms Act, a complex proposal to protect Canadians online.

Florian Martin-Bariteau

Air/time travel: rethinking appropriation in global hci and futures of electronic exchange.

BKC Affiliate Daniel Mwesigwa and Christopher Csíkszentmíhalyi reexamine appropriation in Human-Computer Interaction.

Daniel Mwesigwa

It’s high noon at the high court for internet free speech. What’s next for social media users?

BKC Director Rebecca Tushnet comments on what First Amendment speech protections look like in online discussions.

Why Online Free Speech Is Now Up to the Supreme Court

2023-2024 RSM Visiting Scholar Anupam Chander provides insight on the content moderation cases before the Supreme Court this term.

The legal profession in 2024: AI

BKC Faculty Associate David Wilkins discusses how generative AI may impact the legal practice.

David Wilkins

Does copyright help artists? Not necessarily, say these writers.

Madhavi Sunder reviews Who Owns This Sentence?, which weaves through the history of copyright and grapples with key current issues.

Madhavi Sunder

Social media can harm kids. Can laws protect them?

BKC Faculty Associate Leah Plunkett coments on whether laws geared towards keeping children safe online will be enforceable.

The Fresh Prince of Joseon: How a Crypto Mogul Became a Korean Royal Heir—and Formed a Digital Kingdom

2023-2024 RSM Visiting Scholar​​​​​​​ Anupam Chander comments on the feasibility of creating digital countries.

“Where are you” vs “How are you”?

BKC Affiliate Tunde Okunoye contemplates what investment in digital identification projects in Africa may achieve—and who they may benefit.

Babatunde Okunoye

The Sleepy Copyright Office in the Middle of a High-Stakes Clash Over A.I.

Rebecca Tushnet comments on the Copyright Office's involvement in the determination of where AI fits into intellectual property laws.

Clinic Represents SPN and LCA in 1201 Rulemaking to Reduce Barriers to Software Preservation

The Cyberlaw Clinic, on behalf of the Software Preservation Network (SPN) and Library Copyright Alliance (LCA), sought to expand existing exemptions to allow for eligible memory…

'Steamboat Willie' is now in the public domain. What does that mean for Mickey Mouse?

Ruth Okediji discusses "Steamboat Willy" and protection of the public domain.

Big Tech has long avoided responsibility for online content. Generative AI could end that.

Anupam Chander spoke to Business Insider on the potential for generative AI to hold Big Tech responsible for online content. 

Algorithmic Institutionalism

In a new Oxford University Press book, Virgilio Almeida delves into the increasing presence of algorithms in everyday decisions, exploring their social and political impacts…

Virgilio Almeida

On the bookshelves, fall 2023

Faculty Associate Ifeoma Ajunwa's book talk, The Quantified Worker: Law and Technology in the Modern Workplace, was discussed in Harvard Law School's Fall 2023 book event roundup.

Ifeoma Ajunwa

Supporting free speech means supporting victims of slapp suits, even if you disagree with the speakers.

Cyberlaw Clinical Instructor and Director of IfRFA Kendra Albert leads an amicus brief supporting free speech rights.

The Internet Enabled Mass Surveillance. A.I. Will Enable Mass Spying.

BKC Affiliate Bruce Schneier argues that AI is on track to reduce spying's current limiting factor: the need for human labor.

Bruce Schneier

Harvard law school professor finds chatgpt invents fake law less than the supreme court.

BKC Faculty Associate Larry Lessig interacts with ChatGPT, finding that it ChatGPT was both more forthright and more analytically astute about the tensions (and worse) in Supreme…

Larry Lessig

As nh sues meta, it also urges social media literacy instruction for kids.

BKC Faculty Associate Leah Plunkett discusses the difficulties parents face when raising children in the internet age.

Fifteen Questions: Jonathan Zittrain on Social Media, AI Litigation, and CompuServe

Faculty Director Jonathan Zittrain discusses AI regulation, moderating online communities, and the Applied Social Media Lab.

Jonathan Zittrain

Holly herndon’s infinite art.

BKC Director Rebecca Tushnet comments on the copyright implications of A.I.-generated art.

Thinking Through Generative AI Harms Among Users on Online Platforms

BKC Faculty Associate Sameer Hinduja offers a deep dive into the sobering potential of generative AI tools to perpetuate online harassment at massive scale.

Sameer Hinduja

Intellectual property and “the lost year” of covid-19 deaths.

Madhavi Sunder and Haochen Sun explain how Intellectual Property protections impacted the COVID-19 pandemic and the development, availability, and distribution of the COVID…

Haochen Sun

Who's in Charge in a Kid-Influencer World?

Leah Plunkett is a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center and an expert in digital privacy law and digital life for kids, teens, and families.

Cyberlaw and Election Law Clinics File Joint Comment on AI in Campaign Ads

The Harvard Cyberlaw Clinic and the Harvard Election Law Clinic have jointly submitted a response to the Federal Election Commission’s (FEC) request for comments about Artificial…

Casey Goes to the White House + The Copyright Battle Over Artificial Intelligence + HatGPT

BKC Director Rebecca Tushnet joined the Hard Fork podcast to explain the latest developments in a lawsuit against the creators of AI image-generation tools.

Co-Designing Shared Futures

BKC Senior Director of Programs and Strategy Lis Sylvan introduces Co-Designing Generative Futures, a collection of multidisciplinary transnational reflections and speculations…

What is fair use in the age of AI?

Ruth Okediji moderated a Rappaport Forum on what's at stake with the rise of Artificial Intelligence.

A year after Elon Musk bought Twitter, LGBTQ people say it has become toxic

Cyberlaw Clinical Instructor Alejandra Caraballo comments on how Twitter, now X, has become toxic for LGBTQ people since Elon Musk's takeover of the platform.

Alejandra Caraballo

The use of new technologies in immigration and asylum governance: implications for human rights.

BKC Faculty Associate Petra Molnar joins the RefugeE Studies Center to discuss how the use of new technologies in immigration and asylum governance affect human rights. 

Petra Molnar

Harvard professor lawrence lessig on why ai and social media are causing a free speech crisis for the internet.

BKC Faculty Associate Larry Lessig speaks with The Verge's Nilay Patel about BKC's new Applied Social Media Lab and why AI and social media are causing a free speech crisis for…

A Trademark Dispute Is Tearing the Tiny Film Photography Community Apart

Rebecca Tushnet explains that tradmark holders often make the argument that they have no choice but to try to enforce its trademark but this argument rarely holds water.

Towards a Legal Understanding of Social Data

BKC Faculty Associate Salomé Viljoen and collaborator Amanda Parsons, explain why current laws are not well equipped to confront problems generated by the rise of informational…

Salomé Viljoen

Key issues in writers' case against openai explained.

BKC Director Rebecca Tushnet explains key issues in the writers' case against OpenAI and discusses some of the broader legal issues around emerging tech. 

Why false advertising suits are on the rise in the fast-food industry

BKC Director Rebecca Tushnet explains the harms of false advertising and the need for remedies. 

Digital Border Governance: a Human Righst Based Approach

With the United Nations Human Rights Office, Lorna McGregor and Petra Molnar launched a study advocating for a human-rights based approach to digital border technologies. 

Social Media, Youth, and New Legislation: The Most Critical Components

BKC Faculty Associate Sameer Hinduja discusses the challenge of regulating social media platforms to protect young people.

What happens when AI trains itself?

BKC Faculty Associate Ethan Zuckerman describes roadblocks to AI's continued training and learning. 

How Dating Became a Paradise for Predators

BKC Faculty Associate Leah Plunkett comments on the relationship between social media platforms and the harms that may occur on them.

Pyramid Schemes Are Illegal. MLMs Are Not. What About the Tech That Powers Them?

BKC Director Rebecca Tushnet comments on accountability for software companies servicing multi-level marketing companies accused of being pyramid schemes. “Regulators take the…

Algorithmic Harm in Consumer Markets

BKC Faculty Associate Oren Bar-Gill and co-director of Artificial Intelligence and Law Project Cass R. Sunstein, co-write with Inbal Talgam-Cohen on addressing the potential harms…

Oren Bar-Gill

Cass Sunstein

A categorization of decentralized autonomous organizations: the case of the aragon platform.

Andrea Peña-Calvin, Jorge Saldivar, Javier Arroyo, and Samer Hassan provide insights on decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).

Samer Hassan

Harvard law school and berkman klein center announce new ai and the law initiative.

Harvard Law School and BKC announce a new initiative on AI and the law which will be directed by Harvard Law Professors Oren Bar-Gill and Cass R. Sunstein.

Want to stop harmful tech? Just say no

BKC Faculty Associate Ethan Zuckerman calls upon people to consider how technology is currently harming some groups and ways to end that harm. 

A.I. Microdirectives Could Soon Be Used for Law Enforcement

BKC Affiliate Bruce Schneier writes about the use of AI systems that is harming the most vulnerable society. 

The Future of Online Speech Shouldn’t Belong to One Trump-Appointed Judge in Louisiana

BKC Rebooting Social Media Visiting Scholar Kate Klonick writes about a federal court ruling that restricted the Biden administration’s communications with social media platforms.

Kate Klonick

How Tech Regulation Can Leverage Product Experimentation Results

BKC Affiliate Nathaniel Lubin writes about how tech regulation could benefit from using the data from companies' private experimentation results.

Nathaniel Lubin

Why FTC’s child privacy push costs Seattle’s biggest employers millions

BKC Faculty Associate Leah Plunkett comments on children's privacy rights.

Datafication, Identity, and the Reorganization of the Category Individual

BKC Affiliate Juan Ortiz Freuler proposes a framework for understanding how current technological developments are putting pressure on our existing conceptions of the individual…

Juan Ortiz Freuler

Generative AI is a minefield for copyright law

BKC Assistant Director of the Cyberlaw Clinic Jessica Fjeld writes about the challenges that arise in the realm of copyright law due to the increased use of generative AI. 

Jessica Fjeld

The feds are coming for crypto. can it survive.

BKC Affiliate Molly White writes about lawsuits filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission against two of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges.

Molly White

Imagine A Community: Obscenity’s History and Moderating Speech Online

Clinical instructor at the Cyberlaw Clinic and director of the Initiative for a Representative First Amendment Kendra Albert writes about the history of obscenity’s community…

Big Tech Isn’t Prepared for A.I.’s Next Chapter

BKC Affiliate Bruce Schneier writes about the open-source future of generative AI.

This Harvard Law Professor is an Expert on Digital Technology

The career of Jonathan Zittrain is profiled by IEEE Spectrum.

Podcast Episode: Safer Sex Work Makes a Safer Internet

Clinical instructor at the Cyberlaw Clinic Kendra Albert discusses how an internet that is safe for sex workers is an internet that is safer for everyone.

AI Desperately Needs Global Oversight

BKC Responsible AI Fellow Rumman Chowdhury advocates for global oversight of AI. 

Rumman Chowdhury

Social media platforms and challenges for democracy, rule of law and fundamental rights

BKC Faculty Associate Beatriz Botero Arcila and collaborator Rachel Griffin release a study commissioned by the European Parliament’s Policy Department for Citizens’ Rights and…

Beatriz Botero Arcila

What’s the Future for A.I.?

BKC Affiliate Aviv Ovadya comments on the need for cross-cutting, international regulation of AI.

Aviv Ovadya

GPT-4 needs more robust testing, “red team” member says

BKC Affiliate Aviv Ovadya speaks about the need for more robust testing for GPT-4. 

Grindr sends Egypt users a warning after alleged entrapments and arrests

BKC Affiliate Afsaneh Rigot comments on the arrests of LGBTQ+ people in Egypt.

Afsaneh Rigot

Supreme court to hear case on ‘bad spaniels’ v. jack daniel’s.

Rebecca Tushnet discusses the Rogers test as a standard for trademark infringement which is implicated in a current Supreme Court case involving a dog toy company spoofing Jack…

How AI could write our laws

BKC Affiliates Nathan Sanders and Bruce Schneier write about the potential influence of ChatGPT and generative AI on lobbying.

Nathan Sanders

Towards Responsible Quantum Technology

Urs Gasser contributed to a paper urging technologists to proceed and innovate responsibly. 

The Amendment the Court Forgot in Twitter v. Taamneh

Evelyn Douek writes with Genevieve Lakier about the free speech ramifications of Twitter v Taamneh...

Evelyn Douek

Tiktok's api guidelines are a minefield for researchers.

BKC Affiliate Joe Bak-Coleman writes about TikTok’s new API designed to provide data access to qualified researchers.

Joe Bak-Coleman

New Border Force unit to deploy more surveillance tech in Channel

"Instead of investing in costly technologies, governments could be using this money to strengthen access to justice, services and psycho-social support for people who are…

Amazon's Trickle-Down Monopoly

BKC Faculty Associate Moira Weigel writes about third-party sellers and the critical role they play in lending Amazon monopolistic power.

Moira Weigel

Meet The Three Artists Behind A Landmark Lawsuit Against AI Art Generators

Jessica Fjeld is quoted discussing the viability of lawsuits involving generative AI alleged to infringe upon artists' copyright claims. "It’s a little hard to predict how…

Technologies of Violence at the World's Sharpest Edges

BKC Faculty Associate Petra Molnar writes about new technologies of border management. “But when we really drill down, none of these conversations are just about technology. We…

IU Kelley prof: More TikTok suits likely

BKC Faculty Associate Abbey Stemler was interviewed about TikTok’s legal liability for failing to protect children from inappropriate content.

Abbey Stemler

Why the ‘twitter files’ are falling flat.

Joan Donovan writes about the Twitter Files and Elon Musk’s failing attempts to shape the media’s narrative. “In fact, what the “Twitter Files” reveal is what we already knew…

Joan Donovan

Musk boosts Twitter’s right-wing appeal with moderation changes, ‘Twitter Files’

David Weinberger discusses the shift in Twitter’s appeal to the right following Musk’s takeover. “It’s easy to understand why the right is overall so happy with what Musk has…

David Weinberger

Self-regulating platforms and anti-trust justice.

BKC Affiliate Elettra Bietti explores the distinctions and assumptions around platforms' functioning in markets. 

Twitter Is Not Rocket Science—It’s Harder

RSM Assembly Fellow Joe Bak-Coleman writes about the challenges of managing human behavior, especially as applied to Twitter.  “On a social network, interactions between…

Elon Musk Has Inherited Twitter’s India Problem

BKC Faculty Associate Evelyn Douek discusses Twitter's content moderation practices in different areas of the world.  Musk has called himself a “free speech absolutist,”…

Stuck in the Mud: How a Tiny, Beloved Driving Game Sparked a Bizarre, Decade-Long Feud

Micaela Mantegna spoke to IGN about the Spintire controversy. "Given how confounding this entire investigation has been, I spoke with video game lawyer and Berkman Klein Center…

Rights holders got Google to remove 6 billion links from Search over 10 years

Lumen project manager Adam Holland and Rebecca Tushnet spoke about Google’s efforts to take down links considered pirated. “Google's partner in tracking all of its takedown…

Adam Holland

Threats prompt hospitals to strip websites of info on gender-affirming care.

Cyberlaw clinic’s Alejandra Caraballo discusses how children’s hospitals are taking down websites as a result of harassment and threats. Removing too much information comes…

How a Texas law could impact First Amendment rights and content moderation online

BKC Harvard affiliate Julie Owono discusses online content moderation. "Is it okay in a modern democratic society to leave two private companies the decision on what we can say…

Julie Owono

First amendment hurdle looms for california’s social media law.

Rebecca Tushnet discusses the potential challenges to California’s new social media law under the First Amendment.  “Knowing how many reports they got and whether or when…

Why the First Amendment also protects code

“The First Amendment serves as a check on government intervention into our public expression through, for example, spoken or visually signed speech, writing, protesting and coding…

Unfair Artificial Intelligence: How FTC Intervention Can Overcome the Limitations of Discrimination Law

BKC Faculty Associate Solon Barocas writes about the Federal Trade Commission's intent to regulate discriminatory AI products and services. 

Solon Barocas

GOP reacts to Trump search with threats and comparisons to ‘Gestapo’

Susan Benesch, faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, said when it comes to “dangerous speech ... what matters most is how…

Susan Benesch

As interest rates rise, a silent vampire attack on crypto.

BKC affiliate Patrick Murck writes about the “silent vampire attack” crypto is facing as interest rates rise. “In a bull market, it was perhaps easy for crypto firms to…

Patrick Murck

The Netflix v. 'Unofficial Bridgerton Musical' lawsuit, explained

Rebecca Tushnet comments on a lawsuit filed by Netflix against The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical based on the popular Netflix show.

What’s in a name? If the name is Meta, a lawsuit.

Rebecca Tushnet discusses a lawsuit over Facebook’s name change to Meta with a competing company staking out its claim to the same name.

Bomb Body Politics: On the TSA's Algorithmic Policing of Gender

"Long before FAccT or ProPublica’s COMPAS reporting or Andrew Ferguson's book, the Department of Homeland Security was using sexist, racist algorithms to determine who to subject…

4 Ways the New EU Digital Acts Fall Short and How to Remedy It

BKC associates delve into the shortcomings of EU’s legislation addressing digital giants. “The gaps we see in these new regulations are less matters of language than a…

NICK COULDRY

Russell Newman

Velislava Hillman

Gregory Narr

Mitzi László

Public Defenders Are About to Be on the Front Lines for Protecting Abortion Rights

Alejandra Caraballo provides an overview on how surveillance technology can impact prosecutions in the Post-Roe era. People are rightly already asking, What would happen to me…

Blockchain-based application at a governmental level: disruption or illusion? The case of Estonia

BKC Faculty Associate Samer Hassan writes about the Estonian government’s applications of blockchain technology.

The Bitcoin Mining Showdown In New York’s Wine Country

Elizabeth Renieris shares about cryptocurrency's climate impact.

Elizabeth Renieris

In the Balance: Q&A with Janis Wong, PhD researcher in computer science, the University of St Andrews

Janis Wong, who recently completed a research sprint hosted by the Berkman Klein Center, speaks with McKinsey’s Stephanie Spangler about data governance “In our work, we refer…

From Harvard to Berkeley, Clinics Train Next-Gen Tech Lawyers

Kendra Albert and Christopher Bavitz share how the Cyberlaw Clinic prepares students to address the biggest issues in cyberspace.

The Lawfare Podcast: Facebook Shuts Down Research On Itself

evelyn douek talks with Quinta Jurecic and Alex Abdo about the legal fight between researchers and Facebook about collecting data on Facebook ads.  Listen to the…

The Feature is the Bug

Colin Doyle explains how algorithms can expose flaws in criminal laws and the harms that they can produce.

Colin Doyle

How to Read a Docket

Mason Kortz and Kendra Albert explain how to read a court docket in a free guide

Understanding Chilling Effects

Jon Penney outlines a new framework for understanding "chilling effects" on speech.

Activision, an indie developer and the battle over the ‘Warzone’ name

Kendra Albert explains lawsuit over “Warzone” video game trademark

Taking the crypto out of digital currency

A Q&A with Primavera De Filippi

Ads Are Impersonating Government Websites in Google Results, Despite Ban

Rebecca Tushnet discusses advertising law with The Markup

With a Covid-19 vaccine patent waiver likely, time to rethink global intellectual property rules

An op-ed by Ruth Okediji

The software industry dodges an API tax in Oracle decision

Kendra Albert weighs in on Supreme Court's fair-use decision

Jonathan Zittrain on the Great Deplatforming

Jonathan Zittrain joins the Lawfare Podcast

Impeachment Defense, the Constitution, and Bill of Rights

Jonathan Zittrain pens an op-ed about impeachment and the First Amendment.

Trump social media ban will feature in future antitrust hearings

Jasmine McNealy discusses policy issues likely to appear on a Democratic-controlled agenda.

Blocking the president

Harvard Law experts Yochai Benkler and evelyn douek weigh in on the suspension of President Trump’s social media accounts

Yochai Benkler

Movement lawyering for alternative futures.

Five community members speak about their vexed relationships to the law

Roslyn Satchel

Solarwinds as a constitutive moment: a new agenda for the international law of intelligence.

Asaf Lubin calls the SolarWinds Hack a "constitutive moment" in Just Security

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Artificial Intelligence and the Law

Legal scholars on the potential for innovation and upheaval.

• December 5, 2023
• Tomas Weber
• Illustrations by Joan Wong | Photography by Timothy Archibald
• Fall 2023 – Issue 109
• Cover Story
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Earlier this year, in Belgium, a young father of two ended his life after a conversation with an AI-powered chatbot. He had, apparently, been talking to the large language model regularly and had become emotionally dependent on it. When the system encouraged him to commit suicide, he did. “Without these conversations with the chatbot,” his widow told a Brussels newspaper, “my husband would still be here.”

A devastating tragedy, but one that experts predict could become a lot more common.

As the use of generative AI expands, so does the capacity of large language models to cause serious harm. Mark Lemley (BA ’88), the William H. Neukom Professor of Law, worries about a future in which AI provides advice on committing acts of terrorism, recipes for poisons or explosives, or disinformation that can ruin reputations or incite violence.

The question is who, if anybody, will be held accountable for these harms?

“We don’t have case law yet,” Lemley says. “The company that runs the AI is not doing anything deliberate. They don’t necessarily know what the AI is going to say in response to any given prompt.” So, who’s liable? “The correct answer, right now, might be nobody. And that’s something we will probably want to change.”

Generative AI is developing at a stunning speed, creating new and thorny problems in well-established legal areas, disrupting long-standing regimes of civil liability—and outpacing the necessary frameworks, both legal and regulatory, that can ensure the risks are anticipated and accounted for.

To keep up with the flood of new,  large language models like ChatGPT, judges and lawmakers will need to grapple, for the first time, with a host of complex questions. For starters, how should the law govern harmful speech that is not created by human beings with rights under the First Amendment? How must criminal statutes and prosecutions change to address the role of bots in the commission of crimes? As growing numbers of people seek legal advice from chatbots, what does that mean for the regulation of legal services? With large language models capable of authoring novels and AI video generators churning out movies, how can existing copyright law be made current?

Hanging over this urgent list of questions is yet another: Are politicians, administrators, judges, and lawyers ready for the upheaval AI has triggered?

ARTIFICIAL AGENTS, CRIMINAL INTENT

Did ChatGPT defame Professor Lemley?

In 2023, when Lemley asked the chatbot GPT-4 to provide information about himself, it said he had been accused of a crime: namely, the misappropriation of trade secrets. Director of the Stanford Program in Law, Science and Technology , Lemley had done no such thing. His area of research, it seems, had caused the chatbot to hallucinate criminal offenses.

More recently, while researching a paper on AI and liability, Lemley and his team asked Google for information on how to prevent seizures. The search engine responded with a link titled “Had a seizure, now what?” and Lemley clicked. Among the answers: “put something in someone’s mouth” and “hold the person down.” Something was very wrong. Google’s algorithm, it turned out, had sourced content from a webpage explaining precisely what not to do. The error could have caused serious injury. (This advice is no longer included in search results.)

Lemley says it is not clear AI companies will be held liable for errors like these. The law, he says, needs to evolve to plug the gaps. But Lemley is also concerned about an even broader problem: how to deal with AI models that cause harm but that have impenetrable technical details locked inside a black box.

Take defamation. Establishing liability, Lemley explains, requires a plaintiff to prove mens rea: an intent to deceive. When the author of an allegedly defamatory statement is a chatbot, though, the question of intent becomes murky and will likely turn on the model’s technical details: how exactly it was trained and optimized.

To guard against possible exposure, Lemley fears, developers will make their models less transparent. Turning an AI into a black box, after all, makes it harder for plaintiffs to argue that it had the requisite “intent.” At the same time, it makes models more difficult to regulate.

How, then, should we change the law? What’s needed, says Lemley, is a legal framework that incentivizes developers to focus less on avoiding liability and more on encouraging companies to create systems that reflect our preferences. We’d like systems to be open and comprehensible, he says. We’d prefer AIs that do not lie and do not cause harm. But that doesn’t mean they should only say nice things about people simply to avoid liability. We expect them to be genuinely informative.

In light of these competing interests, judges and policymakers should take a fine-grained approach to AI cases, asking what, exactly, we should be seeking to incentivize. As a starting point, suggests Lemley, we should dump the mens rea requirement in AI defamation cases now that we’ve entered an era when dangerous content can so easily be generated by machines that lack intent.

Lemley’s point extends to AI speech that contributes to criminal conduct. Imagine, he says, a chatbot generating a list of instructions for becoming a hit man or making a deadly toxin. There is precedent for finding human beings liable for these things. But when it comes to AI, once again accountability is made difficult by the machine’s lack of intent.

“We want AI to avoid persuading people to hurt themselves, facilitating crimes, and telling falsehoods about people,” Lemley writes in “Where’s the Liability in Harmful AI Speech?” So instead of liability resting on intent, which AIs lack, Lemley suggests an AI company should be held liable for harms in cases where it was designed without taking standard actions to mitigate risk.

“It is deploying AI to help prosecutors make decisions that are not conditioned on race. Because that’s what the law requires.”

Julian Nyarko, associate professor of law, on the algorithm he developed

At the same time, Lemley worries that holding AI companies liable when ordinary humans wouldn’t be, may inappropriately discourage development of the technology. He and his co-authors argue that we need a set of best practices for safe AI. Companies that follow the best practices would be immune from suit for harms that result from their technology while companies that ignore best practices would be held responsible when their AIs are found to have contributed to a resulting harm.

HELPING TO CLOSE THE ACCESS TO JUSTICE GAP 

As AI threatens to disrupt criminal law, lawyers themselves are facing major disruptions. The technology has empowered individuals who cannot find or pay an attorney to turn to AI-powered legal help. In a civil justice system awash in unmet legal need, that could be a game changer.

“It’s hard to believe,” says David Freeman Engstrom , JD ’02, Stanford’s LSVF Professor in Law and co-director of the Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession , “but the majority of civil cases in the American legal system—that’s millions of cases each year—are debt collections, evictions, or family law matters.” Most pit a represented institutional plaintiff (a bank, landlord, or government agency) against an unrepresented individual. AI-powered legal help could profoundly shift the legal services marketplace while opening courthouse doors wider for all.

“Up until now,” says Engstrom, “my view was that AI wasn’t powerful enough to move the dial on access to justice.” That view was front and center in a book Engstrom published earlier this year, Legal Tech and the Future of Civil Justice . Then ChatGPT roared onto the scene—a “lightning-bolt moment,” as he puts it. The technology has advanced so fast that Engstrom now sees rich potential for large language models to translate back and forth between plain language and legalese, parsing an individual’s description of a problem and responding with clear legal options and actions.

“We need to make more room for new tools to serve people who currently don’t have lawyers,” says Engstrom, whose Rhode Center has worked with multiple state supreme courts on how to responsibly relax their unauthorized practice of law and related rules. As part of that work, a groundbreaking Rhode Center study offered the first rigorous evidence on legal innovation in Utah and Arizona, the first two states to implement significant reforms.

But there are signs of trouble on the horizon. This summer, a New York judge sanctioned an attorney for filing a motion that cited phantom precedents. The lawyer, it turns out, relied on ChatGPT for legal research, never imagining the chatbot might hallucinate fake law.

How worried should we be about AI-powered legal tech leading lay people—or even attorneys—astray? Margaret Hagan , JD ’13, lecturer in law, is trying to walk a fine line between techno-optimism and pessimism.

“I can see the point of view of both camps,” says Hagan, who is also the executive director of the Legal Design Lab , which is researching how AI can increase access to justice, as well as designing and evaluating new tools. “The lab tries to steer between those two viewpoints and not be guided by either optimistic anecdotes or scary stories.”

To that end, Hagan is studying how individuals are using AI tools to solve legal problems. Beginning in June, she gave volunteers fictional legal scenarios, such as receiving an eviction notice, and watched as they consulted Google Bard. “People were asking, ‘Do I have any rights if my landlord sends me a notice?’ and ‘Can I really be evicted if I pay my rent on time?’” says Hagan.

Bard “provided them with very clear and seemingly authoritative information,” she says, including correct statutes and ordinances. It also offered up imaginary case law and phone numbers of nonexistent legal aid groups.

In her policy lab class, AI for Legal Help , which began last autumn, Hagan’s students are continuing that work by interviewing members of the public about how they might use AI to help them with legal problems. As a future lawyer, Jessica Shin, JD ’25, a participant in Hagan’s class, is concerned about vulnerable people placing too much faith in these tools.

“I’m worried that if a chatbot isn’t dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s, key things can and will be missed—like  statute of limitation deadlines or other procedural steps that will make or break their cases,” she says.

“Government cannot govern AI, if government doesn’t understand AI.”

Daniel Ho, William Benjamin Scott and Luna M. Scott Professor of Law

Given all this promise and peril, courts need guidance, and SLS is providing it. Engstrom was just tapped by the American Law Institute to lead a multiyear project to advise courts on “high-volume” dockets, including debt, eviction, and family cases. Technology will be a pivotal part, as will examining how courts can leverage AI. Two years ago, Engstrom and Hagan teamed up with Mark Chandler, JD ’81, former Cisco chief legal officer now at the Rhode Center, to launch the Filing Fairness Project . They’ve partnered with courts in seven states, from Alaska to Texas, to make it easier for tech providers to serve litigants using AI-based tools. Their latest collaboration will work with the Los Angeles Superior Court, the nation’s largest, to design new digital pathways that better serve court users.

CAN MACHINES PROMOTE COMPLIANCE WITH THE LAW?

The hope that AI can be harnessed to help foster fairness and efficiency extends to the work of government too. Take criminal justice. It’s supposed to be blind, but the system all too often can be discriminatory—especially when it comes to race. When deciding whether to charge or dismiss a case, a prosecutor is prohibited by the Constitution from taking a suspect’s race into account. There is real concern, though, that these decisions might be shaped by racial bias—whether implicit or explicit.

Enter AI. Julian Nyarko , associate professor of law, has developed an algorithm to mask race-related information from felony reports. He then implemented the algorithm in a district attorney’s office, erasing racially identifying details before the reports reached the prosecutor’s desk. Nyarko believes his algorithm will help ensure lawful prosecutorial decisions.

“The work uses AI tools to increase compliance with the law,” he says. “It is deploying AI to help prosecutors make decisions that are not conditioned on race. Because that’s what the law requires.”

GOVERNING AI

While the legal profession evaluates how it might integrate this new technology, the government has been catching up on how to grapple with the AI revolution. According to Daniel Ho , the William Benjamin Scott and Luna M. Scott Professor of Law and a senior fellow at Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered AI, one of the core challenges for the public sector is a dearth of expertise.

Very few specialists in AI choose to work in the public sector. According to a recent survey, less than 1 percent of recent AI PhD graduates took positions in government—compared with some 60 percent who chose industry jobs. A lack of the right people, and an ailing government digital infrastructure, means the public sector is missing the expertise to craft law and policy and effectively use these tools to improve governance. “Government cannot govern AI,” says Ho, “if government doesn’t understand AI.”

Ho, who also advises the White House as an appointed member of the National AI Advisory Committee (NAIAC), is concerned policymakers and administrators lack sufficient knowledge to separate speculative from concrete risks posed by the technology.

Evelyn Douek , a Stanford Law assistant professor, agrees. There is a lack of available information about how commonly used AI tools work—information the government could use to guide its regulatory approach, she says. The outcome? An epidemic of what Douek calls “magical thinking” on the part of the public sector about what is possible.

The information gap between the public and private sectors motivated a large research team from Stanford Law School’s Regulation, Evaluation, and Governance Lab (RegLab) to assess the feasibility of recent proposals for AI regulation. The team, which included Tino Cuéllar (MA ’96, PhD ’00), former SLS professor and president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Colleen Honigsberg , professor of law; and Ho, concluded that one important step is for the government to collect and investigate events in which AI systems seriously malfunction or cause harm, such as with bioweapons risk.

“If you look at other complex products, like cars and pharmaceuticals, the government has a database of information that details the factors that led to accidents and harms,” says Neel Guha, JD/PhD ’24 (BA ’18), a PhD student in computer science and co-author of a forthcoming paper that explores this topic. The NAIAC formally adopted this recommendation for such a reporting system in November.

“Our full understanding of how these systems are being used and where they might fail is still in flux,” says Guha. “An adverse-event-reporting system is a necessary prerequisite for more effective governance.”

MODERNIZING GOVERNMENT

While the latest AI models demand new regulatory tools and frameworks, they also require that we rethink existing ones—a challenge when the various stakeholders often operate in separate silos.

“Policymakers might propose something that is technically impossible. Engineers might propose a technical solution that is flatly illegal.” Ho says. “What you need are people with an understanding of both dimensions.”

Last year, Ho, Christie Lawrence, JD ’24, and Isaac Cui, JD ’25, documented extensive challenges the federal government faced in implementing AI legal requirements in an article. This led Ho to testify before the U.S. Senate on a range of reforms. And this work is driving change. The landmark White House executive order on AI adopted these recommendations, and the proposed AI Leadership to Enable Accountable Deployment (AI LEAD) Act would further codify recommendations, such as the creation of a chief AI officer, agency AI governance boards, and agency strategic planning. These requirements would help ensure the government is able to properly use and govern the technology.

“If generative AI technologies continue on their present trajectory, it seems likely that they will upend many of our assumptions about a copyright system.”

Paul Goldstein, Stella W. and Ira S. Lillick Professor of Law

Ho, as faculty director of RegLab, is also building bridges with local and federal agencies to develop high-impact demonstration projects of machine learning and data science in the public sector.

The RegLab is working with the Internal Revenue Service to modernize the tax-collection system with AI. It is collaborating with the Environmental Protection Agency to develop machine-learning technology to improve environmental compliance. And during the pandemic, it partnered with Santa Clara County to improve the public health department’s wide range of pandemic response programs.

“AI has real potential to transform parts of the public sector,” says Ho. “Our demonstration projects with government agencies help to envision an affirmative view of responsible technology to serve Americans.”

In a sign of an encouraging shift, Ho has observed an increasing number of computer scientists gravitating toward public policy, eager to participate in shaping laws and policy to respond to rapidly advancing AI, as well as law students with deep interests in technology. Alumni of the RegLab have been snapped up to serve in the IRS and the U.S. Digital Service, the technical arm of the executive branch. Ho himself serves as senior advisor on responsible AI to the U.S. Department of Labor. And the law school and the RegLab are front and center in training a new generation of lawyers and technologists to shape this future.

AI GOES TO HOLLYWOOD 

Swaths of books and movies have been made about humans threatened by artificial intelligence, but what happens when the technology becomes a menace to the entertainment industry itself? It’s still early days for generative AI-created novels, films, and other content, but it’s beginning to look like Hollywood has been cast in its own science fiction tale—and the law has a role to play.

“If generative AI technologies continue on their present trajectory,” says the Stella W. and Ira S. Lillick Professor of Law Paul Goldstein , “it seems likely that they will upend many of our assumptions about a copyright system.”

There are two main assumptions behind intellectual property law that AI is on track to disrupt. From feature films and video games with multimillion-dollar budgets to a book whose author took five years to complete, the presumption has been that copyright law is necessary to incentivize costly investments. Now AI has upended that logic.

“When a video game that today requires a $100 million investment can be produced by generative AI at a cost that is one or two orders of magnitude lower,” says Goldstein, “the argument for copyright as an incentive to investment will weaken significantly across popular culture.”

The second assumption, resting on the consumer side of the equation, is no more stable. Copyright, a system designed in part to protect the creators of original works, has also long been justified as maximizing consumer choice. However, in an era of AI-powered recommendation engines, individual choice becomes less and less important, and the argument will only weaken as streaming services “get a lot better at figuring out what suits your tastes and making decisions for you,” says Goldstein.

If these bedrock assumptions behind copyright are both going to be rendered “increasingly irrelevant” by AI, what then is the necessary response? Goldstein says we need to find legal frameworks that will better safeguard human authors.

“I believe that authorship and autonomy are independent values that deserve to be protected,” he says. Goldstein foresees a framework in which AI-produced works are clearly labeled as such to guarantee consumers have accurate information.

The labeling approach may have the advantage of simplicity, but on its own it is not enough. At a moment of unprecedented disruption, Goldstein argues, lawmakers should be looking for additional ways to support human creators who will find themselves competing with AIs that can generate works faster and for a fraction of the cost. The solution, he suggests, might involve looking to practices in countries that have traditionally given greater thought to supporting artists, such as those in Europe.

“There will always be an appetite for authenticity, a taste for the real thing,” Goldstein says. “How else do you explain why someone will pay $2,000 to watch Taylor Swift from a distant balcony, when they could stream the same songs in their living room for pennies?” In the case of intellectual property law, catching up with the technology may mean heeding our human impulse—and taking the necessary steps to facilitate the deeply rooted urge to make and share authentic works of art.  SL

Research subject Law and Information Technology

Law and Information Technology examines the relationship and interaction between law and ICT (Information and Communication Technologies). The areas of interest include the interpretation and development of regulations in the digital society, as well as the methods for legally customised system design and management.

Legal informatics spans several traditional areas of law, including law of contract, commercial law, copyright and administrative law. The subject is usually divided into a matrix-oriented part and a methodology-oriented part. The first part - usually referred to as IT law - covers legal issues that arise in connection with the use of IT. This includes everything from the use of computers and the Internet in handling information, to telecommunications and various forms of media. IT law also covers issues such as information security, processing of personal data, trade secrets, publicity and confidentiality, etc. 

The method-oriented part of legal informatics in turn deals with regulations and methodological issues that arise in the development of digitised systems and applications. The importance of a legal approach to digitisation has become increasingly important in the context of society's growing use of digital systems and artificial intelligence (AI), both in the automation of legal proceedings and in the use of various forms of apps. The rapid developments in this field are constantly raising new questions about how laws, rules and ethical guidelines can and should be applied, making legal informatics an extremely dynamic area of research.

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Researchers

Cecilia Magnusson Sjöberg

Kacper Filip Szkalej

Liane Rose Colonna

Ass. lektor, docent

Christine Storr

Univ. adjunkt

This project addresses fundamental ethical and legal challenges that AI technologies bring to learning and teaching in higher education. It will provide knowledge about how to conceptually and empirically approach these challenges, but most importantly: How to deal with ethical issues in practice.

The goal of thid cross-disciplinary collaboration is to design and implement a novel data management and analytics framework for medical data sources. The focus is on explainable machine learning methods as well as on legal and ethical aspects of the predictive models.

PhD project that aims to examine legal information retrieval, the concept of legal information within the framework of the doctrine of legal sources and the information-seeking behavior of lawyers.

PhD Research Project about the right to compensation and liability for damages caused by processing of personal data.

Research project that investigates the link between new technologies and optimal operation of buildings. The aim is to create better conditions for the optimal operation of smart buildings.

Path2Integrity is a European project – funded by the European Commission – that raises awareness about research integrity and educates on how to argue in favour of responsible research and reliable research results.

What are the regulatory challenges when designing new systems for waste management? The topic will be explored in this research project. Our aim is to expand the understanding of interactions between environmental sustainability, local regulations and digital innovation.

PhD Project that is a part of the Maria Skłodowska-Curie Action project visuAAL - Privacy-Aware and Acceptable Video-Based Technologies and Services for Active and Assisted Living.

EU framework for AI usage will soon be established

During Sweden's current presidency of the Council of the European Union, the upcoming AI-act is one of the issues on the table. And it is a regulation that is highly important, according to several researchers at the Department of Law, Stockholm University.

VisuAAL-projects at SU Law examine legal aspects of AAL technologies

Video-based technology can be of great help in the care of older adults, but at the same time raises several questions of a legal nature. At SU Law, two PhD students are currently studying these issues within the framework of an EU major research program.

Law in the Era of Artificial Intelligence

The Swedish Law and Informatics Research Institute (IRI) has newly launched the publication of the Nordic Yearbook of Law and Informatics 2020–2021: Law in the Era of Artificial Intelligence.

AI and Legal Methods: Navigating the new Frontier

Departments and centres, centres and other units.

The Swedish Law and Informatics Research Institute (IRI) explores the interaction between Law and Information Technology. The topic is a meeting place for traditional legal studies, information science and information technology. Through this subject, the legal system acquires new working tools for the handling of source material, legal proceedings become automated and legal activities take on a new guise. Law and Information Technology focuses on both methodological issues and regulative issues.

The activities started in 1968 and are to a large extent project oriented. Apart from research, IRI is engaged in educational activities and Law and Information Technology (“Rättsinformatik”) has since the early 1980s been a compulsory component in the legal education at Stockholm University.

The Swedish Law and Informatics Research Institute

Departments

By offering a wide range of academic programmes in law bringing together researchers, teachers and students from different horizons, the Department of Law at Stockholm University creates strong and stimulating educational and research environments of the highest class.

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Trends in information technology law: looking ahead to 2021

This piece looks ahead to what we might expect as IT law develops in 2021.

2020: an extraordinary year of IT transformation at scale, pace and depth

At last, we can see 2020 through the rear view mirror. A year like no other within living memory, its impact on transformation in the world of IT is huge. It can be summarised in three words: Scale, Pace, Depth.

“The digital economy is consuming the old economy” said a former CEO of HSBC recently, neatly if graphically articulating the scale of change. [i] 2020’s ‘tech celeration’ and great shove online have compressed into months changes previously anticipated in years. And headlines in early December 2020 illustrate how the depth of these changes will impact all our lives:

• DeepMind’s AlphaFold AI system predicting a protein’s shape from its amino acid components; [ii]
• Arm Holdings’ Project Triffid to develop virtually no-power IOT sensors; [iii]
• UK regulatory approval of the first mRNA [iv] and DNA [v] Covid-19 vaccines;
• researchers in China manipulating light particles in a quantum calculation reportedly 10bn times faster than anything before; [vi] and
• SpaceX’s Starship SN8 rocket prototype carrying out its first high-altitude test flight. [vii]

The high street

Retail and the UK high street remained the place where these changes were most visible in 2020. The chart below [viii] shows how internet sales as a percentage of total retail sales inclined relatively gently upwards from 3% in 2006 to 20% in 2019, but then raced ahead to 30% in early 2020. The list of well-known UK retailers that went into liquidation or administration in 2020 as a result is likely to lengthen in 2021.

Brexit and digital trade

So now we know what “Brexit means Brexit” means. Having ridden up six floors in the elevator of European economic integration, we finally got out at level 2, where we last were in 1960: tariff-free trade in UK- and EU- originating goods, bolted on to the WTO’s basic principles of non-discrimination and equal treatment (see graphic). [ix]

“Brexit means Brexit” means getting out at Level 2

December’s 1,246 page EU/UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement (‘ TCA ’) [x] adds to this a number of high level terms on services plus commitments to negotiate. These include seven pages aiming “to facilitate digital trade, to address unjustified barriers to trade enabled by electronic means and to ensure an open, secure and trustworthy online environment”. [xi] The Government has called these out as “some of the most liberalising and modern digital trade provisions in the world” and “the first time the EU has agreed provisions on data in a free trade agreement”. [xii]

Brexit and data protection

As an example of the contortions that may lie ahead, many businesses are likely to end up with dual data protection compliance requirements. During the transition period, the GDPR continued to apply in the UK pretty much as before and the TCA defers the UK from being considered a “third country” for GDPR purposes until 30 June 2021 or (if earlier) when the EU makes an adequacy decision for the UK. [xiii] We will be keenly awaiting the outcome of the Commission’s adequacy review.

However, as well needing to comply with UK GDPR, a UK business will also be subject to EU GDPR if it offers goods or services to data subjects in the EU, monitors their behaviour or has an EU establishment. Whilst divergence is unlikely to be material early on, room for inconsistency and conflict between UK GDPR and EU GDPR will grow over time.

If not reviewed before, the main areas affected that will need attention in 2021 are international data transfers, appointment of EU representatives and regulatory oversight for cross-border processing. The fall-out from the ECJ judgment in Schrems II (which struck down the US Privacy Shield arrangements with the EU) [xiv] and ongoing clarification in Brussels of points of EU GDPR detail are also likely to make this a volatile area of law for UK practitioners for a while.

At the global level, the data protection compliance picture is further complicated in 2021 as more states embed their own GDPR-type laws and rules. These include Brazil (September 2020); California (California Consumer Privacy Act: January 2020, California Privacy Rights Act: from January 2022); Canada (bill introduced November 2020); China (draft published October 2020); and South Africa (June 2021).

All the cloud’s a stage

IT transformation will continue to get star billing this year, and the main players are evident as we head into 2021. The cloud sets the stage where digital transformation plays out. In the world of “everything as a service”, efficient use of cloud resources is a pre-requisite to good performances from the rest of the 4 th Industrial Revolution cast. Here, AI, 5G, blockchain, process automation, autonomous devices (robots, drones and vehicles), and virtual (aka augmented or extended) reality will be taking up the most important roles in 2021.

Towards the digital supply chain

Against this backdrop, transformation is taking place in different ways across different sectors, but emerging common features across industry include digital twinning, the development of secure digital supply chains and effective end to end governance and management of data and algorithms.

By way of example, the Air Transport Industry (‘ ATI ’) has faced unprecedented challenges in 2020, from changing traffic patterns, through space and resource re-utilisation, to the green airport and greener ways to fly.

The ATI depends on a complex supply chain of layered, co-ordinated and structured processes, events and interactions from multiple entities including air traffic control, aircraft (in flight, landing, at stand and take-off), airports (departure and arrival), cargo, passengers and ticket distribution.

All these processes, events and interactions, or rather their digital twins, generate vast amounts of digital data. All the actors in the ATI supply chain are reliant on the availability and accuracy of this data: they all need the right data at the right time to perform their role. Viewed through the lens of data, the ATI supply chain becomes data points, data flows and data sharing based on common architectures, and permissioning within and between entities and ecosystems. Rules can be set through smart contracts, blockchain and standards to determine how these processes, events and interactions take place, and the value of data (as an asset) and its risk (as a liability) as it moves through the system.

Each process, event and interaction in the digital supply chain must comply with applicable legal requirements – as critical infrastructure for example, and for cybersecurity, data protection, specific ATI regulation and data contracting and licensing.

The ATI is just one example of representing an industry through a data-centric lens which IT lawyers will see much more of in 2021.

Tech regulation: intermediary immunities and competition law

To the keywords of scale, pace and depth we might add regulation. With significant legislation in the works in Brussels and London, 2021 will be a seminal year for digital regulation, as well pointing the direction that regulatory divergence will take both between the UK and the EU, and between Europe and the US.

Longstanding intermediary immunities and safe harbours from liability are increasingly under challenge around the world “as governments seek to deputise intermediaries to assist in law enforcement”. [xv] These immunities arise in the EU under the E-Commerce Directive, [xvi] which the EU Commission is proposing to overhaul through the two pillars of its Digital Services Act package. [xvii] The first pillar will set out new rules on responsibilities of digital services providers towards their users, and the second will implement new rules on competition.

For the first pillar, the UK government stated in October 2020 that it had “no current plans to change the UK’s intermediary liability regime or its approach to prohibition on general monitoring requirements”, [xviii] indicating that intermediary liability rules in the UK will diverge over time from those in the EU. On the second pillar, 2021 is scheduled to see UK legislative action around a new regulatory regime for online platforms and digital advertising, with responsibility shared between the new Digital Markets Unit of the Competition and Markets Authority, the Information Commissioner’s Office and Ofcom. [xix]

Regulating the distributed web

A feature of 2021 will be the rise of the distributed web, based on open source frameworks for publishing lightweight, peer to peer applications and decentralised data storage (like Holochain), encrypted identity verification (like Keybase) and third party service integration (like Electron). The distributed web heralds a move away from the centralised platforms of web 2.0 and towards a more user-centric, “self-sovereign” internet. But this new web world – where there’s no “canonical” single version of the truth as the data is stored on each user’s device – may make the role of publishers and app developers more challenging in terms of intermediary liability, where the rules are set to tighten and effective notice and take down may no longer be in their gift. As ever, regulation struggles somewhat to keep up with the tech.

Telecoms regulation: OTT and the EECC

How the tides of tech regulation can catch business unawares is shown by the reach of the new European Electronic Communications Code (‘ EECC ’). [xx] The EECC came into force on 21 December 2020, with the UK deferring certain provisions for a number of months. As part of a series of measures that replaces the 2002 EU telecoms regulatory package, it sets out general authorisation conditions for telecoms services. Under the old rules, [xxi] over the top (‘ OTT ’) services – calls and messages over the internet – were outside the reach of telecoms law as they weren’t considered to be regulated electronic communications services (‘ ECS ’). Brussels changed this in the EECC, where most OTT services now fall inside the definition of ECS and, if public ECS (essentially, where anyone can sign up), are subject to certain rules protecting users that the EECC imposes. However, note that the UK has not yet implemented the EECC fully in relation to OTT.

As public ECS, OTT services will also need to comply with the communications confidentiality, traffic data and location data rules in the (old) ePrivacy Directive (‘ ePD ’), [xxii] which is due to be replaced in the EU by the ePrivacy Regulation (‘ ePR ’) when agreed, likely in 2021. Of course, as the ePR won’t apply in the UK and how the UK will deal with e-Privacy in 2021 isn’t yet clear. The EECC, ePD and ePR rules are separate from the GDPR and other (largely EU-based) laws protecting consumers online, where the rule books are also lengthening.

With added dimension provided by Brexit, it’s a racing certainty that the scale, pace and depth of IT and regulatory change we have seen in 2020 will accelerate as we head into 2021.

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T1 - Information Technology Law

AU - Rowland, Diane

AU - Kohl, Uta

AU - Charlesworth, Andrew

PY - 2016/8/1

Y1 - 2016/8/1

N2 - The fifth edition of Information Technology Law continues to be dedicated to a detailed analysis of and commentary on the latest developments within this burgeoning field of law. It provides an essential read for all those interested in the interface between law and technology and the effect of new technological developments on the law. The contents have been restructured and the reordering of the chapters provides a coherent flow to the subject matter. Criminal law issues are now dealt with in two separate chapters to enable a more focused approach to content crime. The new edition contains both a significant amount of incremental change as well as substantial new material and, where possible, case studies have been used to illustrate significant issues.

AB - The fifth edition of Information Technology Law continues to be dedicated to a detailed analysis of and commentary on the latest developments within this burgeoning field of law. It provides an essential read for all those interested in the interface between law and technology and the effect of new technological developments on the law. The contents have been restructured and the reordering of the chapters provides a coherent flow to the subject matter. Criminal law issues are now dealt with in two separate chapters to enable a more focused approach to content crime. The new edition contains both a significant amount of incremental change as well as substantial new material and, where possible, case studies have been used to illustrate significant issues.

M3 - Authored book

SN - 9780415870160

BT - Information Technology Law

PB - Routledge

CY - Abingdon

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Article Contents

Introduction, a definition of legal technology, a mapping and categorization of legal technology, implications of legal technologies, legal tech design and adoption considerations.

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Defining legal technology and its implications

 Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Hong Kong, Pokefulam, Hong Kong. E-mail: [email protected] .

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Ryan Whalen, Defining legal technology and its implications, International Journal of Law and Information Technology , Volume 30, Issue 1, Spring 2022, Pages 47–67, https://doi.org/10.1093/ijlit/eaac005

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Legal technological developments have been both lauded as the promising future of the law and derided as a danger to the fundamentals of justice. This article helps reconcile these divergent perspectives by providing a definition of legal technology and a framework through which to understand its different types and their potential implications for the legal system and society more generally. Mapping technologies according to how specifically they afford legal uses, and the directness with which they engage in unmediated legal activities reveals different technological categories and their differing propensities to have legal, functional or general implications. This framework can help inform discussions both about which types of legal technologies to be excited about, and which to be concerned about, while also helping guide research, policymaking, design and adoption considerations.

Although excitement about how technology will change the practice or substance of law is nothing new, 1 recent years have witnessed rapid growth in both the development and marketing of legal technologies, and discussions about their implications. 2 The increasing sophistication of these technologies and their wider availability and adoption have generated two divergent narratives about their potential implications. These narratives alternately express excitement about legal technology’s potential to make the law more efficient and improve access to justice, 3 or concern about the ways in which it may actually exacerbate existing biases or otherwise systematically harm justice. 4 Although these two narratives appear to be at odds with one another, they can be reconciled by noting one simple and uncontroversial fact about legal technologies: they are diverse. However, despite their diversity, we lack a sufficiently precise and nuanced conceptualization to differentiate between the varied types of legal technology. To the extent that we currently have a vocabulary to categorize these technologies, it relies on the areas of law they are applied in. So, legal tech comprised ‘fintech, regtech’, 5 ‘smart contract’, 6 ‘e-discovery’, 7 etc. While this categorization tells us something about where or when a technology might be used, it overlooks all of the other dimensions these technologies can be sorted along as well as the similarities they share. At other times, scholars or commentators might examine legal tech by focusing on how specific technologies might be applied to the law. For instance, scholars have written about how technologies like search engines, 8 machine learning 9 or chatbots 10 might influence the law or legal practice. However, by focusing on specific types of technology these approaches offer little to help us make sense of legal technology as a whole. This lack of precision in commentary relating to legal technologies makes deep and meaningful discussion about their merits and demerits less precise than they should be. By more explicitly defining and categorizing legal technologies, this article seeks to help address this lack of precision.

The relationship between law and technology is much older than recent decades and includes much more than the computationally enabled information technologies often used as examples. For instance, important technological developments like writing, 11 papermaking 12 and citator organization 13 influenced the development of law and legal systems, and were each in different ways ‘legal’ technologies. The basket of technologies referred to as ‘legal tech’ is vast, and its constituent technologies vary in their design, their markets, their implications and the directness with which they engage with the law. Noting this diversity and identifying the important dimensions along which legal tech varies, can provide both a better understanding of what it means to be legal technology, as well as guidance about the potential implications and relevant design considerations they raise.

This article makes three contributions to the way we understand, study and discuss legal technologies. First, it offers a definition of legal technology as ‘all devices, capable of being used as a means for interacting with the substance of law or assisting its user to interact with the law, and the skills and techniques by which we use them’. Next, it situates those technologies within a two-dimensional mapping according to the directness with which they engage with the law and the extent to which they specifically afford legally related uses. Following from this mapping, and informed by the resulting taxonomy of legal technologies it provides, this Article then goes on to discuss the implications that legal technologies can give rise to and how these can and should inform the design, regulation and adoption of legal tech. Before we move on to mapping legal technologies and trying to understand the different types of implications they can have, we must first discuss what we mean when we talk about ‘legal tech’.

On the surface, the notion of ‘legal technology’ and what may or may not fall under its auspices, seems straight forward. One might say that legal technology is simply any technology that one might use while engaged in legal activities. However, this definition has a number of weaknesses. It is of course self-referential, defining the term in relation to its component parts. It also elides much of the nuance and diversity that exist within the bounds of legal technology, while at the same time being over inclusive and possibly incorporating many mundane technologies that have no intrinsic ‘legalness’ about them.

Because of the diversity of technologies that potentially fit within the ‘legal tech’ penumbra, scholars have struggled to produce a precise and concise definition of it. Webb defines legal technology as ‘the use of digital information and communication technologies to automate all or part of the legal work process, to offer decision support to legal service producers, and to provide legal information and advice directly to clients/end users.’ 14 Hoffmann-Reim offers a similar definition describing legal tech as ‘the use of digital technologies to assist in identifying, interpreting and applying the law and, in some instances, also in creating it.’ 15 Salmerón-Manzano focuses on legal tech as online services used by lawyers or those needing legal advice. 16 These are certainly helpful definitions, but they exclude many non-digital precursors of modern legal technologies. This is perhaps appropriate when discussing 21st century legal technologies but is unduly limiting when trying to understand the concept more generally. 17

Rather than focusing on precisely defining legal technologies, Gowder provides a helpful way to categorize them according to the type of effect they have on legal practice. 18 This categorization scheme sorts legal technologies into two types: the ‘cheaper lawyer’ type which replicates current practices but with greater efficiency, and the ‘transformative artificial legal cognition’ type that facilitates automated legal decision-making in ways not previously possible. This focus on how different legal technologies have different implications for legal systems provides an essential consideration for related discussion. However, we are still left without a clear definition of what precisely we mean when we talk about ‘legal tech’. In seeking a generally applicable and historically inclusive definition, we can begin by deconstructing the term into its constituent parts—legal and technology.

What is it to be ‘legal’?

To be ‘legal’ is of course to be ‘relating to the law’. 19 Although there is jurisprudential disagreement about what precisely the ‘law’ is, for our present purposes these philosophical disputes can largely be ignored. Provided we adopt a sufficiently expansive definition, little will turn on its precise philosophical perspective. Shapiro’s definition of legal activities as those that are ‘shared, official, institutional, compulsory, [and] self-certifying’ acts of social planning with a moral aim 20 provides one such sufficient definition of law and legality. These acts result in social plans, which can manifest as rules, regulations, norms, common law principles, etc that make up what we commonly think of as ‘the law’. So, to be a ‘legal’ technology is to be a technology related to one of these social plans or the resulting system of shared, official, institutional and compulsory rules, norms, etc. 21

In order to avoid an overbroad definition of the ‘legal’ portion of legal technology, we must also account for the nature of the relationship between the technology and the law. Not all technologies relating to anything that law touches upon will be ‘legal technologies’. This would subsume all technologies and make the ‘legal’ modifier meaningless. Rather, we must include limit legal technologies to be those that ‘interact with’ the law as such. That is to say, those technologies that interact with the substance of law itself—for instance the rules, norms, principles, etc—or the activities involved in discovering, creating, enforcing or complying with that legal substance. To return to Shapiro’s definition of law as social planning, technologies that engage with the law as such would include those that help form the plans, determine what the plans are or gauge whether activities conform to the plan.

Because of both law’s omnipresence and technology’s diversity, there are of course many ways that technologies can interact with the law. In the categorization of legal technologies below, I will detail some of these different ways and the important dimensions along which they vary. For now, let it suffice to say that if a technology is capable of interacting with the substance of law, or assisting its user to interact with the law, it is ‘legal’. With that addressed, let us now turn to shedding some light on precisely what we mean by ‘technology’.

What is technology

Much as defining ‘what is legal’ is the subject of a vast and varied literature, the task of attempting to define ‘technology’ has a similarly robust tradition. Although engaging deeply with this tradition is beyond our current scope, defining legal technology requires at least some discussion of what it means to be a technology.

Technology has at its roots two Greek words: techne (craftsmanship, craft or art) and logos (word, reason, discourse, etc) . Since the industrial revolution, the term has been remarkably fluid, having shifted in meaning from the study of craft and technical production to refer to the objects produced themselves. 22 The dictionary definition of the modern term is often something along the lines of ‘machinery, equipment, etc, developed from the practical application of scientific and technical knowledge’. 23 With its focus on machinery and equipment, this more traditional definition characterizes technology as artefact, thereby overlooking its non-physical aspects. Sociologists of science and technology offer a more inclusive definition, such as Bain’s ‘all tools, machines, utensils, weapons, instruments, housing, clothing, communicating and transporting devices and the skills by which we produce and use them.’ 24

Although helpful, Bain’s definition is also perhaps overly detailed, listing some terms redundantly (eg, a tool is also potentially a utensil and an instrument), and can be made more succinct. What Heidegger refers to as the instrumental definition of technology as a ‘means to an end’ helps in this regard by focusing on the ways technologies can be and are used as a vital aspect of the definition. 25 To ensure our definition is clearly inclusive of information technologies, which are so central to legal tech, 26 we can also include a reference to the ‘technique’ involved in using devices. This helps ensure that a computer clearly fits within the definition of technology but so too does a type of database or machine learning model. Putting these components together gives us a useful working definition of technology as: ‘all devices capable of being used as a means to human ends and the skills and techniques by which we produce and use them.’

Defining legal technology

We can adapt this general definition of technology to provide one that is focused specifically on legal technologies. Doing so leads us to a definition of legal tech as: ‘all devices, capable of being used as a means for interacting with the substance of law or assisting its user to interact with the law, and the skills and techniques by which we use them.’ This encompasses all technologies that are capable of being used towards ‘legal ends’.

This is an expansive definition, and will include many different types of technologies. Indeed, as technologies become more capable of taking on legally related roles, it will come to include more-and-more different types of technology. 27 The next section helps divide these technologies into their different types by characterizing them according to both their possible uses and the degree to which they directly engage with the law.

The definition of legal technologies as those capable of use as a means to interact with the law is expansive, incorporating a wide variety of technologies. To facilitate a useful mapping of these technologies that allows us to understand their different types in terms that extends beyond their practice area applications, I propose situating them along two dimensions: their legal ‘directness’, and their legal ‘specificity’. Legal directness refers to the extent to which a technology interacts with the law in a direct unmediated fashion. Specificity refers to how generic or specifically useful the technology in question is. Assessing legal technologies along these two dimensions provides a mapping of four different types of technology ( Figure 1 ).

Mapping legal technologies according to their ‘directness’ (how directly they engage with the law in an unmediated and/or official manner) and their ‘specificity’ (the degree to which they offer primarily legal affordances). Although useful for visualization purposes, these two dimensions are not truly orthogonal to one another, and do not bisect one another quite as neatly as shown. In reality, the ‘generic tech’ quadrant would occupy only a small corner on the bottom left. These technologies do not interact with the law directly or indirectly. Once a technology is capable of interacting with the law, even if in a quite mediated and indirect manner, it becomes ‘legal’ technology and thus the ‘generic legal tech’ quadrant would occupy much of the lower half of the space.

The ‘specificity’ dimension runs from generic technologies with many non-legal applications, to more specific technologies that are designed for or capable of being applied for primarily legally related purposes. While this may seem simple on its face, it is important to note that a technology’s ‘uses’ are not merely coterminous with its ‘capabilities’. Technologies are often used in ways for which they were not designed or intended, and users may or may not avail themselves of each of a technology’s capabilities. The ways technologies are used vary greatly by context, they change over time, differ between users and are thus difficult to define in specific and concrete ways.

The concept of technological ‘affordances’ 28 provides a way to discuss legal technologies’ capabilities, while also recognizing the complex and socially constructed nature of their actual or perceived uses and potential. Building on Gibson’s introduction of the notion of affordances to the cognitive psychology literature, 29 scholars of science and technology 30 and design 31 have adopted it to more precisely discuss how technologies can be and are used. Hutchby defines technological affordances as ‘the possibilities that [technologies] offer for action’. 32 Affordances describe all the functional capabilities that a technology has. Take for instance a paperback book. It has a wide variety of affordances including conveying a narrative story, weighing down papers in a windy office, swatting houseflies, etc. While these affordances are properties of the book, whether they are available depends on the context. When the book is perceived by someone not literate in its language, its narrative-conveying affordance is not available, yet it retains is capacity as a paperweight ( Figure 2 ).

The specificity dimension varies based on how generic or specifically legal a technology's affordances are.

All of this is to say that legal technologies also have affordances, and those sets of affordances vary in terms of how exclusively legal they are. The specificity dimension reflects this and represents the degree to which a technology has a specifically legal or more generic set of affordances. Sometimes the availability of those affordances will depend on context, such as whether the user is a layperson, a legal professional or someone serving in an official capacity, but regardless the affordances are there. Legal technologies with low specificity—that is to say generic technologies—may have legal affordances but also many non-legal ones. They can be applied to the law or legal practice, but they can also be used for unrelated purposes. For instance, the word processing software I am currently using is a generic technology. It can be used to engage with the law, but it is not primarily intended for such use and it has many non-legal uses. On the other end of the spectrum would be a technology with a very specific set of legal affordances, and few non-legally related ones. For example, an automated contract clause generator has almost exclusively legally related affordances.

The ‘directness’ dimension also relates to the affordances that a technology offers, but rather than focusing on how varied those affordances are it measures the degree to which a technology affords direct engagement with the law. There are two aspects of a technology that can affect this directness—the extent to which it requires a human intermediary to interact with the law and whether that interaction is official. Thus, directness spans a spectrum from technologies which are highly indirect, because they do not themselves refer directly to any legal substance and require an intermediary to do so, to those that engage with the substance of the law directly and officially. In a sense, this directness dimension can be thought of as representing not just the degree to which the technology in question can be used for legal ‘ends’, but the degree to which it does so by legal ‘means’ ( Figure 3 ).

The directness spectrum runs from highly indirect engagement with the law to direct and official engagement.

For example, consider different technologies all related to speed limit enforcement or compliance. The regular speedometer installed in a car is highly indirect. It functions to help ensure the driver’s behaviour complies with the law and thus fits our definition of a legal technology, but it requires extensive human intermediation to do so. The human driver needs to be aware of the local speed limit, to compare that with the speedometer’s readings and subsequently perhaps correct the vehicle’s speed. The police officer’s radar gun still requires a human intermediary, but it is calibrated and officially endorsed as a measure of vehicle speed, making its engagement with the law more direct than the unofficial driver’s speedometer. Finally, the speed camera requires no intermediary and engages directly and officially with the law by automating enforcement and issuing speeding tickets where appropriate. It is thus a very direct example of this type of technology.

These two dimensions—directness and specificity—are related but distinct. Technologies that are inherently very direct in nature—that is to say, those that incorporate or engage with legal rules directly and officially as a core part of their functionality—will often be specifically designed for legally related uses and thus have a set of affordances that is largely legally related. That said, this relationship runs from directness-to-specificity, but not necessarily in the other direction. There are many technologies that are specifically designed for use in legal practice that may not engage with legal rules at all and are thus relatively low in their directness. Consider a law firm’s contract precedent management system. It is specifically designed for legal uses by helping the firm track and reuse or adapt contractual provisions, but because the substance of legal rules does not feature in the design or use of the tool, it is not directly legal in nature.

Although there are of course many dimensions along which one can sort legal technologies, these two are particularly useful in providing a categorization that is distinct from the ‘field of practice’ categorizing approach that is presently dominant, and in doing so they help provide insight into the potential wider social, professional and legal implications arising from these technologies. Focusing on how ‘direct’ a legal technology is in its interface with the law represents the degree to which it automates behaviour that would otherwise require a human to complete. In doing so it can help distinguish between technologies that introduce great potential change to legal practice or enforcement. Technologies that are highly indirect and require extensive human intermediation between them and the law are ceteris paribus less concerning than those that potentially remove human intermediaries and engage directly with the law, potentially automating important legal tasks. Meanwhile, the specificity dimension can provide insight into the degree to which the technology in question is of general relevance—and thus perhaps best subject to general regulation—or whether it is more narrowly relevant to legal officials and practitioners—and thus perhaps more appropriately regulated via professional bodies or the courts.

The four quadrants of the directness–specificity space can be used to categorize technologies into types. In the low specificity, low directness quadrant, we find generic technologies. These are of little interest to our present purposes, as they neither afford legal uses nor do they engage with the law. The quadrant above generic technology represents the high specificity, low directness technologies that can be thought of as ‘shallow legal tech’. These technologies are designed for and afford uses that primarily relate to the law, but they do not engage meaningfully with the law as such. The bottom right quadrant, featuring the low specificity and high directness technologies, is home to ‘generic legal tech’. Like their generic neighbours to the left, they are not designed with specific legal uses in mind, but they can engage directly with the law. Finally, the top right corner of the space shows the high specificity and high directness technologies. These ‘deep legal technologies’ both afford primarily legally related uses and engage with the law directly and deeply. The following sections will further describe these types of technologies, before we turn to examining the different implications they can have.

Generic technologies

Generic technologies are those that do not engage with the law—or only do so in such a remote and indirect way as to have essentially no engagement—and have a generic (ie, non-legally related) set of affordances. This category includes the majority of technologies—from the curtains on my windows to the powerplant charging my laptop. Although these technologies are clearly important, they are beyond this article’s immediate scope and so will only be discussed in passing. What distinguishes these technologies from their generic legal technology counterparts is that they are as low on the directness spectrum as to have essentially no connection, or only an extremely attenuated connection, to the law and legal practice.

It is true that because the law touches on all human activities, generic technologies can, and often do, have implications for the law and legal practice. As such, they will appear in discussions about technological implications below. However, for the time being, our focus is on ‘legal’ technologies, and so we will turn first to the three other types of categories that are either used as the means to a legal end or that afford primarily legal uses.

Generic legal technologies

Generic technologies that have some degree of engagement with the law are perhaps ‘legal technologies’ but as a group are the furthest removed from the law and legal practice. They have a generic—as opposed to specifically legal—set of affordances, and because they are generic, they come in a wide variety of forms, including those that have only mediated and indirect engagement with the substance of the law and those that are more direct. For instance, this category includes all sorts of mundane and indirectly legal technologies like computers, highlighters or the Internet. These are generic technologies, in that they offer a widely varied set of affordances, and only engage with the law via extensive human intermediation. On the other hand, some generic technologies offer more direct legal engagement. Consider for example the self-driving car. 33 Its primary set of affordances are things like transportation, shelter, etc and it is thus on the generic side of the generic-specific spectrum. However, it also engages directly with the substance of the law, it features databases of legal rules and makes unmediated determinations about compliance.

Not all generic technologies are generic ‘legal’ technologies. The bicycle that the lawyer rides to work, or the shoes that she wears during her visit to the court are so far left on the ‘directness’ spectrum that they are simply ‘generic’. To be a generic ‘legal’ technology, the technology in question must be capable of being applied to the professional or personal practice of law, or it must engage with legal rules, codes or norms. That is to say, they afford legal uses.

Shallow legal tech

Moving on from generic technologies with some legal affordances, we come next to the technologies that are specifically legal because their affordances are primarily legally related, yet do not themselves engage directly with the law. These technologies are frequently used to engage with some aspect of legal practice—for instance, helping a practitioner discover the law or track legal developments—and thus are often used by lawyers, judges, law librarians and others who frequently engage in legal practice. Because they are designed with legally related uses in mind, they are high in ‘specificity’; however, they do not engage directly with the law and are thus low in ‘directness’.

Because so much of legal practice revolves around determining what the law is in relation to some scenario, many of the technologies specifically designed to assist in legal practice are meant to help in this process of legal search and retrieval. For instance, the many legal databases that catalogue and organize the law in its various forms fit within this category. These databases are designed to help lawyers, judges, clerks and others who might want to know what law governs some issue they have identified. Other examples of specific legal practice technologies include things like docket management systems used by courts, contract management systems used by corporations or patent prior art search engines. It is a broad category—including many information technologies—that continues to grow in its importance to the legal profession.

Much of the shallow legal tech category is populated by generic technologies that have been adapted specifically for legal use. This reflects the recombinatorial nature of technology, where technological developments are variously recombined and repurposed to produce new variants. 34 For instance, technologies like the docket management systems or legal opinion search engines referenced above are adaptations of generic database and information retrieval systems that have been specifically designed for legal applications.

What distinguishes these shallow legal technologies from their more deeply legal counterparts is their comparatively limited direct engagement with the law. For instance, while the precedent search engine may be very specifically designed for legal uses, and indeed a key part of many legal practices, it does not engage with the law as such. It makes no legal determinations and leaves the majority of the legal work to the human practitioner. Recently, more technologies have been moving beyond this dynamic by engaging more directly with the law as such, and by automating more legal work.

Deep legal tech

Atop the legal technology hierarchy are those technologies that afford primarily legal uses and that engage directly and deeply with the law. These technologies do so by making legal determinations, directly or indirectly enforcing the law, or perhaps by updating the law itself. Some might consider these ‘true’ legal tech because they are so closely entwined with the law. Much of the recent excitement about legal technologies revolves around the promise of deep legal tech to transform the institution of the law or the way we interact with it. 35

Despite their direct legal engagement, these technologies need not be overly complex, and some of them have been widely used for many decades. For instance, tax preparation software that takes as input one’s specific circumstances—eg, income, marital status, etc—and makes a determination about one’s tax obligations fits into this deep legal tech category. These programmes are designed to take into account the relevant tax law, and by comparing a set of facts to that law make legal determinations. When these technologies are official in nature and thus capable of making legally binding determinations about tax obligations, they become even more directly legal as they further reduce the need for human intermediation between the facts and the legal outcome. Other examples of deep legal tech include newer inventions like the so-called ‘smart contracts’ that are designed to monitor conditions and self-execute as the agreement dictates, 36 or automated trademark infringement detectors that use artificial intelligence to monitor IP portfolios and make judgements as to possible infringement. 37

At the apex of this ‘deep legal technology’ category are technologies—at this point mostly theoretical—that not only incorporate the rules into their engineering and make legal determinations, but that observe conditions and update the rules accordingly. These technologies offer much promise in addressing some of the weaknesses inherent in the way law is created, but also raise important ethical issues about the role of law and its legitimacy.

Although these technologies are at this point largely theoretical, we can imagine some examples. For instance, responsive speed limits provide a simple example of this sort of reactive legal technology. 38 By monitoring traffic congestion and updating local speed limits in order to help ensure safe traffic flow, automatic speed limiting technologies are not just taking rules and facts as input and giving legal interpretations as output, but rather are updating the current rules that govern behaviour.

In some ways, this theoretical type of legal technology engages in making law. Unlike the other types of legal tech which either assist in legal practice, or help one discover or interpret the law, these ‘law making technologies’ actually alter the rules that govern behaviour at any given time and can be empowered to dynamically alter legal obligations. For this reason, they have particularly powerful implications and correspondingly important design considerations.

Having spent all of this time and effort defining and mapping legal technology, it would be very understandable if one were to ask: ‘why?’ Why does it matter that the rather amorphous set of technologies sometimes referred to as ‘legal tech’ can be sorted along these two dimensions of their generic utility and the directness with which they engage with the law? Does the categorization that this sorting allows for provide more than a helpful ‘sense-making’ explication of legal technologies?

I believe the answer to these questions is that yes, identifying these dimensions along which we can situate legal technologies provides nuance that is useful when we discuss them. And, perhaps more importantly, thinking of legal technologies in this way provides insight into the varied concerns different types of legal technology raise in terms of their implications and the design and regulatory issues that they give rise to.

Before moving on to discuss these potential implications, it is important to note that the effects legal technologies might have are not simply a function of their capabilities but are also influenced by important social forces. There is a tendency in the literature to take an overly technologically deterministic approach in forecasting how legal tech will alter legal practice and legal systems more generally. 39 Deterministic accounts of technology equate technological progress with social progress and make assumptions based on a technology’s capabilities to infer how it will be adopted and what sorts of implications it will have. 40 In doing so, these accounts ignore the role of human agency both in the choices contributing to a technology’s design, and also in terms of how that technology will go on to be used. In reality, technology is not merely deterministic but is—at least in part—a social construct, and as such any discussion of its implications must account for its social context. To do so, technology can be considered not merely as a tool with inherent capacities that will become manifest as it is used, but rather as an entity which offers a variety of technological affordances that users may or may not avail themselves of. 41 Doing so reveals that, although technologies may have inherent affordances, they are also subject to human agency and are thus ‘both shaped by and shaping of the practices humans use in interaction with, around and through them’. 42 Conceiving of technological development and its implications as not merely deterministic, but rather as a function of both technology’s affordances and a degree of social construction that is constrained by those affordances, helps ensure a more realistic and nuanced understanding of the relationship between technology and society.

The relationship of legal technology to the law and legal practice has yet another consideration that must be accounted for—the limitations and possibilities within different jurisdictions. 43 For legal technologies, we can think of these as ‘legal affordances’ which can limit or enable the affordances of legal technology. From a jurisdictionally agnostic perspective, a legal technology might have a given set of affordances. However, that set of affordances can change dramatically in practice if that technology is regulated by a jurisdiction’s legal profession or laws. For instance, consider again our example of the automated speed limit enforcement camera. In theory, it affords direct enforcement of the law. However, these cameras are not legal in all jurisdictions. 44 In jurisdictions where their use is not legal, they have no legal affordance to enforce the law and may in fact be completely irrelevant. Thus, when considering what sorts of implications a specific legal technology might have, in addition to considering its inherent affordances, one must also consider the legal affordances in relevant jurisdictions.

To summarize, legal technologies’ implications are not deterministic. Rather, they are influenced by the affordances each technology might allow for, the choices made by users as they adopt (or ignore) each technology, and the legal affordances of the jurisdictions within which they might be used. All that said, these implications can be sorted roughly into three types and the likelihood of any given technology having implications of these varied types is related to its directness and specificity, as described above. In order to show how mapping legal technology along these two axes can help reveal design, adoption and regulation considerations, let us first explore three distinct types of implications that legal technologies can have: legal, functional and general.

Legal implications

Perhaps, the most obvious type of implication arising from the adoption of a new legal technology is the possibility that it alters the substance of the law. This occurs when the technology in question affects the form of some legal rule, norm, principle, etc. For instance, the responsive speed limit technology discussed above enables jurisdictions to reform comparatively crude speed limits tied only to the location of the road in question, or perhaps one or two other auxiliary inputs like the time of day or proximity to a school, with tailored speed limits that optimize traffic flow across an entire network of roads in response to live traffic conditions. The introduction of a technology like this could substantively change a jurisdiction’s traffic law by transforming a categorical rule to a more complex, technologically enabled, regulation system.

As another example, consider a hypothetical technology that allowed patent offices to precisely estimate the degree of innovation in a new invention claiming a patent. Doing so would allow for tailored patent terms in providing a longer duration of protection for more innovative inventions, and shorter duration for less innovative inventions. The introduction of this technology would enable a substantive change to the current binary that exists in patent law where—absent a few regulatory exceptions—all patentable inventions are entitled to the same duration of protection, 45 and any inventions not meeting the patentability bar receive no patent protection at all. 46

The sorts of legal technologies that enable the substantive alteration of legal rules are perhaps easiest to conceive in legal areas that do not raise contentious moral or ethical issues. In both of the examples provided above, technical designers could use relatively objective and clear utility functions to inform their design choices. In the case of traffic regulations—a largely amoral area of law—the function is to optimize both safety and efficiency, enabling those using the traffic system to safely reach their destinations in the most efficient manner. In the case of an innovation-measuring technology that optimizes patent terms, the utility function is a maximization of innovative output. This sort of technology would set out to tune the reward and incentive scheme provided by patent law to further this goal.

In areas of law where questions of morality are more salient, it is more difficult to imagine technologies that substantively alter the law in a manner that is not highly contentious. However, imagining dystopian technologies that substantively alter the law in contentious ways is not so difficult. Take for example a hypothetical invention that classifies speech as either constitutionally protected free expression, or regulatable unprotected speech. This would substantively alter free expression law by foregoing legislated rules or the use of judicial discretion, and instead create a technologically enforced rule wherein expressions deemed permissible are left alone, while those that are deemed impermissible are regulated accordingly—perhaps with a takedown notice or injunction requiring their correction. Even assuming the technology in question could accurately categorize speech into categories currently considered protected or unprotected—for instance by identifying fighting words 47 —automating the decision-making process and removing humans from the deliberation would be highly contentious. It would forego the possibility that new exceptions could be identified, or new interpretations made, while also precluding change in the meaning of words or the social context through which they are understood. Unlike the less controversial examples above, there is no objective utility function with which to design this technology. Not only do we not know how to accurately classify speech as protected or not protected—indeed it may be impossible to do this without a huge amount of contextual information—but perhaps more importantly, there is great disagreement about what should be in these categories. For instance, reasonable people can and do disagree about what it means to be threatening and the appropriate role of the fighting words doctrine in limiting (or not) free expression. 48

The lesson here is that technologies which substantively alter the law merit different degrees of oversight depending on whether or not they are able to integrate objective criteria in the way in which they transform the rules they alter. Some areas of law are largely divorced from contentious moral considerations and are either implicitly or explicitly structured in such a way as to produce some agreed upon outcome. These areas of law are most amenable to legal tech developments as they set out clearer design standards and raise fewer sensitive questions. Other areas of law do not present operationalizable objective criteria that can be used to inform its design. As such, these areas of law are less likely to be able to uncontroversially adopt technologies that substantively alter the law. In these areas, it may be that the humanness of the legal endeavour is central to the legal system’s legitimacy. 49

Functional implications

In addition to the way technology can substantively change the law, it can also give rise to functional implications that affect the way we interact with the law. These arise when the technology changes some facet of the way the law functions, or the way we practice, access or engage with the law—but do not necessarily alter the substance of a rule or make legal determinations. For instance, the adoption of a case management system that enables a court to hear more cases per day and thereby reduce the time required to render judgment has functional implications. Although they do not alter legal substance, these changes can be normatively important. Most consider the timely rendering of justice to be an important aspect in a well-functioning legal system, 50 as the saying goes ‘justice delayed is justice denied’, and thus the adoption of a technology that improves timeliness makes a normative improvement to the legal system without altering legal substance.

As another example, consider the implications that arise from a self-executing contract. These agreements—sometimes referred to as ‘smart contracts’—do not alter the substance of contract law. 51 Indeed, like all contracts they assume that contract law is a largely settled matter and rely on it to inform agreement drafting. However, the self-executing nature of these contracts has functional implications for the way in which private factors establish and enforce legal obligations. Because a truly self-executing contract automates enforcement of the agreed upon terms, it obviates the need for third-party enforcement. When a traditional contract is allegedly breached, the parties must ultimately rely on the state to enforce compliance or provide a remedy. In contrast, a self-executing contract does not allow for breach and, in theory at least, makes dispute resolution by arbitration or the state unnecessary. This has functional implications for the legal system by essentially rendering its dispute resolution function obsolete in enforcing the agreements between contracting parties.

These functional implications can also extend to the way that the law is structured. For instance, consider the implications of the introduction of tax preparation software. These programmes make it easier to navigate complex tax laws and apply them to one’s own—or one’s client’s—circumstances. As such, these sorts of software effectively make applying the law simpler, abstracting complexity away from the end user. But, these applications and other analogous legal technologies also have a more direct structural effect on the law that actually enables the complexity they seek to mitigate. 52 By making legal complexity easier to navigate, legal technologies can make it more practical for legislators and regulators to draft laws and regulations with a degree of complexity that would not be feasible absent the technological capacity to navigate them.

We have seen similar ‘complexification’ of the law enabled by the general use information retrieval technologies that are now common throughout legal study and practice. Berring argues that legal information retrieval systems, define the world of ‘thinkable thoughts’ 53 and that moving from published opinion reporters with clear categories and indices to full text search, atomizes the law creating a complex and evolving web of law and legal practice. 54

While functional implications are diverse, they share the trait of enabling legal change by altering how we practice, access or engage with the law, rather than by acting on the law itself by changing rules or making legal determinations. As such, these implications are one step removed from the law. They do not alter or engage with it directly, but by changing practical aspects of how humans engage with the law, they can have great influence.

General implications

In addition to the legal implications that technology can have by enabling changes to the law itself, and the functional implications it can have by altering methods of legal practice and the way legal systems function, legal technologies can also have more general social implications as they alter the communities governed by the legal systems that adopt them. These non-legal implications are like those that can arise from any technology, and I thus refer to them as ‘general implications’ here. This type of implication often arises as a consequence of the substantive and functional changes brought about by legal technology. Because the legal system is so thoroughly intertwined with society, changing the substance of the law, or altering its practice in functionally important ways, will almost certainly have follow-on effects that are non-legal in nature.

As an example, consider the general implications of writing down the law. Prior to the invention of writing, law—such as it was—would have been rooted in oral tradition and communal deliberation—perhaps interpreted or guided by some community elders or officials. 55 There are of course many differences between societies which use writing and those that do not, and the changes arising from writing down laws are only one of many. But that single act of transitioning from a system of laws that are not encoded to one where they are written down has substantial implications for how society can be ordered. It, at least in theory, makes the law clearer. It gives it further geographic reach and more consistency as it spreads from its point of origin. The greater consistency and certainty allowed by writing down the rules that govern legal relationships encourages innovations in commerce and industry. Posner argues that the capacity to write down rules—and thus to subsequently update, remove or change them—enables the law to develop at a faster pace, and thus enables more dynamic social systems. 56 Similarly, Vismann argues that a society’s legal framework is, at least in part, a function of its techniques and technologies for producing records. 57 The general implications that can arise when a legal system adopts the technology of writing are so fundamental and varied that they can be difficult to perceive from our current perspective within a highly technologically enabled legal system and society. That said, this example of a legal tech adoption—in this case the adoption of the generic technology of writing to legal practice—provides a clear demonstration of how legal technology can have wide ranging general implications beyond the law.

For a more future-oriented example of how adopting a legal technology could have implications beyond the legal system, consider the variety of ways that self-driving cars might alter the built environment. A true fully automated car, with the so-called Level 5 automation, 58 would be in the ‘generic legal tech’ category described above. Although not specifically designed for legal uses, these automobiles would ‘know’ all relevant traffic laws and constantly be making determinations based on them. While the introduction of Level 5 autonomous automobiles would almost certainly ultimately lead to substantive legal implications—after all many existing traffic laws are only required because humans are not very adept at coordinating high-speed transit—it would also have more general effects by altering transportation practices. This could influence where people choose to live and work, how public transit is funded, and much of urban planning. 59

The set of general implications that have arisen, and may arise in the future, due to the adoption of legal technology are too varied to cover here exhaustively. The wide-ranging importance of the legal system to social, political and cultural ordering means that when technologies alter the law or legal practice, there are often follow-on implications beyond the law itself.

These three types of implications can be ordered hierarchically in terms of how directly they implicate the law or the legal system—substantive implications are the closest to the law altering its substance; functional implications are one step removed from the law itself, altering the law by changing legal practice; finally, general implications arise when legal technologies have effects beyond the law or legal practice.

Every legal technology has its own propensity for generating each of these distinct types of implications. Some will be of minor import, and have few meaningful implications at all, while others have the potential to greatly transform the law, legal practice or society more generally. As a result, the development and adoption of legal technologies should be done with care and awareness of what may come.

Mapping legal technologies in the way proposed above—according to how directly they engage with the law, and how specifically they afford legal uses—and understanding that the implications of legal technologies can fit within the above taxonomy as either legal, functional or general, provides a framework to more precisely discuss and understand both the varied types of legal technology and the concerns that arise from their design and adoption. Although in theory each type of implication could arise from technologies within any of the described legal tech quadrants, these tendencies are not evenly distributed across the space. Increasing directness increases the likelihood that a technology will have substantive legal implications, moving upwards in specificity makes functional implications more likely, while moving towards the generic end of the spectrum makes important general implications more probable. Understanding these tendencies can assist the work of those who study, design, regulate or adopt legal technologies.

Just as any technology can have general implications, any legal technology can as well. That said, the more generic a technology is the more likely it is to have wide-ranging and important general implications. 60 As we move upwards in the specificity dimension, we reduce the probability of encountering technologies that produce these diffuse effects on society. This is not to say they are not possible, but rather that the probability of general implications decreases as a legal technology becomes more specifically designed for legal uses.

General implications are characterized by their diffuse nature. They can thus be difficult to predict when a technology is in its infancy. Given this, when it comes to anticipating and addressing the potential general implications of their products, legal technologists face a similar set of considerations as technologists more generally: more generically useful technologies are more likely to have wide-ranging general implications and they thus require careful forethought about the effects they may have. 61

As technology moves from the generic towards the specific end of the spectrum, it becomes more likely to have functional implications on the legal system. By definition, these specifically legal technologies influence how we engage in legally related activities. It is therefore in their nature to alter the way legal systems function and they thus raise issues that are important to the legal profession. For instance, specific legal technologies are more likely to raise issues related to access to justice. 62 These technologies have the capacity to reduce the cost of legal services, thereby improving access to justice, 63 or alternately provide tools only available to those who can afford them, thereby making access to justice less equal. 64 Because of the functional implications that are in their nature, specifically legal technologies are more likely to raise professional ethics-related design considerations. Designers of specifically legal technologies must, therefore, take into consideration the effects their technologies may have for consumers of legal services. Depending on their own interests, they may also wish to consider the effects on the legal profession more generally. After all, these functional implications are most likely to be relevant to those who make their living in a legal capacity. 65

In the other dimension, technologies that are more directly legal in nature, that is to say those that incorporate the law as a component or make unmediated legal determinations, are more likely to have substantive legal implications. Their capacity to engage directly with the law, means that these directly legal technologies can facilitate different rules than those that exist absent the technological enablement in question. By enabling substantive changes to the law, these technologies are more likely to raise normative concerns such as fairness, equality, due process or transparency.

Because of the normative concerns that can arise when technologies have the capacity for substantive legal implications, they must be treated with great care. Some would argue that these technologies should be strictly limited to a few areas of law, so as not to detract from law’s inherent humanity 66 At the least, these technologies are less likely to raise serious concerns when they engage with areas of law that do not raise serious moral questions. 67 When the law in question consists of ‘coordinating rules’ 68 with a clear utility function—such as the traffic law function of enabling safe and expedient movement of traffic—there is little concern about the substantive implications a technology might have. All that we care about is that the rule in question effectively achieves its purpose. On the other hand, when the laws in question raises important moral considerations—for instance criminal laws—we should be concerned about the substantive changes that legal technologies might enable. In these instances, technology must not be used to deprive individuals of their ‘right to a human decision’ 69 and if it is used at all, should be initially adopted in a hybrid form alongside human decision makers. 70

Legal technologists, regulators and practitioners should take these considerations into account. When developing, adopting or choosing whether to regulate legal technologies, one must understand what kind of technology it is and what type of implications it is most likely to give rise to. Mapping the technology in question according to how directly and specifically legal it is can help do so.

Legal technologies are diverse. They have the potential to both improve access to justice and to exacerbate inequality. Without a sufficiently rich conceptualization and an accompanying vocabulary, we risk eliding this diversity and impeding our ability to both capitalize on legal technology’s promises and face the challenges it raises. This article has offered a definition of legal technology as ’all devices, capable of being used as a means for interacting with the substance of law or assisting its user to interact with the law, and the skills and techniques by which we use them.’ It then categorized these technologies according to how directly they engage with the law and how specifically legal or general their affordances are. This reveals four types of technologies: generic; generic legal tech; shallow legal tech and deep legal tech. These provide a framework to think about and discuss legal technologies that extends beyond the usual ‘area of law’ categorizations that accompany them.

In conjunction with the legal tech definition and categorization, the taxonomy of legal tech implications as either legal, functional or general helps add nuance to discussions about the importance of legal technologies, and how they may alter the law, legal practice or society more generally. Legal technologies that are more generic are less likely to give rise to regulatory concerns when they are adopted for legal purposes. On the other hand, the more directly a technology engages with legal rules, the more likely it is to raise normative legal issues, such as concerns about justice, equality and democracy.

Although there is much uncertainty about the future of legal systems, it is almost certain that technology will play an increasingly high-profile role in practicing, accessing, enforcing and making the law. It is essential that, as we consider the future, we do so in a sufficiently nuanced manner to ensure we both benefit from the efficiency gains that legal technologies can offer, while also avoiding their more pernicious possibilities.

See eg, Louis H Mayo, ‘New Technology and National Goals Some Implications for Legal-Policy Decision Making’ (1961–1962) 37 Notre Dame Law Rev 33; Marise Cremona and Adam Hodgkin, ‘Electronic Publishing in Law: A Text-Base Approach’ (1989) 9 Oxf J Leg Stud 323.

See Roger Brownsword, Law 3.0: Rules, Regulation, and Technology (Routledge 2020); Jim Leason, Abigail Connor and Jimmy Vestbirk, ‘Legaltech Startup Report 2019: A Maturing Market’ (2019) < https://blogs.thomsonreuters.com/legal-uk/2019/10/18/a-new-report-legaltech-startup-report-2019-a-maturing-market/ > accessed 27 August 2020; In recent years, investments in legal tech firms have exceeded $1 billion Meg McEvoy, ‘ANALYSIS: 2019 Legal Tech Investments Top $1B After Strong Q3’ ( Bloomberg Legal Analysis , 11 October 2019) < https://news.bloomberglaw.com/bloomberg-law-analysis/analysis-2019-legal-tech-investments-top-1b-after-strong-q3 > accessed 24 September 2020.

Andrew Arruda, ‘An Ethical Obligation to Use Artificial Intelligence? An Examination of the Use of Artificial Intelligence in Law and the Model Rules of Professional Responsibility’ (2017) 40 Am J Trial Advoc 443; John O McGinnis and Russell G Pearce, ‘The Great Disruption: How Machine Intelligence Will Transform the Role of Lawyers in the Delivery of Legal Services’ (2013–2014) 82 Fordham L Rev 3041; Richard Susskind, Tomorrow’s Lawyers: An Introduction to Your Future (Oxford University Press 2013).

Mireille Hildebrandt, ‘Law as Computation in the Era of Artificial Legal Intelligence: Speaking Law to the Power of Statistics’ (2018) 68 UTLJ 12; Frank Pasquale, ‘A Rule of Persons, Not Machines: The Limits of Legal Automation’ (2019) 87 Geo Wash L Rev 1.

Douglas W Arner, Janos Barberis and Ross P Buckey, ‘FinTech, RegTech, and the Reconceptualization of Financial Regulation’ (2016–2017) 37 Northwest J Intl L& Bus 371.

Eliza Mik, ‘Smart Contracts: Terminology, Technical Limitations and Real World Complexity’ (2017) 9 LIT 269; Max Raskin, ‘The Law and Legality of Smart Contracts’ (2017) 1 Geo L Tech Rev 305; Pierluigi Cuccuru, ‘Beyond Bitcoin: An Early Overview on Smart Contracts’ (2017) 25 Int J Law Inf Technol 179.

Maura R Grossman and Gordon V Cormack, ‘Technology-Assisted Review in E-Discovery Can Be More Effective and More Efficient than Exhaustive Manual Review Annual Survey’ (2010–2011) 17 Rich J L & Tech 1.

Robert C Berring, ‘Legal Research and Legal Concepts: Where Form Molds Substance’ (1987) 75 Cal L Rev 15; Robert C Berring, ‘Chaos, Cyberspace and Tradition: Legal Information Transmogrified’ (1997) 12 Berkeley Tech LJ 189.

Harry Surden, ‘Machine Learning and Law’ (2014) 89 Wash L Rev 87; McGinnis and Pearce (n 3); Paul Gowder, ‘Is Legal Cognition Computational? (When Will DeepVehicle Replace Judge Hercules?)’ in Ryan Whalen (ed), Computational Legal Studies (Edward Elgar Publishing 2020).

Joshua D Blank and Leigh Osofsky, ‘Automated Legal Guidance’ (2020) 106 Cornell L Rev 179.

Richard A Posner, ‘A Theory of Primitive Society, with Special Reference to Law’ (1980) 23 J L Econ 1 (discussing the relationship between writing and legal system development).

Richard Leslie Hills, Papermaking in Britain 1488– 1988: A Short History (Bloomsbury Publishing 2015) 130 (referring to the importance of papermaking for legal document keeping).

Robert C Berring, ‘Legal Research and the World of Thinkable Thoughts’ (2000) 2 J App Prac Process 305; Berring, Legal Research and Legal Concepts (n 8) (exploring the relationship between citator development and legal categorization).

Julian Webb, ‘Legal Technology: The Great Disruption?’ in Richard L Abel and others (eds), Lawyers in 21st Century Societies (vol II, Hart Publishing 2021).

Wolfgang Hoffmann-Riem, ‘Legal Technology/Computational Law’ (2021) 1 J Cross-disciplinary Res Computational L.

Esther Salmerón-Manzano, ‘Legaltech and Lawtech: Global Perspectives, Challenges, and Opportunities’ (2021) 10 MDPI J Laws 24.

The trade press offers another source of definitions of legal technology, but they are often circular and of limited help in delineating the concept, including ones such as ‘the technology that helps facilitate the practice of law’ Christian Lang, ‘What Is “Legal Tech”?’ ( Medium , 3 November 2018) < https://medium.com/@christianllang/what-is-legal-tech-a6edf69140e7 > accessed 24 September 2020, or ‘the use of technology and software to provide and aid legal services’ ‘What Is Legal Technology And How Is It Changing Our Industry?’ ( The Lawyer Portal , 29 January 2019) < https://www.thelawyerportal.com/blog/what-is-legal-tech-and-how-is-it-changing-industry/ > accessed 24 September 2020.

Paul Gowder, ‘Transformative Legal Technology and the Rule of Law’ [2018] UTLJ < https://www.utpjournals.press/doi/abs/10.3138/utlj.2017-0047 > accessed 22 June 2020.

‘legal, adj. and n.’ OED Online, OUP, March 2021 < www.oed.com/view/Entry/107008 > accessed 25 April 2021.

Scott Shapiro, Legality (Harvard University Press 2011) 3111.

Under this definition, the law can of course take many forms—eg, as an explicit rule, a common law standard, a plan-like norm, etc—however the ‘rule’ is perhaps the modern archetype of law and as such I will at times use ‘legal rules’ below to speak of law. See Antonin Scalia, ‘The Rule of Law as a Law of Rules’ (1989) 56 U Chi L Rev 1175.

Eric Schatzberg, ‘“Technik” Comes to America: Changing Meanings of “Technology” before 1930’ (2006) 47 Tech & Cult 486.

‘technology, n.’ OED Online, OUP, March 2021 < www.oed.com/view/Entry/198469 > accessed 25 April 2021.

Read Bain, ‘Technology and State Government’ (1937) 2 Am Soc Rev 860, 860.

Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology, and Other Essays (Garland Publishing 1977) 4.

Richard E Susskind, The Future of Law: Facing the Challenges of Information Technology (OUP 1996).

For more on the increasing technologization of the law (as Law 3.0), see Brownsword (n 2); Roger Brownsword and Han Somsen, ‘Law, Innovation and Technology: Fast Forward to 2021’ (2021) 13 Law Innov Technol 1.

James J Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (Houghton Mifflin 1979); Ian Hutchby, ‘Technologies, Texts and Affordances’ (2001) 35 Sociology 441; William W Gaver, ‘Technology Affordances’, Proceedings of the SIGCHI   Conference   on Human   Factors   in   Computing   Systems (ACM 1991).

Gibson ibid.

See eg, Paul M Leonardi, ‘When Does Technology Use Enable Network Change in Organizations? A Comparative Study of Feature Use and Shared Affordances’ (2013) 37 MIS Q 749; Hutchby (n 28).

See eg, Donald A Norman, The Psychology of Everyday Things (Basic Books 1988); Rex Hartson, ‘Cognitive, Physical, Sensory, and Functional Affordances in Interaction Design’ (2003) 22 Behav Info Tech 315.

Hutchby (n 28) 447.

Anthony J Casey and Anthony Niblett, ‘Self-Driving Laws’ (2016) 66 UTLJ 429.

Charles Galunic and Simon Rodan, ‘Resource Recombinations in the Firm: Knowledge Structures and the Potential for Schumpeterian Innovation’ (1998) 19 Strategic Mgmt J 1993; Martin L Weitzman, ‘Recombinant Growth’ (1998) 113 Q J Econ 331.

See eg, McGinnis and Pearce (n 3); Sophia Adams Bhatti, Akber Datoo and Drago Indjic, The LegalTech Book: The Legal Technology Handbook for Investors, Entrepreneurs and FinTech Visionaries (John Wiley & Sons 2020); Micha-Manuel Bues and Emilio Matthaei, ‘LegalTech on the Rise: Technology Changes Legal Work Behaviours, But Does Not Replace Its Profession’, Liquid Legal (Springer 2017); Arruda (n 3).

Raskin (n 6); Cuccuru (n 6).

Sonia K Katyal and Aniket Kesari, ‘Trademark Search, Artificial Intelligence, and the Role of the Private Sector’ (2021) 35 Berkeley Tech L J 501.

See John O McGinnis, Accelerating Democracy: Transforming Governance through Technology (Reprint edition, Princeton University Press 2015).

See Milan Markovic, ‘Rise of the Robot Lawyers’ (2019) 61 Ariz L Rev 325 (arguing that more nuance is needed to address existing deterministic accounts of legal technology’s future).

Sally Wyatt, ‘Technological Determinism Is Dead; Long Live Technological Determinism’ in Edward J Hackett and others (eds), The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies (vol 3, MIT Press 2008).

Gibson (n 28); Gaver (n 28); Norman (n 31).

Hutchby (n 28) 444.

This is similar to how a technology’s institutional or organizational context can have far-reaching effects for its affordances and the way they are or are not adopted by its users. Anne-Laure Fayard and John Weeks, ‘Affordances for Practice’ (2014) 24 Info Org 236.

See Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, ‘Automated Enforcement Laws’ ( IIHS-HLDI Crash Testing and Highway Safety , May 2021) < https://www.iihs.org/topics/red-light-running/automated-enforcement-laws > accessed 3 May 2021.

See eg, 35 USC s 154; Patents Act 1977 (UK) s 25. Laura G Pedraza-Fariña and Ryan Whalen, ‘A Network Theory of Patentability’ (2020) 87 U Chi L Rev 63 (proposing a technologically enabled method of operationalizing innovation).

See eg, 35 USC s 101; Patents Act 1977 (UK) s 1.

See Chaplinsky v State of New Hampshire (1942) 315 US 568 (defining ‘fighting words’ as ‘those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace’).

See eg, Stephen W Gard, ‘Fighting Words as Free Speech’ (1980) 58 Wash U L Q 531; William C Nevin, ‘Fighting Slurs: Contemporary Fighting Words and the Question of Criminally Punishable Racial Epithets’ (2015–2016) 14 First Amendment L Rev 127.

See Michael A Livermore, ‘Rule by Rules’ in Ryan Whalen (ed), Computational Legal Studies (Edward Elgar Publishing 2020); Aziz Z Huq, ‘A Right to a Human Decision’ (2020) 106 Va L Rev 611.

See eg, Charter of Rights and Freedoms (stipulating a right ‘to be tried within a reasonable time’.).

For an overview of smart contracts, see Raskin (n 6).

Lawrence Zelenak, ‘Complex Tax Legislation in the TurboTax Era’ (2010) 1 Colum J Tax L 91.

Berring, Legal Research and the World of Thinkable Thoughts (n 13) 305.

Berring, Legal Research and Legal Concepts (n 8).

Andrew D Madden, Jared Bryson and Joe Palimi, ‘Information Behavior in Pre-Literate Societies’ in Amanda Spink and Charles Cole (eds), New Directions in Human Information Behavior (Springer Netherlands 2006) < https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-3670-1_3 > accessed 10 September 2020.

Posner (n 11).

Cornelia Vismann, Files: Law and Media Technology (Stanford University Press 2008).

‘Taxonomy and Definitions for Terms Related to Driving Automation Systems for On-Road Motor Vehicles’ < http://standards.sae.org/ > accessed 2 February 2022.

Eva Fraedrich and others, ‘Autonomous Driving, the Built Environment and Policy Implications’ (2019) 122 Transp Res A Poly Pr 162.

Timothy F Bresnahan and Manuel Trajtenberg, ‘General Purpose Technologies “Engines of Growth”?’ (1995) 65 J Econometrics 83.

It seems likely that a similar dynamic exists within technologies that are used across varying levels of legal generality. Legal technologies will have use for a varied number of practice areas. For instance, one might only be useful for trademark practice, whereas another might be useful to all civil litigation. Those legal technologies that are more ‘generically legal’ by being useful to more practice areas, are more likely to have general implications across the law. Their developers therefore have a greater responsibility to carefully consider the way their technologies may affect the law and legal practice.

Deborah L Rhode, Access to Justice (Oxford University Press 2004); See also William Lucy, ‘Access to Justice and the Rule of Law’ (2020) 40 Oxf J Leg Stud 377 (arguing for a more nuanced appreciation of the relationship between access to justice and the rule of law.).

McGinnis and Pearce (n 3).

Emily S Taylor Poppe, ‘The Future Is Complicated: AI, Apps & Access to Justice Symposium: Lawyering in the Age of Artificial Intelligence’ (2019–2020) 72 Okla L Rev 185.

For discussion on professional implications of legal tech, see Richard Susskind, The End of Lawyers?: Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services (Revised edition, Oxford University Press 2010); but see Markovic (n 39) (arguing that technology is unlikely to undermine the market for professional legal services).

Pasquale (n 4).

See Arti K Rai, ‘Machine Learning at the Patent Office: Lessons for Patents and Administrative Law’ (2018) 104 Iowa L Rev 2617 (arguing that patent offices offer an appropriate proving ground for machine learning in law).

Shapiro (n 20).

Huq (n 49).

Tim Wu, ‘Will Artificial Intelligence Eat the Law? The Rise of Hybrid Social-Ordering Systems’ (2019) 119 Colum L Rev 2001.

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N2 - Pivot. Teleconference. Vax. Lockdown. Super-spreader. Border closures. Ransomware…. The list of buzz words for recent years ever grows. Indeed, 2020 and 2021 have challenged our understanding of how our society operates. We scan QR codes to get into a shop to buy a piece of cheese. We may need to prove our vax status. Kids and students have been locked out of school and often they have been sitting in front of a tablet screen attempting to replicate the in-person experience. For anyone, accomplishing normal activities without a networked device in hand has become very difficult.Legal systems are normally, and quite rightly, measured in their response to challenges, and slow to change. It is difficult for citizens to cope with a legal system that changes regulation and control of civil society overnight – as evidenced by the rapid succession of public health orders that often have left enforcement scratching their heads. On the other hand, rapidly changing deployment of technologies and their intrusion into daily living has come at such a pace that timely policy and legal responses are required.

AB - Pivot. Teleconference. Vax. Lockdown. Super-spreader. Border closures. Ransomware…. The list of buzz words for recent years ever grows. Indeed, 2020 and 2021 have challenged our understanding of how our society operates. We scan QR codes to get into a shop to buy a piece of cheese. We may need to prove our vax status. Kids and students have been locked out of school and often they have been sitting in front of a tablet screen attempting to replicate the in-person experience. For anyone, accomplishing normal activities without a networked device in hand has become very difficult.Legal systems are normally, and quite rightly, measured in their response to challenges, and slow to change. It is difficult for citizens to cope with a legal system that changes regulation and control of civil society overnight – as evidenced by the rapid succession of public health orders that often have left enforcement scratching their heads. On the other hand, rapidly changing deployment of technologies and their intrusion into daily living has come at such a pace that timely policy and legal responses are required.

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A Review of Information Technology Act, 2000

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Yogesh Kolekar

Shivaji University

Date Written: May 28, 2015

The new boon brought by information technology has brought its scar in the form of cybercrime, moreover the new business environment required new regulations for its legal endorsement as more and more business communities are moving towards electronic commerce and transborder contracts. To address this issue the United Nation through its core agency, United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) had formulated a model legislation on electronic commerce. The Information Technology Act 2000 is the prime legislation dealing with cyber offenses and electronic commerce in India which is based on the United Nations Model Law on Electronic Commerce adopted by the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL).The Information Technology Act 2000 is applicable to the whole of India, including any offense committed outside India, if such contravention involves a computer, computer system or computer network located in India. India with the adoption of the Information Technology Act, 2000 has entered the coveted world of the few countries that have separate law to deal with information technology issues. This has paved way for the growth of e-commerce and e-transaction, thereby advancing economic growth and a new era of e-governance has come into existence which helps in bringing transparency, efficiency and accountability in governance.

Keywords: Information Technology Law, Information Technology Act, 2000, Cyber Crime, eCommerce, UNCITRAL, cyberspace, cyber law in India

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INTRODUCTION: LAW, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

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Information Technology and lawyers, at first sight not the most natural combination one can think of. Information Technology is fast, schematic, and futuristic; lawyers are cautious, verbose, and old-fashioned. When one of the authors once told a chemist he was working in the field of IT and Law, the first reaction was: “Is there any connection between the two at all?” This was back in 1995. The influence of IT and in particular the Internet on law has become ever greater since, and also the use of IT and in particular the Internet by lawyers (the side of the IT and Law diptych this book focuses on) has increased significantly. Currently there is indeed a connection between IT and Law that is also clear to people outside the field, viz. IT plays a central role in law, legal practice, and legal research. The reliance on technology has even become so great that one could say the combination Information Technology and lawyers has become a natural one. Not everyone seems to be convinced of the benefits of Information Technology though:

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INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY & THE FUTURE OF LEGAL EDUCATION: A PROVOCATION

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This short paper explores, albeit in a preliminary fashion, challenges to legal education arising from the significant impact of new information and communications technologies (ICTs) on law and legal practice. It uses the pervasiveness of ICTs to reframe the question of “law and technology” from a philosophical perspective that sees information technology as an “environmental force”2 that is capable of re-shaping our identity, agency, and social relations, and hence constitutes a significant means through which we make sense of the world.3 The key question the paper poses thus emerges: how should we design the law curriculum when the law-technology relation is itself understood as a critical part of a continuing and profound transformation in what it means to be both a lawyer, and a human being?

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For many years, the question of how to use technology to teach the law has been a minor concern of the legal academy.2 That era of general indifference to developments in learning technologies is now coming to an end. There are many reasons for the change. Law schools are facing such a host of difficulties – declining enrollments, declining job prospects for graduates, reduced public funding, and understandable concerns about cost and debt – that sometimes it seems the only debate is over whether the situation is best described as a “tsunami”3 or “a perfect storm.”4 Against this backdrop, which has heightened the desire for reform, technology offers the attractive possibility of making legal education both more efficient and more effective. This Article has two main aims. First, in Part II, it discusses some of the conditions that will push law schools to incorporate more learning technologies into our teaching methodologies in the coming years. Part III then provides an overview of some of the learning technologies that have gained prominence, as well as at least limited usage, in law schools in recent years.

Journal of the Australasian Law Academics Association, 2021

The role technology plays in the legal profession is growing. It is, therefore, incumbent on legal educators to prepare law students for a profession that leverages current and emerging technologies, while mitigating potential risks. A desktop analysis was performed on all technology-focused courses offered at Australian and New Zealand law schools and at the top five universities in the United States and the United Kingdom to identify common themes and characteristics. The authors then share their experiences teaching a technology-focused course at a small regional university. The aim of this article is to stimulate greater discussion about how universities teach technology into the law curriculum, not whether such a course is needed.

Key Directions in Legal Education, 2020

Are law schools equipping graduates with the skills required for twenty-first-century legal practice? Should an understanding of the impact of artificial intelligence and machine learning on legal services now be a pre-requisite for the contemporary law degree? Will coding be as important as constitutional theory? This chapter will argue that the digital age requires a commitment to developing the capacity of law students to respond to technological innovation. Practice-ready law graduates need more than a traditional legal skill base to navigate their way through a changing legal landscape. Law schools need to respond by developing a legal curriculum that equips law graduates to flourish in a digital environment. The authors assess the impact of digital transformation on the legal profession and consider the implications for contemporary legal education, both in terms of content and pedagogy. They argue that pedagogical innovations can enhance the teaching of law and consider the e...

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