This group feeds into the recently launched Data Science Community @UM, an initiative of the Institute of Data Science, but it designs and holds its own initiatives in the field of legal data.

Launched in November 2017, the Legal Data community has been doing several activities at the intersection of law and technology during the past academic year.

The initiative took off with a Think Tank meeting in January 2018 between the Faculty of Law, The Institute of Data Science (IDS) and the Department of Data Science and Knowledge Engineering (DKE). The event was hosted at the Faculty of Law (FL), with a welcome speech by the Dean Jan Smits, and included drinks and snacks sponsored by the FL and IDS. The meeting consisted of a brainstorming session on joint work perspectives and interdisciplinary research funding, and consisted of individual pitch sessions, a breakout group session and a final, short wrap-up session.

This surprisingly intense and productive workshop gathered 25 participants from FL, IDS and DKE and was the first step towards a strong interfaculty cooperation around an overarching vision of technology and legal data.

The highly successful first event was quickly followed by the Legal Data Speed Date & Roundtable Discussion on Big Data, Trustworthy Computation and Legal Analytics. The objectives of the second meeting were to establish and deepen the Legal Data community, to cross over the disciplinary boundaries by learning more about each other fields, and to explore common grounds for joint academic output in the themes of the event.

The speed date begun with each participant introducing themselves and their research projects, and then assessing whether there was interest and feasibility of working together. Following the speed date, the participants discussed different projects relating to education, research and civil society outreach. This second event involved the dynamic and engaged participation of four students of the FL, one of them having performed an impressive live visual representation of the outcomes of the event.

The third and most recent event organized by the Legal Data community was a summer masterclass on Ethics, Research and the GDPR in cooperation with European Centre on Privacy and Cybersecurity (ECPC). It took place on 10 July 2018 and was conducted by the Director of ECPC, Cosimo Monda, together with Paolo Balboni (Professor of Privacy, Cybersecurity and IT Contract Law at the ECPC) and Christopher Kuner (Co-Director of the Brussels Privacy Hub at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, VUB, and Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law). The summer break did not stop us from having a full house: more than twenty participants ranging from UM staff members, students and alumni from various faculties, as well as Data Protection Officers and representatives from legal practices, gathered at the Law Faculty to discuss the ethical and legal issues raised by the regulation of data processing for the purposes of research. The very interactive meeting, which touched upon the topic of “fairness by design” and focused on the importance of following the GDPR as a means to get a competitive advantage over other universities and increase trust in the research done at the UM, was followed by drinks and snacks at the common room, courtesy of the ECPC.

The Legal Data community initiative will continue to gather fellow experts and students and explore the world of law and data and its challenges it poses to research and society as a whole. We warmly invite you to stay tuned for upcoming events by following this blog.