Prof. Mireille Hildebrandt has contributed a chapter in the recently published Research Handbook on Law and Technology (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2023). The chapter, entitled 'Grounding computational 'law' in legal education and professional legal training', discusses how we can devise learning objectives and teaching approaches that contribute to critical engagement with computational legal technologies and calls for effective scrutiny of such technology in legal research and practice.
The abstract of the chapter reads as follows:
In this chapter I address the challenges presented by computational technologies when used to enact, search and decide the law. While investigating the ‘traditional’ way of studying and practising law, I explain that and how the practice and the study of law depend on a particular technological infrastructure, grounded in the technologies of the word (script and printing press). I then investigate what computational legal technologies are claimed to accomplish and to what extent these claims can be substantiated. This results in a set of learning objectives and teaching approaches meant to contribute to a critical engagement with these technologies. Finally, I call for effective scrutiny of computational tools in legal practice and legal research, proposing a new hermeneutics of computational ‘law’ to reverse both naïve endorsement and uninformed rejection of such ‘law’.
More information about the chapter can be found here.