In recent years, the digitization of legal texts and developments in the fields of statistics, computer science, and data analytics have opened entirely new approaches to the study of law. This volume explores the new field of computational legal analysis, an approach marked by its use of legal texts as data. The emphasis herein is work that pushes methodological boundaries, either by using new tools to study longstanding questions within legal studies or by identifying new questions in response to developments in data availability and analysis. By using the text and underlying data of legal documents as the direct objects of quantitative statistical analysis, Law as Data introduces the legal world to the broad range of computational tools already proving themselves relevant to law scholarship and practice, and highlights the early steps in what promises to be an exciting new approach to studying the law.

Data, in its raw or unstructured form, has become an important and valuable economic asset, lending it the sobriquet of ‘the oil of the twenty-first century’. Clearly, as intellectual property, raw data must be legally defined if not somehow protected to ensure that its access and re-use can be subject to legal relations. As legislators struggle to develop a settled legal regime in this complex area, this indispensable handbook will offer a careful and dedicated analysis of the legal instruments and remedies, both existing and potential, that provide such protection across a wide variety of national legal systems. Produced under the auspices of the International Association for the Protection of International Property (AIPPI), more than forty of the association’s specialists from twenty-three countries worldwide contribute national chapters on the relevant law in their respective jurisdictions. The contributions thoroughly explain how each country approaches such crucial matters as the following: if there is any intellectual property right available to protect raw data; the nature of such intellectual property rights that exist in unstructured data; contracts on data and which legal boundaries stand in the way of contract drafting; liability for data products or services; and questions of international private law and cross-border portability. Each country’s rules concerning specific forms of data – such as data embedded in household appliances and consumer goods, criminal offence data, data relating to human genetics, tax and bank secrecy, medical records, and clinical trial data – are described, drawing on legislation, regulation, and case law. A matchless legal resource on one of the most important raw materials of the twenty-first century, this book provides corporate counsel, practitioners and policymakers working in the field of intellectual property rights, and concerned academics with both a broad-based global overview on emerging legal strategies in the protection of unstructured data and the latest information on existing legislation and regulation in the area.

Legal Data and Information in Practice provides readers with an understanding of how to facilitate the acquisition, management, and use of legal data in organizations such as libraries, courts, governments, universities, and start-ups. Presenting a synthesis of information about legal data that will furnish readers with a thorough understanding of the topic, the book also explains why it is becoming crucial that data analysis be integrated into decision-making in the legal space. Legal organizations are looking at how to develop data-driven insights for a variety of purposes and it is, as Sutherland shows, vital that they have the necessary skills to facilitate this work. This book will assist in this endeavour by providing an international perspective on the issues affecting access to legal data and clearly describing methods of obtaining and evaluating it. Sutherland also incorporates advice about how to critically approach data analysis. Legal Data and Information in Practice will be essential reading for those in the law library community who are based in English-speaking countries with a common law tradition. The book will also be useful to those with a general interest in legal data, including students, academics engaged in the study of information science and law.

The changes brought about by digital technology and the consequent explosion of information known as Big Data have brought opportunities and challenges in all areas of society, and the law is no exception. This book, Knowledge of the Law in the Big Data Age contains a selection of the papers presented at the conference ‘Law via the Internet 2018’, held in Florence, Italy, on 11-12 October 2018. This annual conference of the ‘Free Access to Law Movement’ (http://www.fatlm.org) hosted more than 60 international speakers from universities, government and research bodies as well as EU institutions. Topics covered range from free access to law and Big Data and data analytics in the legal domain, to policy issues concerning access, publishing and the dissemination of legal information, tools to support democratic participation and opportunities for digital democracy. The book is divided into 3 sections: Part I provides an introductory background, covering aspects such as the evolution of legal science and models for representing the law; Part II addresses the present and future of access to law and to various legal information sources; and Part III covers updates in projects, initiatives, and concrete achievements in the field. The book provides an overview of the practical implementation of legal information systems and the tools to manage this special kind of information, as well as some of the critical issues which must be faced, and will be of interest to all those working at the intersection of law and technology.

For increasingly data-savvy clients, lawyers can no longer give "it depends" answers rooted in anecdata. Clients insist that their lawyers justify their reasoning, and with more than a limited set of war stories. The considered judgment of an experienced lawyer is unquestionably valuable. However, on balance, clients would rather have the considered judgment of an experienced lawyer informed by the most relevant information required to answer their questions. Data-Driven Law: Data Analytics and the New Legal Services helps legal professionals meet the challenges posed by a data-driven approach to delivering legal services. Its chapters are written by leading experts who cover such topics as: Mining legal data Computational law Uncovering bias through the use of Big Data Quantifying the quality of legal services Data mining and decision-making Contract analytics and contract standards In addition to providing clients with data-based insight, legal firms can track a matter with data from beginning to end, from the marketing spend through to the type of matter, hours spent, billed, and collected, including metrics on profitability and success. Firms can organize and collect documents after a matter and even automate them for reuse. Data on marketing related to a matter can be an amazing source of insight about which practice areas are most profitable. Data-driven decision-making requires firms to think differently about their workflow. Most firms warehouse their files, never to be seen again after the matter closes. Running a data-driven firm requires lawyers and their teams to treat information about the work as part of the service, and to collect, standardize, and analyze matter data from cradle to grave. More than anything, using data in a law practice requires a different mindset about the value of this information. This book helps legal professionals to develop this data-driven mindset.

This state-of-the-art Research Handbook provides an overview of research into, and the scope of current thinking in, the field of big data analytics and the law. It contains a wealth of information to survey the issues surrounding big data analytics in legal settings, as well as legal issues concerning the application of big data techniques in different domains.

Increasingly, we conduct our lives online, and in doing so, we grant access to our personal information. The crucial feedstock of the world economy thus generated - the commercialization and exploitation of personal data and the intrusion of digital privacy it entails - has built an imposing edifice of market power. As we enter the third decade of the 21st century, this detailed exploration of the interlinkage between competition and data privacy takes a critical look at competition policy to evaluate whether the system in its current form and with the existing approach is capable of tackling the challenges raised by the role of personal data in the shift from an offline to an online economy. Challenging the commonplace assumption that privacy has little or no role and relevance in competition law, the author’s penetrating analysis accomplishes the following and more: provides an in-depth understanding of the intersection of competition and privacy in the data-driven economy; surveys legal policy developments on the role of privacy in competition law; underlines the importance of non-price parameters in competition, such as consumer choice; clearly explains why and how competition law can protect privacy among its policy objectives; and addresses challenges in measuring the intangible harm of digital privacy violation in assessing abuse of market power. Recent case law in Europe and elsewhere, a revealing comparison between relevant European Union (EU) and United States (US) practice, the expanded role of the EU’s Competition Commissioner, and the likely impact of such phenomena as the coronavirus pandemic are all drawn into the book’s remit. In her analysis of the growing privacy dimension in competition policy, the author examines the topic from a broad perspective that includes societal, political, economic, historical and cultural elements. Her insightful multidimensional and value-based review will prove of immeasurable value to practitioners, academics, policymakers and enforcers in its identification of implications for business practice as we go forward.

An exploration of the current state of global trade law in the era of Big Data and AI. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

The author evaluates the costs and/or gains and the interference (positive or negative) in the commercial, public administrative and social spheres that data protection laws have the potential to create, with numerous references to legislation and administrative decision making in a wide variety of jurisdictions.

This thoroughly updated Research Handbook examines the recent exponential growth of data use in society and its implications for legal research and practice. It explores contemporary research in the field of data science, as well as the operationalization of data for use in healthcare, urban governance and smart household devices, among others.