ICAIL 2021 - The 18th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law - Call for Papers, Demonstrations, Workshops & Tutorials

The 18th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law (ICAIL 2021) will be held ONLINE, organized by the University of São Paulo from Monday, June 21 to Friday, June 25.
https://icail.lawgorithm.com.br/

Since 1987, the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law (ICAIL) has been the foremost international conference addressing research in Artificial Intelligence and Law. It is organized biennially under the auspices of the International Association for Artificial Intelligence and Law (IAAIL), and in cooperation with the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). The conference proceedings are published by ACM.
The 18th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law will be held entirely online due to the overall Covid-19 pandemic situation.
We invite submissions of papers, technology demonstrations, as well as proposals for workshops and tutorials.

CONFERENCE ORGANIZATION
Program Chair – Adam Zachary Wyner (Swansea University, UK) a.z.wyner@swansea.ac.uk
Conference Chair – Juliano MaranhSão (University of Sao Paulo, Brazil) julianomaranhao@usp.br
Doctoral Consortium & Mentoring Program Chair / Secretary - Treasurer – Michał Araszkiewicz (Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland) michal.araszkiewicz@uj.edu.pl

TOPICS
We invite submission of original papers on Artificial Intelligence & Law, covering foundations, methods, tools, systems and applications. Topics may include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Argument mining from legal texts
• Automated information extraction from legal databases and texts
• Automatic legal text classification and summarization
• Computational methods for negotiation and contract formation
• Computer-assisted dispute resolution
• Deep learning applied to the legal domain
• Deontic logics for legal reasoning
• e-discovery and e-disclosure
• e-government, e-democracy and e-justice
• Ethical and legal issues of AI technology and its applications
• Formal and computational models of evidential reasoning
• Formal and computational models of legal reasoning (e.g. argumentation, case-based reasoning)
• Intelligent legal tutoring systems
• Intelligent support systems for law and forensics
• Interdisciplinary applications of legal informatics methods and systems
• Knowledge acquisition techniques for the legal domain, including natural language processing, argument and data mining
• Legal design
• Legal knowledge visualization
• Machine learning and data analytics applied to the legal domain
• Modelling norms and norm-governed systems
• Ontologies and legal knowledge representation
• Open and linked data in the legal domain
• Smart contracts and application of blockchain in the legal domain

ICAIL is keen to broaden its scope to include topics of growing importance. Therefore, we want to draw particular attention to two tracks:

• Innovative applications in AI and Law – applications that fall within any of the core AI & Law topics. Papers in this track will be subject to the same rigorous reviewing process as standard papers, but the emphasis is less on novel scientific contributions, formal frameworks, or results and more on the innovative and novel application of techniques from AI & Law to real problems.
• Ethical and legal issues of AI technology and its applications – research on legal and ethical norms for AI technology and its applications. Papers in this track will be subject to the same rigorous reviewing process as standard papers, but the emphasis is less on novel scientific contributions, formal frameworks, or results and more on legal, philosophical and social perspectives on AI.
• Reproducible results and data - it is essential for scientific progress that techniques and results are reproducible and scrutinised in detail. Papers in this track will be subject to the same rigorous reviewing process as standard papers, but they should report the results of work to reproduce and scrutinise three or more previously published works on a related topic (so as to make the analysis coherent and results comparable). Special effort should go to providing code (e.g., as Jupyter notebooks) and data.

PAPER SUBMISSION

DEADLINE FOR PAPER SUBMISSION:  MONDAY, MARCH 1, 2021
Papers (up to 10 pages inclusive of references) should present worked-out ideas on relevant topics. Papers on machine learning or data mining should include discussions of the data, methodology, results, and analysis of the results; it would be highly recommended that code (e.g., as Jupyter notebooks) and data be provided so as to foster reproducible results. Papers proposing formal or computational models should in addition provide examples and/or reproducible simulations. Papers on applications should describe the motivations, techniques, implementation, and evaluation; it would be highly recommended that code (e.g., as Jupyter notebooks) and data be provided so as to foster reproducible results. All papers should make clear their relation to legal information, reasoning, or processes as well as relation to prior work and novel scientific contribution.
Papers should not exceed the page limit in the approved style: the ACM sigconf template (for LaTeX) or the interim template layout.docx (for Word), both at
http://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template
All papers should be converted to PDF prior to electronic submission. Papers that do not adhere to these conditions will be rejected.

Submissions should be uploaded in the conference support system
https://www.conftool.net/icail2021/
by the paper submission deadline. For each submission, it should be indicated whether it belongs in the standard track or one of the special tracks (Innovative Applications or Ethical and Legal Issues or Reproducible results and data) using the facility provided by the submission system.
Reviewing will be double blind. Papers submitted for review should not include names and affiliations of the authors, nor an acknowledgments section. These aspects can be added at the camera-ready stage. Therefore, prior to submission of the paper, the authors should first register the paper on the conference support system in order to receive an ID number for the paper. Then, in order to submit the paper, the paper should be revised so that the ID number of the paper replaces the names and affiliations of the authors. The references should include published literature relevant to the paper, including previous works of the authors, though care should be taken in the style of writing in order to preserve anonymity.

DEMONSTRATIONS

DEADLINE FOR DEMONSTRATION SUBMISSION: MONDAY, MARCH 1, 2021
A session will be organized for the demonstration of creative, robust, and practical working applications and tools. Where a demonstration is not connected to a submitted paper, a two-page extended abstract about the system should be submitted for review, via the conference support system and following the instructions on paper submission. Accepted extended abstracts will be published in the conference proceedings. For those demonstrations that are connected to a paper in the main track, no separate statement about the demonstration need be submitted, but the author(s) should send an email to the Program Chair by the demo submission deadline to register their interest in demonstrating their work at this session.

AWARDS 
IAAIL has established three different awards, to be presented at the conference banquet.

*** Donald H. Berman Award for Best Student Paper
The best student paper award is in memory of Donald H. Berman, a professor of law at Northeastern University, who was a co-founder of the Artificial Intelligence and Law journal. The award consists of a cash gift and free attendance at ICAIL 2021. For a paper to be considered for the award, the student author(s) should be clearly designated as such when the paper is submitted using the facility provided by the submission system, and any non-student co-authors should provide a statement by email to the Program Chair that affirms that the paper is primarily student work.

*** Carole Hafner Award for Best Paper
The best paper award is given in memory of Carole Hafner, an associate professor of computer science at Northeastern University. She was one of the founders of the ICAIL conference and a co-founding editor of the journal Artificial Intelligence and Law.

*** Peter Jackson Award for Best Innovative Application Paper
The best innovative application paper award is dedicated to the memory of Peter Jackson, Thomson Reuters’ Chief Research Scientist, who was a strong supporter of the ICAIL conferences and a significant contributor to the development of advanced technologies in AI and Law.

IMPORTANT DATES

• Deadline for request to take part in mentoring program: November 9, 2020
• Deadline for submission of workshop and tutorial proposals: December 14, 2020
• Deadline for submission of papers & demonstrations: March 1, 2021
• Notification of acceptance: April 12, 2021
• Deadline for submissions of camera-ready versions of accepted papers: May 10, 2021
• Conference: June 21-25, 2021

PROPOSALS FOR WORKSHOPS AND TUTORIALS
DEADLINE FOR THE PROPOSAL OF WORKSHOPS AND TUTORIALS: MONDAY 14 DECEMBER 2020
ICAIL 2021 will include workshops and tutorials on Monday, June 21 and Friday, June 25. Tutorials should cover a broad topic of relevance to the AI and Law community and should have one or more designated organizers/speakers. A workshop is intended for informal discussion, and it should have one or more designated organizers and a program or organizing committee. Proposals should contain enough information to permit evaluation on the basis of importance, quality, and community interest. Proposals should be 2 to 4 pages and include at least the following information:

• The workshop or tutorial topic and goals, their significance, and their appropriateness for ICAIL 2021
• The intended audience, including the research areas from which participants may come, the likely number of participants (with some of their names, if known), and plans for publicizing the workshop
• Organization of the workshop or tutorial, including the intended format (such as invited talks, presentations, panel discussions, or other methods for ensuring an interactive atmosphere) and the expected length (full day or half day)
• Organizers’ details: a description of the main organizers’ background in the proposed topic; and complete addresses including web pages of all organizers and committee members (if applicable)

Proposals for workshops and tutorials can be sent by email to the program chair, Adam Wyner (a.z.wyner@swansea.ac.uk) by the submission deadline.

MENTORING PROGRAM

DEADLINE FOR FOR THE REQUEST OF A MENTOR: MONDAY NOVEMBER 9, 2020
IAAIL is offering a mentoring program aimed primarily for junior authors who have not previously published an Artificial Intelligence and Law paper at a conference or in a journal. If you would like help with your submission, you may ask for a mentor who will help you with your submission to the IAAIL audience through one-on-one advising, usually via e-mail and Skype. A mentor can also familiarize you with the standards of ICAIL submissions. Mentors are volunteers familiar with successful submissions.

A mentor request should contain at least the following information:

• Your name and the names of your co-authors;
• The name of your school (or department) and institution;
• A plain-text description of your work (a title and abstract is a minimum requirement);
• Any specific questions or areas in which you would like help

To request a mentor, please send email by the Mentoring Program Request Deadline to the mentoring program chair, Michał Araszkiewicz (michal.araszkiewicz@uj.edu.pl).

DOCTORAL CONSORTIUM

The ICAIL 2021 Doctoral Consortium aims to promote the exchange of ideas from PhD researchers in the area of Artificial Intelligence and Law and to provide them with an opportunity to interact and receive feedback from leading scholars and experts in the field. Specifically, the Consortium seeks to provide opportunities for PhD students to:

• obtain fruitful feedback and advice on their research projects;
• meet experts from different backgrounds working on topics related to the AI & Law and Legal Information Systems fields;
• have a face to face mentoring discussion on the topic and methodology of the PhD with an international senior scholar;
• discuss concerns about research, supervision, the job market, and other career-related issues.

To be eligible for the Consortium, a candidate must be a current doctoral student at a recognized university. Ideally, the candidate should have at least 8—12 months of work remaining before expected completion. The participants of the Doctoral Consortium must register for and attend the main conference. The PhD student should be the sole author of the submission. Note that submissions to the Doctoral Consortium are entirely separate from any papers that students may have submitted to the main conference.
The accepted thesis descriptions or research descriptions will be presented to an interested audience and subject to discussion during the ICAIL 2021 conference. Submissions should address a topic related to the AI & Law such as those listed in the call for papers for the main conference, above.

***Submission
Students are invited to submit an original description of their work addressing the following aspects:

• A clear formulation of the research question;
• An identification of the significant problems in the field of research;
• An outline of the current knowledge of the problem domain, as well as the state of existing solutions;
• A presentation of preliminary ideas, the proposed approach and the results achieved so far;
• A sketch of the applied research methodology;
• A description of the PhD project’s contribution to the problem solution;
• A discussion of how the suggested solution is different, new, or better than existing approaches to the problem.

Thesis descriptions or research outcomes are limited to 10 pages in English using LNCS format and submitted electronically in PDF format jointly with a maximum 3 page CV. Please submit to https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=icail2021dc.
Submissions will be assessed by members from the AI and Law community who will consider how well the submissions address each of the aspects given above. We intend to invite the presenting authors to co-author a paper covering the topics of the accepted DC submissions in the Artificial Intelligence and Law journal.

*** Doctoral Consortium Important Dates
Deadline for submission of papers: April 26, 2021
Notification of acceptance: May 24, 2021
Camera-ready copy due: June 7, 2021
Conference: June 21-25, 2021

*** Award
The Best Paper of ICAIL 2021 Doctoral Consortium Award will be assigned to the most original, innovative and well presented research.