The Lab for Law, Data-Science and Digital Ethics at Bar Ilan-University Faculty of Law focuses on two primary research areas: (1) data-driven legal research using various data-science methods (e.g., ML, NLP, social network analysis); and (2) normative and ethical analysis, focusing on legal and regulatory aspects of big data, data analytics and AI, and on ensuring proper data governance.

 

The lab is based on an interdisciplinary collaboration between legal researchers from the BIU Faculty of Law and data scientists from the BIU Data Science Institute and other affiliated BIU departments. It also encourages international collaboration between BIU researchers and international partners. Existing collaborations include the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence on Digital Governance (DIGOV) (with Erasmus University and Leeds University) (https://digov.eu/). It additionally works with partners from technology companies and other industry and government actors.

 

The lab seeks to explore questions at the forefront of legal research and practice using a wide range of data-science methods. It takes a new approach to legal research that brings together theory-driven and policy-driven research that contributes to evidence-based policy making. In the theory-driven research track, the lab currently hosts multiple on-going studies, which include projects using natural language processing tools, network analysis, machine learning and other AI models, as well as cryptography. In the policy-driven track the lab collaborates with several governmental ministries, regulatory agencies and municipalities with the goal of finding solutions to practical problems and policy challenges.