BIU LawData LAB | Faculty of Law

BIU LawData Lab: BIU Innovation Lab for Law, Data-Science and Digital Ethics

About

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

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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 is also based on an international collaboration as part of the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence on Digital Governance (DIGOV). 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 more than 20 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.

Members

Head: Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov

Steering Committee: Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov, Miriam Bitton, Oren Perez, Ayelet Sela

Affiliated researchers:

Legal Scholars:

Data Scientists:

Graduate students

Sharon Avigad

Bar Fargon Mizrahi

Keren Horwitz

Elhanan Schwarts

Alon Singer

Ofir Stegmann

Research

Recent Projects

Ethical Risks in Digital Devices: A Data-Science Approach (MOST Grant). Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov, Ayelet Sela & Inbal Yahav
Making Sense of Mobile App Privacy Policies: An Unsupervised Machine Learning Approach. Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov, David Sarne, Jonathan Schler, Ayelet Sela, Alon Singer
Using Data Science to Explore the Constitutional Dialogue between Courts and Legislatures. Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov
Networks and the law. Oren Perez, Reuven Cohen, Ofir Stegmann
Big Data and the Regulation of Ordinary Unethicality. Yuval Feldman & Yotam Kaplan
The Gender Gap in Patenting: Analysis of Global Patents Databases. Miriam Marcowitz-Bitton, Daniel Benoliel, Ruth Halperin Kaddari
Promoting Small Businesses? Credit Reforms in Israel and the Biases They Create. Adi Ayal, Roy Gelbard, Onn Shehory
Post and Trauma: The Use of Social Media by Sexual Assault Victims. Hadar Dancig-Rosenberg
Vanishing Trials, Settlement Judges? Data on Judges’ Procedural Involvement in Civil Litigation Shed Light on their Role in Israeli Trial Courts. Ayelet Sela & Limor Gabay-Egozi
Why Judges Cite the Constitution? A Mixed-Method Analysis of Constitutional Talk in Lower Court Opinions. Ori Aronson
Blockchain: the Future of Intellectual Property Registries. Miriam Marcowitz-Bitton, Lital Helman
Personalized Law: Using Information from Previous Proceedings. Benjamin Shmueli

Recent Publications

Perez, Oren, Reuven Cohen, and Nir Schreiber. "Governance through Global Networks and Corporate Signaling." Regulation & Governance 0, no. 0 (2018). https://ssrn.com/abstract=3265793
Perez, Oren, and Ofir Stegmann. "Transnational Networked Constitutionalism." Journal of Law and Society 45, no. S1 (2018/07/01 2018): S135-S62.
Perez, Oren, Bar-Ilan, Judit, Cohen, Reuven and Schreiber, Nir, The Network of Law Reviews: Citation Cartels, Scientific Communities, and Journal Rankings (August 31, 2018). Modern Law Review, Forthcoming 2018/2019. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3242052.
Ayelet Sela, “Can Computers Be Fair? How Automated and Human-Powered Online Dispute Resolution Affect Procedural Justice in Mediation and Arbitration”, 33 Ohio state journal on Dispute Resolution (Forthcoming, 2018).
Ayelet Sela, “The Effect of Online Technologies on Dispute Resolution System Design: Antecedents, Current Trends and Future Directions”, 21 Lewis & Clark Law Review 635 (2017).
Ayelet Sela, “Streamlining Justice: How Online Courts Can Resolve the Challenges of Pro Se Litigation”, 26 Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy 331 (2016).
David Sarne, Jonathan Schler, Alon Singer, Ayelet Sela, and Ittai Bar Siman Tov. 2019. Unsupervised Topic Extraction from Privacy Policies. In Companion Proceedings of the 2019 World Wide Web Conference (WWW '19 Companion).
Yuval Feldman & Yotam Kaplan, Bounded ethicality and big data

Recent Grants

Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence on Digital Governance, awarded by the European Commission (2019-2022) (Oren Perez, Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov & Ayelet Sela, together with researchers from Erasmus University Rotterdam and University of Leeds)
Ministry of Science and Technology Research Grant (2018-2021) - “Ethical Risks in Digital Devices: A Data-Science Approach” (Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov, Ayelet Sela & Inbal Yahav).

Education

The Law Faculty offers a unique MA program in Legal Studies for Graduates of Computer Science and Engineering

The Law Faculty offers a variety of courses in the field, including, e.g.: