ICAIL 2015 Call for Papers

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15th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence & Law (ICAIL 2015)
June 8 – June 12, 2015
University of San Diego School of Law
http://www.icail2015.org<http://www.icail2015.org/>

First Call for Papers

The 15th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law (ICAIL 2015) will be held at the University of San Diego School of Law from Monday, June 8 to Friday, June 12, 2015.

Artificial Intelligence and Law is a vibrant research field that focuses on:
• Legal reasoning and development of computational methods of such reasoning
• Applications of AI and other advanced information technologies that are intended to support the legal domain
• Discovery of electronically stored information for legal applications (eDiscovery)
• Machine learning and data mining for legal applications
• Formal models of norms, normative systems, and norm-governed societies

Since it began in 1987, the ICAIL conference has been established as the primary 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). The conference proceedings are published by ACM. The journal Artificial Intelligence and Law regularly publishes expanded versions of selected ICAIL papers.

The field serves as an excellent setting for AI researchers to demonstrate the application of their work in a rich, real-world domain. The conference also serves as a venue for researchers to showcase their work on the theoretical foundations of computational models of law. Accordingly, authors are invited to submit papers on a broad spectrum of research topics that include, but are not restricted to:
• Formal and computational models of legal reasoning
• Computational models of argumentation and decision making
• Computational models of evidential reasoning
• Legal reasoning in multi-agent systems
• Knowledge acquisition techniques for the legal domain, including natural language processing and data mining
• Legal knowledge representation including legal ontologies and common sense knowledge
• Automatic legal text classification and summarization
• Automated information extraction from legal databases and texts
• Data mining applied to the legal domain
• Conceptual or model-based legal information retrieval
• E-government, e-democracy and e-justice
• Modeling norms for multi-agent systems
• Modeling negotiation and contract formation
• Online dispute resolution
• Intelligent legal tutoring systems
• Intelligent support systems for the legal domain
• Interdisciplinary applications of legal informatics methods and systems

ICAIL is keen to broaden its scope to include topics of growing importance in artificial intelligence research. Therefore, papers are invited on the following featured categories:
· eDiscovery and eDisclosure
· Open data, linked data and big data
· Machine learning
· Argument mining

Papers will be assessed in a rigorous reviewing procedure. Standard assessment criteria for research papers will apply to all submissions (relevance, originality, significance, technical quality, evaluation, presentation). Papers proposing formal or computational models should provide examples and/or simulations that show the models’ applicability to a realistic legal problem or domain. Papers on applications should describe clearly the underlying motivations, the techniques employed, and the current state of both implementation and evaluation. All papers should make clear their relation to prior work.

Demonstrations:
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 conference style, by the demo submission deadline of January 23, 2015. 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.

ICAIL Workshops and Tutorials:
ICAIL 2015 will include workshops and tutorials on Monday, June 8 and Friday, June 12. Proposals for workshops and tutorials are invited, and should be sent by email to the Program Chair. Tutorials should cover a broad topic of relevance to the AI and Law community. Proposals should contain enough information to permit evaluation on the basis of importance, quality, and community interest. Each workshop should have one or more designated organizers and a program or organizing committee. 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 2015
• 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)

The submission deadline for workshop and tutorial proposals is December 5, 2014.

Continuing Legal Education Sessions:
In addition to the workshops and tutorials solicited above, ICAIL 2015 will feature several continuing legal education (CLE) sessions on Monday, June 8 and Friday, June 12, likely in the following areas:
· eDiscovery
· Software, automation and machine learning in IP law
· Trends in legal software and search engines

The University of San Diego School of Law is a State Bar of California-approved MCLE provider.  Credit hours for the above CLE events are currently being evaluated.

Further information about the CLE events can be found at: http://www.sandiego.edu/law/school/events/detail.php?_focus=47565

Mentoring Program for ICAIL 2015:
The International Association for AI and Law (IAAIL) will offer a mentoring program for papers being submitted to ICAIL.  The program is intended primarily for junior authors who have not previously published an Artificial Intelligence and Law paper at a conference or in a journal and do not have local access to suitably experienced colleagues. If you would like help with your submission, you may ask for a mentor: a person who will help you with your submission to the ICAIL audience through one-on-one advising, usually via e-mail. To request a mentor, please send an email to Guido Governatori atGuido.Governatori@nicta.com.au<mailto:atGuido.Governatori@nicta.com.au> by the mentoring program request deadline. Please include your name and the names of your co-authors; the name of your school/department and institution; a title and an abstract; and any specific questions or areas in which you would like help.  A first draft of the paper should be sent to the mentor once he/she is assigned.  Further details will be provided at the conference website:http://www.icail2015.org<http://www.icail2015.org/>

Doctoral Consortium for ICAIL 2015:
A Doctoral Consortium will be held as part of ICAIL 2015.  The event will provide doctoral students with an opportunity to publish and present papers on their PhD research and to receive feedback and encouragement from the AI and Law community. Students who submit papers to the main conference are also welcome to submit their work to the Doctoral Consortium. A call for papers specifically for the Doctoral Consortium will be forthcoming in 2014. Further details will be provided at the conference website: http://www.icail2015.org<http://www.icail2015.org/>

Important Dates
• Mentoring program request deadline: September 30, 2014
• Submission of workshop and tutorial proposals: December 5, 2014
• Submission of abstracts (optional): January 9, 2015
• Submission of papers deadline: January 16, 2015
• Submission of demonstration abstracts: January 23, 2015
• Notification of acceptance: March 13, 2015
• Doctoral consortium paper deadline: March 31, 2015
• Final revised and formatted papers due: April 17, 2015
• Conference: June 8 - June 12, 2015

Submission Details:
Papers should not exceed 10 pages in the approved style. Style format template files can be found at http://www.acm.org/sigs/pubs/proceed/template.html. Whilst papers can be prepared using LaTeX or Word, all papers should be converted to PDF prior to submission. All papers must be submitted electronically to the conference support system,https://www.conftool.net/icail2015/ by the paper submission deadline.

To aid the reviewing process, authors are requested to submit abstracts of their papers by the above abstract submission deadline. Abstract submissions should include the paper title, up to four keywords, and a contact address for the corresponding author. Both papers and abstracts should be submitted electronically to the conference support system.

Authors will be notified of the acceptance decision by the date indicated above. Papers not accepted for full publication and presentation may be accepted as short research abstracts. Papers (including research abstracts) must be presented at the conference in order to appear in the proceedings (and, moreover, all papers and abstracts presented at the conference will appear in the proceedings, which will be published by ACM Press). Final versions of papers for publication in the proceedings will be due by the date indicated above.

Donald H. Berman Award for Best Student Paper:
IAAIL has established a best student paper award in memory of Donald H. Berman, a Professor of Law at Northeastern University who was a co-founder of the AI and Law journal. The award consists of a cash gift and free attendance at ICAIL 2015. For a paper to be considered for the award, the student author(s) should be clearly designated as such when the paper is submitted, 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. Notification will be made through the ICAIL website, and the award will be presented at the conference banquet.

Peter Jackson Award for Best Innovative Application Paper:
At ICAIL 2015 a new award is being introduced for the best innovative application paper. The award is in honor 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 for AI and Law. For a paper to be considered for the award, the author(s) should clearly identify it as an application paper by including “innovative applications” as a keyword. Notification will be made through the ICAIL website, and the award will be presented at the conference banquet.

Conference Officials:

Program Chair
Katie Atkinson
Department of Computer Science,
University of Liverpool, UK
K.M.Atkinson@liverpool.ac.uk<mailto:K.M.Atkinson@liverpool.ac.uk>

Conference Chair
Ted Sichelman,
University of San Diego School of Law,
San Diego, CA USA
tsichelman@sandiego.edu<mailto:tsichelman@sandiego.edu>

Conference Co-Chair
Richard Belew
Cognitive Science Department,
University of California,
San Diego, CA USA
rik@cogsci.ucsd.edu<mailto:rik@cogsci.ucsd.edu>

Secretary/Treasurer
Anne Gardner
Atherton, CA, USA
gardner@cs.stanford.edu<mailto:gardner@cs.stanford.edu>

Program Committee:
To be announced.

Local Committee:
Richard Belew, University of California, San Diego
Karl Gruben, University of San Diego School of Law
Dan Katz, Michigan State University College of Law
Ted Sichelman, University of San Diego School of Law
Thomas Smith, University of San Diego School of Law
Roland Vogl, Stanford Law School

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