Invited Talks:

• Keynote Speaker: Nicolas Economou (confirmed)

  • Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, H5

  • Title of Talk

    • "Principles for the Trustworthy Adoption of AI in Legal Systems: the IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems"

  • Abstract

    • The advent of artificial intelligence in legal systems spurred laudable efforts to assess its implications, risks, and benefits. Among those efforts, US NIST’s TREC Legal Track produced exemplary scholarship on the effectiveness of AI in discovery; other initiatives explored bias in risk-assessment algorithms used in bail or sentencing; and bar associations considered the implications for professional conduct. Yet, a foundational question remained unaddressed: What framework could equip lawyers, judges, advocates, policy makers, and the public, irrespective of legal system or cultural traditions, to determine the extent to which they should trust (or mistrust) the deployment of AI in the legal system? The IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems, a multiyear, international, multidisciplinary effort focused on the ethics of AI took on this challenge. This talk, by the Chair of the Initiative’s Law Committee, will present the IEEE’s recently published proposed norms for the trustworthy adoption of AI in legal systems, outline the objectives of its upcoming work, and place this endeavor in the broader context of international law-focused AI governance endeavors.

  • Speaker Bio

    • Nicolas Economou is the chief executive of H5 and was a pioneer in advocating the application of scientific methods to electronic discovery. He chairs the Law Committees of the IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems and of the Global Governance of AI Roundtable hosted in Dubai as part of the annual World Government Summit. He leads The Future Society's Law Initiative and is a member of the Council on Extended Intelligence (CXI), a joint initiative of the MIT Media Lab and IEEE-SA. He has spoken on issues pertaining to artificial intelligence and its governance at a wide variety of conferences and organizations, including the Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), UNESCO, Harvard and Stanford Law Schools, and Renmin University of China. Trained in political science at the Graduate Institute of International Studies of the University of Geneva (Switzerland), he earned his M.B.A. from the Wharton School of Business, and chose to forgo completion of his M.P.A at Harvard's Kennedy School in order to co-found H5.

• Keynote Speaker: Bennett B. Borden, Esq. (confirmed)

  • Partner, Chief Data Scientist and Chair, Information Governance Group at Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP

  • Title of Talk

    • "Revolutionizing the Practice of Law Through Data Science: Use Cases and Applications"

  • Abstract

    • As demonstrated at past DESI workshops at ICAIL, advances over the past decade in artificial intelligence and machine learning have transformed the practice of e-discovery in making legal search more cost-effective and efficient. Similar forms of data analytics now hold the promise of similarly aiding the legal profession across a spectrum of traditional activities, many of which consist of highly repetitive tasks. Law firms are not, however, incentivized to be more efficient if they are simply giving away the efficiency gains without reaping a benefit for themselves. In order to effectively apply data science to the practice of law, a new billing mechanism needs to be applied so that the efficiency gains benefit both the client and the firm, aligning their incentives. In this session, we will discuss how data analytics principles can best be applied to the practice of law, with an eye towards how AI methods are being used within law firms to complement human legal expertise. Illustrative use cases will include using AI in contract analysis, mergers & acquisitions, and employment and whistleblower investigations.

  • Speaker Bio

    • Bennett B. Borden is Partner and Co-chair of Drinker Biddle & Reath’s Information Governance and eDiscovery Practice, as well as the firm’s Chief Data Scientist. In his two decades of legal practice, he has conducted both offensive and defensive electronic discovery in complex litigation. Bennett has had extensive experience counseling Fortune 500 clients on the establishment of information governance and records management policies. He regularly advises multinational clients regarding data privacy, security and regulatory compliance. In his role as the firm’s Chief Data Scientist, he is responsible for the firm’s overall data analytics strategy. Bennett advises the firm and its clients on the development and use of analytics models that enable insight, data storytelling and economic value generation. Bennett’s research into the use of machine-based learning and unstructured data for organizational insight is now being put to work in data-driven early warning systems for clients to detect and prevent corporate fraud and other misconduct. Bennett also builds machine-based learning models to transform and improve legal outcomes in key corporate events including mergers and acquisitions, information governance program development and enforcement, litigation, and investigations and business intelligence. He has been Chambers-ranked nationwide in e-discovery for the past four years, and recently was appointed to the National Conference of Lawyers and Scientists (NCLS) of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science.

Bennett holds an M.S. in Business Analytics from New York University, a J.D., cum laude, from Georgetown University Law Center, and a B.A. with highest honors from George Mason University. He is a member of the Bars of the District of Columbia and Maryland.