Since the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, we have seen an explosion of interest in applying artificial intelligence to help solve the biggest challenges in law. More recently, we have started to see innovations aimed at helping ordinary people with their most critical needs.
We invite legal technologists, researchers, and practitioners to join us in Turin, Italy on December 9th for a full-day, hybrid workshop on innovations in AI for helping close the access to justice gap: the majority of legal problems that go unsolved around the world because potential litigants lack the time, money, or ability to participate in court processes to solve their problems.
The workshop will focus on three topics:
- Data issues related to access to justice (building reusable, shareable datasets for research)
- AI for access to justice generally
- AI for dispute resolution
What is the access to justice gap?
Around the world, up to 5 billion people have unmet legal needs. This number represents the access to justice gap. The needs range from survivors of domestic violence, people navigating custody or the right to make basic decisions about their own well-being, to people facing eviction from their home, to others dealing with unfair treatment in accessing basic government services.
Approaches to close the access to justice gap range from offering direct legal representation to self-help and DIY solutions that can help individuals at scale.
Who
The workshop will involve the collaboration of Maastricht Law and Tech Lab, Stanford Legal Design Lab, Suffolk LIT Lab, Swansea University, Tabled.io, University of Turin, and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, which will be part of the larger Jurix 2025 conference hosted in Italy.
The Organising Committee is (listed in alphabetical order):
Flora Amato (University of Naples - Federico II)
Massimo Durante (University of Turin)
Andrea Filippo Ferraris (University of Bologna, University of Turin, Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
Lucilla Gatt (Suor Orsola Benincasa University)
Marco Giacalone (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
Margaret Darin Hagan (Stanford University)
Joelle Long (University of Turin)
Paul Massey (Tabled.io)
Marianna Molinari (University of Bologna, University of Turin, Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
Livio Robaldo (University of Swansea)
Jaromir Savelka (Carnegie Mellon University)
Quinten Steenhuis (Suffolk University)
Hannes Westermann (Maastricht University)
The Program Committee is (listed in alphabetical order):
Kolawole Adebayo (Maynooth University)
Ilaria Angela Amantea (University of Turin)
Joseph Anim (University of Swansea)
Guido Boella (University of Turin)
Guido Governatori (Central Queensland University)
Safia Kanwal (University of Swansea)
Davide Liga (University of Luxembourg)
Roberto Nai (University of Turin)
Monica Palmirani (University of Bologna)
Cristina Poncibò (University of Turin)
Emilio Sulis (University of Turin)
It will include the members above, and a pool of additional researchers to be named.
Shared workshop day
The day will be divided between a traditional academic workshop with paper presentations and an interactive exercise related to building datasets for access to justice-related research.
Legal Data For AI and Access to Justice – Data Availability and Technical Standards (LDA2J)
A portion of the day is considering the availability of legal data around the world for AI services promoting Access to Justice, with a view to taking forward a plan to aggregate global legal data for AI through forming a legal knowledge partnership network.
To develop the full benefits of AI for Access to Justice, legal data is required under appropriate copyright licences and those datasets require optimisation for LLM application. Integrating bottom-up neural inference with top-down expert-curated XML data appears particularly promising. Such hybrid approaches can strengthen retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) models for legal use cases.
In the United Kingdom, legislation and jurisprudence is available through The National Archives under OpenJustice Licences and in Akoma Ntoso (a.k.a. LegalDocML), the XML standard format for the legal domain. This open infrastructure has significantly boosted opportunities for LegalTech innovation and Access to Justice. A notable example is Libra.law, developed in the context of the Innovate UK funded project Odyssey, an application designed to leverage structured legal data and LLM capabilities for enhanced legal reasoning and legal information access by the public and for qualified client referral to University legal clinics and law firms for legal advice.
But what is the situation in other countries? We are seeking contributors and papers demonstrating how academics and industry players access, process, and structure legislation and jurisprudence for AI applications and Access to Justice. We will compare case studies and methods, highlighting the strengths and limitations of various country level approaches, with a view to taking the first steps towards building a network to aggregate and share global legal data for AI use cases.
Artificial Intelligence for Access to Justice (AI4A2J)
A middle session of the day will focus on papers related AI tools, datasets, and approaches, whether large language models, traditional machine learning, or rules-based systems, that solve the real-world problems of unrepresented litigants or legal aid programs. Papers discussing the ethical implications, limits, and policy implications of AI in law are also welcome.
Artificial Intelligence for Digital Dispute Resolution (AI4DDR)
The final portion of the workshop will focus on fostering discussion on the state of the art and potential applications of AI in dispute resolution, both within court-connected processes and through alternative methods, such as out-of-court dispute settlement.
The use of advanced algorithms offers numerous benefits, including e-justice systems that facilitate litigation, as well as alternative dispute resolution or online dispute resolution (now referred to as Out-of-Court Dispute Settlement according to Article 21 of the European Digital Services Act - DSA); automated generation of defense documents - through forms - to enhance access to justice; and the deployment of LLMs, conversational agents to improve the dissemination of legal information and computational methods for negotiation and contract formation. These innovations aim to expedite legal timelines overall and streamline decision-making processes, with the goal of ensuring the reasonable duration of trials. They also strive to simplify legal information in adherence to the principles of legal certainty and substantive equality.
However, such advancements raise significant concerns, particularly regarding transparency and reliability, with an emphasis on ensuring explainable and fair AI systems. Thus, the objective of the workshop is to examine not only the legal compatibility of these emerging technologies within the dispute resolution domain, sparking an international dialogue, but also their practical feasibility and impact. Specifically, the workshop aims to explore: (a) whether this integration can effectively assist legal experts while identifying potential biases, and (b) whether it can meaningfully accelerate the timelines of legal professionals and defence processes for the involved parties, fostering greater circulation and accessibility of related legal information.
Submission format for traditional paper presentations
We invite contributors to submit:
short papers (5-10 pages excluding citations and relevant appendices), or
proposals for demos in the form of an extended abstract (1-2 pages excluding citations).
We welcome works in progress, although depending on submission volume, we will give a preference to complete ideas that can be evaluated, shared and discussed.
Case studies are welcome, especially when accompanied by enough detail for qualitative results and replication. Case studies should be well-researched with a relevant prior work section.
The focus of submissions should be on AI tools, datasets, and approaches, whether large language models, traditional machine learning, or rules-based systems, that solve the real-world problems of unrepresented litigants or legal aid programs. Papers discussing the ethical implications, limits, and policy implications of AI in law are also welcome.
Other topics may include:
findings of research about how AI is affecting access to justice,
evaluation of AI models and tools intended to benefit access to justice,
outcomes of new interventions intended to deploy AI for access to justice,
proposals of future work to use AI or hold AI initiatives accountable,
principles & frameworks to guide work in this area, or
other topics related to AI & access to justice
Papers should follow the formatting instructions of CEUR-WS. (Ceurart)
Submissions will be subject to peer review. Submissions will be evaluated on overall quality, technical depth, relevance, and the diversity of topics to ensure an engaging and high-quality workshop.
You can download templates for the Ceurart style in LaTeX or Microsoft Office formats.
Writing a successful submission
We welcome papers submitted by practitioners and non-traditional authors. To help you succeed, you may want to read through our guide on writing an academic paper on AI and access to justice.
All authors should:
Explain the connection to one of the three tracks clearly.
For fairness, we ask that you follow the page limits and the formatting instructions strictly. Use the templates provided.
Multiple submissions by one author
Authors are permitted to make multiple submissions. Each will be considered individually on its merits. Authors will not be permitted to give a live presentation of more than one paper.
Publication possibility
We hope to publish the proceedings from this workshop with CEUR, although we ask for patience as we have limited administrative support for this task.
AI disclosure and AI co-authorship
Please read the CEUR AI usage guidelines carefully. Papers that use AI in certain restricted ways will not be eligible for publication with CEUR, although they may still be eligible to be presented at the workshop. Please be clear with us about how you used AI when writing your paper. Do not use it to substitute for your human judgment and authorship. You are responsible for the accuracy of all content in your paper in all cases.
All papers should include a disclosure of their use or lack of use of generative AI.
We do not have a policy on AI “co-authorship” but we note that it is not compatible with CEUR publication.
Self-publication and publication with other journals
You are welcome to publish a preprint at any time with a venue such as arXiv.org or SSRN. Publishing a preprint will not prevent you from participating in the CEUR publication.
We understand that you may not want to wait for us to publish your work. You will have the right to use the feedback from our workshop to revise your paper for publication in another venue. Communicate with us if you choose a different publication venue so we do not duplicate the publication. Publication other than a preprint is typically exclusive.
Important dates
Submissions are not yet open. Please visit this page again. A submission link will be added to this page.
Expected submission deadline: November 17th.
Notifications expected: November 24th.
The workshop will be held on December 9, 2025.
Workshop format
The workshop will be a hybrid event. Workshop participants will be able to participate in-person or remotely via Zoom, although we hope for broad in-person participation. In past editions, about half of the participation was remote and half in-person. We use Zoom to facilitate multi-channel discussion throughout the workshop.
This will be a full-day workshop from 9 AM Turin time until 18:00 (6 PM).
Presentation format
Each accepted paper is expected to have:
10 minutes (+ 5 for questions) to present long papers
5 minutes + 5 to present for short papers
5 minutes + 5 to present demos
Slides and visuals are welcome. Authors are encouraged to practice their presentation in advance to ensure they can fit their presentation in the strict time limits given.
Papers will be organized by theme into shorter blocks (typically 4-6 papers in each block). We will reserve about 15 minutes at the end of each block for a short panel discussion or additional questions from the audience on each theme.
More about the JURIX conference
The Foundation for Legal Knowledge Based Systems (JURIX) is an organization of researchers in the field of Law and Computer Science in the Netherlands and Flanders. Since 1988, JURIX has held annual international conferences on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems.
This year, JURIX conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems will be hosted in Turin, Italy. It will take place on December 9-11, 2025.
Registration required for in-person participation
Attendees who wish to participate in-person will need to register for the Jurix workshop-only conference. Registration includes food throughout the day. Optionally, participants can also participate in the rest of the Jurix conference which will include a number of academic papers on a wide range of developments in AI and law.
We hope to have an option for remote participants to register via Zoom for free.
Workshop schedule
The workshop will be on Central European Time (GMT+1), 6 hours ahead of the LIT Lab’s home time zone on the U.S. East Coast.
This is a full-day workshop that starts at 9:00 AM and runs until 18:00 (6 PM). Registration and in-person check-in starts at 8:30 AM.
For the complete schedule of the day, see https://jurix2025.di.unito.it/program-overview.