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Professor Burkhard Schafer interviewed by the Ukrainian Dead Lawyers Society

Thu 24 October 2024

Old College Quad

Burkhard Schafer was interviewed in a series of online events organised by the Ukrainian Dead Lawyers Society  – a community of over 8000 Ukrainian lawyers with the objective of “creating a new format of legal discussion about the insides and the insights of the legal business in Ukraine and worldwide”. 

Founded six years ago with the aim to improve legal services in the Ukraine, and with regards to digital transformation of the profession, it now provides pivotal services for a community deeply affected by the war. In the movie that inspired the name of the society, Robin William’s character tells his students to rip out the pages of their textbook that contains a mathematical formula for rating poetry. Quite fittingly, the talk with Burkhard centred around the use and abuse, potential and pitfalls of the use of mathematics in the law, the scope and limits to use statistics and AIs to rate people or events. 

Ranging from the use of statistics in the Lucy Letby case to the potential of AI to gather, analyse and interpret data in complex war crime investigations or defend against militarised deepfakes, the common theme was the often fractious relation between law, statistics and AI, and how the legal profession has to change to reap the benefits that technology promises while staying true to its values and avoid the very real dangers of justice by numbers. 

Burkhard Schafer: “I was delighted to be able to support the Dead Lawyer’s Society in their invaluable role they continue to play in supporting the Ukrainian legal community, now under the most difficult of circumstances – though it was a false fire alarm in Edinburgh that turned out the be the greatest obstacle that day Our discussions got at the very heart of what it means to be a lawyer at a time of accelerated digital transformation”

 

Learn more about the Dead Lawyers Society

Dead Lawyers Society - Medium.com

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