Talk delivered at Sichuan University and Leshan University: Limitations in the Application of NLP to Empirical Legal Research

A/P Daniel Seng was invited to give a talk on the state of research into the use of NLP for empirical legal research before the Law and Computer Science faculties at Sichuan University. The talk explores the research done in predictive legal forecasting, critiques the methodologies used and the conclusions reached by comparing them with legal standards. It also looks at the strengths and limitations of the use of neural network language models for empirical legal research, and considers what potential empirical legal research using these tools might mean for the legal industry.