12th International Conference on
Artificial Intelligence & Law (ICAIL 2009)
June 8 - June 12, 2009
Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain

Sponsored by:
* The International Association for Artificial Intelligence and Law (IAAIL)
* Autonomous University of Barcelona
* ISOCO, Intelligent Software Components S.A.
* Thomson Reuters

The field of AI and Law is concerned with:
* the study of legal reasoning and argumentation using computational methods
* the study of AI and other informatics fields, using law as an example domain
* formal models of norms, normative systems, norm-governed societies
* legal and quasi-legal applications of AI and other advanced information technologies

ICAIL 2009 will be held under the auspices of the International Association for Artificial Intelligence and Law (IAAIL), an organization devoted to promoting research and development in the field of AI and Law with members throughout the world. ICAIL provides a forum for the presentation and discussion of the latest research results and practical applications and stimulates interdisciplinary and international collaboration. Previous ICAIL conferences have been held biennially since 1987, with proceedings published by ACM. Authors are invited to submit papers on topics including but not restricted to:

* Formal and computational models of legal reasoning, argumentation, decision making, and negotiation
* Legal ontologies / representation of legal and related common sense knowledge
* Evidential reasoning and its role in legal decision making
* Modelling norms for multi-agent interaction, regulatory compliance, and electronic institutions
* Modelling contracts and other legal speech acts for electronic agents
* Knowledge discovery in legal databases
* Conceptual or model-based legal information retrieval
* Automated extraction of information from legal texts
* Computer-assisted legal drafting and document management
* Intelligent legal tutoring systems
* Judicial support systems
* Online dispute resolution
* Legal XML models and semantic web applications
* Legal aspects of multi-agent systems
* Representation of quasi-legal norm-governed systems (e.g. e-commerce rules, organization rules and security regulations)

Papers proposing formal or computational models should provide examples and/or simulations that show the model's applicability to a real legal problem or domain. Papers on applications should describe clearly the motivations behind the project, the techniques employed, and the current state of both implementation and evaluation. All papers should make clear their relation to prior work.

ICAIL WORKSHOPS AND TUTORIALS

ICAIL 2009 will include workshops and tutorials on the first and last days. Proposals for workshops and tutorials are invited, and should be sent to the Program Chair. 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 about 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 2009
* The intended audience, including the 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).

MENTORING PROGRAM FOR ICAIL 2009

The International Association for AI and Law will offer a mentoring program for papers being submitted to the ICAIL conference. The mentoring program is intended primarily for authors who have not published at ICAIL previously. For more details see the conference web site: http://idt.uab.cat/icail2009/.

DONALD H. BERMAN AWARD FOR BEST STUDENT PAPER

To encourage participation by students, IAAIL has created the Donald H. Berman Award for the best paper submitted to ICAIL by a student or students. The award consists of a cash gift and free attendance at ICAIL 2009. Notification will be made through the ICAIL web site, and the award will be presented at the conference banquet. 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 nonstudent co-authors should provide a statement that the paper is primarily student work.

IMPORTANT DATES

Mentoring program request deadline: November 4, 2008
Mentoring program paper deadline: November 11, 2008
Workshop and tutorial proposals due: December 1, 2008
Submission of abstracts (optional): January 5, 2009
Submission of papers: January 11, 2009
Notification of acceptance: March 9, 2009
Camera-ready copies: April 10, 2009
Conference: June 8 - June 12, 2009

SUBMISSION DETAILS

Papers should not exceed 5000 words. If an approved style file is used, the maximum length is 10 pages. To aid the reviewing process, authors are requested to submit abstracts of their papers by January 5, 2009, to the conference system. Abstracts should include at least the title of the paper, up to four keywords, and a contact address for the author. Papers must be submitted electronically on or before the January 11, 2009 deadline using the conference management system (details to be announced). Style guidelines and detailed submission instructions will be forthcoming on the conference web site http://idt.uab.cat/icail2009/. Authors will be notified of the referees' decision on March 9, 2009. 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.

CONFERENCE OFFICIALS

Program Chair
Carole Hafner
College of Computer and Information Science
Northeastern University, Room 202 WVH
Boston MA 02115 USA
Email: hafner@ccs.neu Tel: +1-617-373-5116

Conference Chair
Pompeu Casanovas
UAB Institute of Law and Technology
Political Science and Public Law Department
Campus UAB. Edifici B. Facultat de Dret 08193 Bellaterra.
Barcelona. Spain.
Email: pompeu.casanovas@uab.es Tel: +34 93 581 22 35

Secretary/Treasurer
Anne Gardner
286 Selby Lane,
Atherton, California 94027, USA
Email: gardner@cs.stanford.edu Tel: +1-650-368-1297