Alex Reiss-Sorokin (Princeton University): The Computer in the Law Firm: The Early Automation of Legal Research in the United States, 1964-1974

Der Vortrag findet auf Englisch statt.

About the Speaker:
Alex Reiss-Sorokin is a socio-legal historian of information technology at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) and the Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton University. As a postdoctoral fellow at IAS, she works on a project titled "Trust in Search: Credibility and Doubt in Legal Research Technologies," tracing how American legal professionals began using and trusting information technology for legal research and how it has transformed their work and expertise. Before coming to Princeton, Alex Reiss Sorokin obtained law degrees from Tel Aviv University and NYU Law School as well as a PhD from the History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society program at MIT.

About the Topic:
Long before the invention of the internet as we know it, lawyers retrieved court decisions based on keywords from remote terminals placed in law firms, libraries, and clerk offices. Lawyers were not just the users of this innovative technology, but also its developers. The talk focuses on how they conceptualized legal research, what problems they thought automation could solve, and how their vision changed when they began interacting more with computer engineers to build the system later known as LexisNexis.

About the Speaker Series:
The Speaker Series of the new Minerva Fast Track Research Group "Artificial Justice" is organised by Katharina Isabel Schmidt. The Series invites guest speakers who work at the intersection between law, computer science, and the humanities. Neither technical nor juristic knowledge is a prerequisite for participation—the Series is aimed at anyone with an interest in critical and interdisciplinary perspectives on “Law and AI.” The event takes place on Zoom and is scheduled to last one hour.

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