Event: Alex Reiss Sorokin @Artificial Justice on 3 September, 2pm CEST

[Katharina Isabel Schmidt]

Dear all,

Please see below for an invitation to our next Artificial Justice Research Group event. On Wednesday, 3 September 2025 at 2pm CEST, Alex Reiss Sorokin of Princeton University will talk (in English and on Zoom) on "The Computer in the Law Firm: Early Automation of Legal Research in the United States, 1964-1974." Please use THIS LINK to register or get in touch with me directly.

All best wishes from Hamburg,

Katharina

Dear colleagues,

 

On behalf of Katharina Isabel Schmidt we cordially invite you to a virtual lecture in our Speaker Series of the Minerva Fast Track Research Group “Artificial Justice” on Wednesday, 3 September 2025 from 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. (CEST).

 

Alex Reiss-Sorokin (Princeton University) will be speaking on “The Computer in the Law Firm: The Early Automation of Legal Research in the United States, 1964-1974”.

 

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.

 

The virtual lecture will be held as a video conference via Zoom. Please register no later than Tuesday, 2 September 2025 using this LINK. You will receive the login details on Tuesday afternoon. If you do not receive an email containing the login data, please check your spam folder as well.

 

Please confirm upon registration that you agree to the use of Zoom and that you will not record the event. By attending the event you confirm that you have read and agreed to Zoom’s Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

 

Should you have any questions or require further information, please do not hesitate to contact us.

 

We look forward to your registrations!

 

Kind regards,

 

Anja Hell-Mynarik

Conference and Event Management