CfP: Trevor Bench-Capon Doctoral Consortium of ICAIL 2026
Réka Markovich
The Trevor Bench-Capon Doctoral Consortium of ICAIL 2026 invites submissions from doctoral students/candidates describing their research/thesis currently being written in any areas of AI&Law.
Purpose and Eligibility
This event aims to promote the exchange of ideas of PhD researchers in the field of Artificial Intelligence and Law, and to provide them with an opportunity to interact and receive feedback from leading scholars and experts in the field. Specifically, the Consortium seeks to provide opportunities for PhD students to:
- obtain fruitful feedback and advice on their research projects;
- meet experts from different backgrounds working on topics related to the AI&Law and Legal Information Systems fields;
- have a face-to-face mentoring discussion on the topic and methodology of the PhD with an international senior scholar;
- discuss concerns about research, supervision, the job market, and other career-related issues.
To be eligible for the Consortium, a candidate must be a current doctoral student at a recognized university. Ideally, the candidate should have at least 8–12 months of work remaining before expected completion. The participants of the Doctoral Consortium must register for and attend the main conference. The PhD student should be the sole author of the submission. Note that submissions to the Doctoral Consortium are entirely separate from any papers that students may have submitted to the main conference.
The accepted thesis/research descriptions will be presented to an interested audience and subject to discussion during the Doctoral Consortium event at the ICAIL 2026 conference. We expect submissions addressing any topic related to the AI&Law discipline, listed in the call for papers for the main conference,
Submission
Students are invited to submit an original description of their work addressing the following aspects:
- a clear formulation of the research question;
- an identification of the significant problems in the field of research;
- an outline of the current knowledge of the problem domain, as well as the state of existing solutions;
- a presentation of preliminary ideas, the proposed approach and the results achieved so far;
- a sketch of the applied research methodology;
- a description of the PhD project’s contribution to the problem solution;
- a discussion of how the suggested solution is different, new, or better than existing approaches to the problem.
Submissions are expected in English, as a single pdf file using LNCS format and consisting of
- a maximum 10-page-long thesis/research description, and
- a maximum 3-page-long CV.
Please submit to https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=dcoficail2026
Submissions will be assessed by members from the AI&Law community who will consider how well the submissions address each of the aspects given above.
Important Dates
- Deadline for submission: March 31, 2026 AoE
- Notification of acceptance: April 17, 2026 AoE
- Camera-ready copy (to be published on the conference website) due: May 5, 2026 AoE
- Conference: June 8-12, 2026
Award
The Best Paper of the Trevor Bench-Capon Doctoral Consortium of ICAIL 2026 Award will be assigned to the most original, innovative, and well-presented research.
Chair
Réka Markovich (University of Luxembourg) reka.ma...@uni.lu