Law Commons^™

Future Of Ai And Law, Abby Cessna

Cornell Law School J.D. Student Research Papers

Technology has already transformed the way that law is practiced. The use of computers and digital legal resources, such as LexisNexis and Westlaw have been around for decades, but these are just some of the major technological advancements that have transformed law. For instance, it was groundbreaking for a law firm as prestigious as Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe to have a website in the late 1990's, which was getting around 5000 visits a week. Now law firms not only have websites but also use a variety of social media services to promote their firm and services. In addition to promoting …

Data Breaches And Privacy Law: Lawyers’ Challenges In Handling Personal Information, Charlotte Duc-Bragues

Cornell Law School J.D. Student Research Papers

Sharing personal information with a lawyer potentially represents the greatest source of vulnerability for an individual. Since the first major security breach in 2005, law firms have been pressed both by public authorities and clients to take action in order to protect confidential information from potential harmful breaches.

This paper seeks to provide an overview of the challenges faced by lawyers in handling personal information with regard to potential security breaches. The aim is to analyze this issue through the focal of privacy law; statistics on security breaches and tools to prevent this phenomenon, extensively studied in class, are given …

The Virtues Of Moderation, James Grimmelmann

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

On a Friday in 2005, the Los Angeles Times launched an experiment: a “wikitorial” on the Iraq War that any of the paper’s readers could edit. By Sunday, the experiment had ended in abject failure: vandals overran it with crude profanity and graphic pornography. The wikitorial took its inspiration and its technology from Wikipedia, but missed something essential about how the “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit” staves off abuse while maintaining its core commitment to open participation.

The difference is moderation: the governance mechanisms that structure participation in a community to facilitate cooperation and prevent abuse. Town meetings …

Law And Ethics Of Experiments On Social Media Users, James Grimmelmann

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

If you were on Facebook in January 2012, there is a chance that it tried to make you sad. If you were on OkCupid, there is a chance that it tried to match you up with someone incompatible. These were social psychology experiments: Facebook and OkCupid systematically manipulated people's environments to test their reactions. Academics doing similar experiments in a university setting would typically need to obtain informed consent from participants and approval from an Institutional Review Board (IRB). But Facebook and OkCupid, and the academics working with Facebook, had neither. This, I believe, is a problem.

These experiments offer …