Preface

      This volume collects the fourteen contributions selected for the
First International Jurix Doctoral Consortium and Poster Sessions,
organized in conjunction with the 26th International Conference on
Legal Knowledge and Information Systems, held in Bologna on
December 11–13, 2013.

       This is the first year that Jurix has hosted Doctoral Consortium
and Poster Sessions, and the aim is to provide a proper space for young
Ph.D. researchers in AI&Law, while encouraging a constructive and
fruitful dialogue between the senior scholars and the emerging
generation of researchers. The doctoral consortium enables students to
interact with academics and experts in the field who can evaluate their
research projects from both a theoretical and an applicative point of
view. Young researchers have an opportunity to present and discuss
their ideas in a dynamic and friendly setting, while the AI&Law
community can support the new generation of researchers in carrying
forward the interdisciplinary method.
       We have organized the proceedings in two sessions in accordance
with the conference program: a Doctoral Consortium session and a
Posters session.
       Included here are the six papers from the doctoral consortium:
three are selected from the Computer Science background and the other
three from the Law background. In this way we achieve a good balance
between the legal side and the technical side, integrating the two so as
to firm up the interdisciplinary foundation within the AI&Law
community. The topics addressed include legal argumentation, online
dispute resolution, eDiscovery and NLP techniques, and legal-
knowledge modelling.

  The Poster Session includes eight extended abstracts outlining
corresponding posters presented at the Jurix2013 conference: three
posters present application tools and demos; the other five present
theoretical investigations supported by a strong evaluation phase. The
topics include legal argumentation, legal-conflict detection, legal-rule
modelling tool via the Web, social-network analysis applied to the legal
system, NLP parsing for detecting lists in regulation, social-media
policy, and nonprofit organizations.

      We would like to warmly thank all students, supervisors, and
referees and all the members of the program committee and the
organising team, for they have made the First International Jurix
Doctoral Consortium and Poster Sessions a huge success and an
excellent opportunity to enrich the AI&Law community with new
emerging ideas.

                                                  Monica Palmirani
                                                   Giovanni Sartor