Postdoc Research Officer LegalTech

Swansea Singleton Campus

The School of Law has pursued an ambitious research agenda in LegalTech since 2017. Our aim is to create a cohesive and collaborative academic community, bridging the gaps between law, computer science and other disciplines, while working in partnership with the legal sector and other stakeholders to (i) apply cutting-edge technologies to legal practice and research, (ii) contribute to the creation of a suitable normative environment to support the application of such technologies to law, and (iii) deliver innovative LegalTech training to current and future generations of lawyers.

The Legal Innovation Lab Wales, a £5.6 million initiative supported by the Welsh European Funding Office with £4 million of European Regional Development Funds, is a unique environment that supports applied and empirical research in LegalTech, with the aim of developing prototypes and proofs of concept in partnership with the legal sector. The Lab is supported by a team of developers and has special facilities for AI research and collaborative spaces for academia-industry collaborations, as well as a Cyber Threats research centre and a Law Clinic.

You can read more about the Lab at https://legaltech.wales/ - our developer page is available at https://developer.legaltech.wales/ and features detailed overviews of some of the already completed projects (also on our GitHub repo: https://github.com/Legal-Innovation-Lab-Wales/). 

The Hillary Rodham Clinton School of Law seeks to appoint a Research Officer to support LegalTech research and innovation in the Legal Innovation Lab Wales. We are looking for a talented individual, with relevant academic or professional background, interested in exploring cutting-edge LegalTech innovation and passionate about its impact on the legal sector and the wider society. Our researchers and developers work on highly innovative research projects in partnership with law firms, regulators, policy makers, third sector organisations and other stakeholders, to shape the future of law. Among our current projects, we are using data science to map the impact of factual and legislative changes on online legal advice, in partnership with Legal Beagles; democratising access to LegalTech innovation by designing the first open source platform for the co-development of LegalTech apps, in collaboration with the Solicitors Regulation Authority and leading higher education institutions across the UK; and exploring the use of chatbots to disseminate technological know-how and encourage LegalTech innovation in Wales.  

The role holder will be part of a team of four researchers with different expertise in law and tech, with the support of software developers and colleagues from the Legal Innovation Lab Wales, the Hillary Rodham Clinton School of Law and other departments and faculties of Swansea University. Appropriate mentoring will be provided, especially to early career researchers, to enable the role holder to develop their academic and professional profile in a highly collaborative, stimulating and interdisciplinary environment.

For further information please visit our website

For informal enquiries, please contact Stefano Barazza, Academic Lead for the Legal Innovation Lab Wales and Director of the LLM LegalTech, at stefano.barazza@swansea.ac.uk.

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