Lawtech and Sustainable Development: a New Agenda

The Deep Tech Dispute Resolution Lab is undertaking the first-ever comprehensive study into the relationship between Lawtech and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

In times of COVID-19, which represents the most catastrophic health, social, and economic crisis in living memory, the United Nation's SDGs are more relevant today than ever before. It has been recognised that the legal profession can significantly contribute to advancing the SDGs. The focus to date has been on SDG 16 (Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels). At the same time, there are a wide range of SDGs that the legal sector can make a difference to. As the sector increasingly adopts new technologies, the potential impact of Lawtech on sustainable development, as well as the associated opportunities, challenges, and risks, has not been explored in detail.

The relatively little attention paid to sustainble development issues in Lawtech stands in striking contrast to Fintech, where the role of digital finance in promoting a range of SDGs has become a highly visible agenda in recent years. To address this gap, in the coming months, our Deep Tech Dispute Resolution Lab will be producing an independent research report titled Lawtech and Sustainable Development: a New Agenda. 

We would like to invite all stakeholders (legal profession, lawtech providers, businesses, government, industry bodies, academia, etc) to participate in a survey, the findings of which will directly feed into our report. We very much value your input into this important research, which we hope will generate a set of concrete and actionable recommendations with significant policy and practical outcomes for the Lawtech ecosystem.

The link to the survey is here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/GKLLTLM  The survey will take around 5 minutes and should be submitted by 18 October 2020. All responses are confidential and individual respondents are not identified.

Please contact the project lead, Dr Mimi Zou at mimi.zou@law.ox.ac.uk if you have any questions about the survey or study. We very much look forward to your insights.