Scotia
conflictanalyticslab

Certificate leaders:
Prof. Samuel Dahan
Prof. Yuri Levin (Smith and Scotiabank Center for Customer Analytics)
Prof. Mikhail Nediak (Smith and Scotiabank Center for Customer Analytics)
Prof. Maxime Cohen (McGill, Google AI)

APPLICATIONS ARE DUE OCTOBER 1ST

Applications can be submitted here: https://forms.gle/NfmtdxKmhkH6WE8S8


Structure


Size of Participant Pool

  • 5-10 1L students (subject to the needs of the Lab)
  • The Certificate will be offered to a limited pool of students. This is necessary to ensure that the Lab is receiving applications from students who are committed and engaged in their respective projects and also show an interest in participating in the Lab moving forward.

Application

The Certificate will require each prospective volunteer to submit an application expressing interest in the Lab. This will give applicants an opportunity to express why they are interested in the Lab and what they hope to achieve as a member. This will further the Lab’s goal of receiving applications from individuals who are serious and committed to its projects and future growth. Furthermore, this will give the Lab the opportunity to decide between applicants should it receive too many applications.

SCOTIABANK CLA Certificate – FALL 2020

There will be an “Information Session” during the second week of classes. This session will take place in the second week of the Fall 2020 semester. This will be an open session and give all 1Ls an opportunity to learn about the Lab, its projects, and the Certificate program.

Requirements

  1. Application (as described above)
  2. Attendance at an Initial Practicum Meeting (First Meeting After info Session): Once applications have been selected, the applicants will be required to attend the initial weekly meeting of the Lab to get acquainted with their respective project leaders and gain a better understanding of each project and what is required of them. Due to potential conflicts with 1L Classes, they are not required to attend the meeting if there is a scheduling conflict. However, they will have to meet with their respective project leaders at a pre-arranged time to obtain the necessary information.
  3. Attendance and Participation in Weekly Team Meetings: Volunteers will be required to attend and participate in their respective team’s meetings. Given the nature of 1L scheduling, this should be flexible and afford each volunteer the ability to miss meetings to ensure their academic success in their courses. However, they are expected to attend at least 8 weekly meetings (between Sept-Nov). If they cannot attend the meeting, they must provide project leaders with sufficient justification in order to qualify for the certificate.
  4. Completion of the minimum amount of data annotation as per the discretion of the project leader. However, 1L participants are expected to complete a minimum of 10 hours’ worth of annotation. Time spent in the weekly meetings will count towards the 10 hours.
  5. Attendance at “Data Analytics Fundamentals Seminar” – Date TBD –  The session will be led by data scientists and give volunteers an opportunity to learn about how the data they are annotating is utilized by data scientists. The session will also provide an introduction to basic statistical methods and the tools that can be used to find correlations in data.

    This Seminar will be run by the Lab’s Data Scientists and lawyers and have the goals of providing valuable insight such as:
  • What tech can do for young lawyers and students;
  • What information data scientists find useful for machine learning (directed reading techniques for students);
  • Why AI systems are important to the future of the legal industry;
  • The importance of qualitative and quantitative analyses – how the machines use these inputs;
  • Basics of machine learning techniques and when certain techniques are most useful (i.e. Trees, Bayesian, SVM, Regression, etc.)
  • Looking forward – deep learning techniques and its possibilities

Certificate

At the end of the semester, successful candidates will be provided with the 1L Scotiabank Certificate in Law and Analytics. The recipient of the certificate would have demonstrated a keen awareness of the future of the legal industry and have received exposure to new learning methods. Each volunteer’s respective project leader will be available as a reference to verify participation in the Lab.