This session will showcase three short presentations on innovative legal ideas and projects making an impact in development:

AI for Access to Law and Justice - Building Colombia’s First Country-wide LLM: This talk will present Colombia's groundbreaking initiative to develop the country's first special-purpose LLM designed exclusively for legal information access and state services. This pioneering project demonstrates how academic-private partnerships can create scalable, replicable AI solutions that democratize access to justice in civil law jurisdictions.

  • Antonio Barreto Rozo, Associate Professor, Law School of Universidad de los Andes
  • David Varela, Director of the Center for Economic Regulation and International Competitiveness, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana

Court Audio Recordings Project: Access to courts' digital records (oral arguments) enhances transparency, accountability, justice, the rule of law, and public trust. Using the South African Constitutional Court as the pilot, this talk will examine the feasibility of and share innovative options for creating a free digital audio to increase public access, highlighting strategies for collaboration among legal professionals, justice stakeholders, and higher educational institutions.

  • Mtende Mhango, Professor, University of Limpopo
  • Amos Saurombe, Professor & Head of Department, Criminal and Procedural Law, University of South Africa College of Law

Enabling Community Monitoring of Disability Rights Using Text Analytics and LLMs: This talk will explore how GenAI and text analytics can empower communities to monitor implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Using a novel hybrid methodology, participants will learn global and regional trends—with a focus on legal recognition, access to justice, and employment—and how to apply these tools to analyze treaty data relevant to their own contexts.

  • Derrick Cogburn, Professor and Executive Director, School of International Service, Kogod School of Business (Department of Information Technology, Analytics), and Institute on Disability and Public Policy (IDPP), American University
  • Keiko Shikako, Associate Professor and Director, Canada Research Chair in Childhood Disability: Participation and Knowledge Translation, McGill University

 

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