SEMINAR: Empirical Methods for Lawyers: Legal Historical Applications

While still somewhat niche, digital humanities (history) and empirical legal studies (law) have successfully established themselves as respectable fields of research. Yet, both Belgian law schools nor legal historians have picked up this trend. In this lecture, I explain how legal historical methods have evolved over the past decades and provide examples of how empirical methods may be applied in legal (historical) research. Although the concerns of lawyers are somewhat different from legal historians, empirical or digital methods can be beneficial to both. The lecture is thus relevant for all researchers interested in empirical and digital methods.

Florenz Volkaert (°1995) studied law at Ghent University (2018, summa cum laude) and obtained an LL.M/MSc. in Law and Economics (2018-2019, receiving the award for best student in the program) from the Universität Hamburg, Erasmus University Rotterdam and the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research as part of an Erasmus Mundus program. During his law studies in Ghent, he also spent a semester at the University of Waikato (New Zealand), where he won the Law of International Trade Prize for best essay. He furthermore interned twice at the international trade department of an international law firm.

You can join the lecture online by using this MS Teams meeting link.