A workshop will be held at Qatar University College of Law (QU-LAWC) this week to explain the benefits of a new technology that will help public users analyse potential violations of the law regulating air pollutants. This comes as undergraduate students at LAWC aim to simplify law for everyone through user-friendly technologies, according to a press statement. In November 2016, five law students founded a law technology project, called SIMPLAW, under the guidance and supervision of their professors — Dr Rafael Brown and Dr Charles Schnurman, who both teach in the Lawyering Skills Programme of the College of Law. The SIMPLAW project, which works in co-operation with the LAWC, uses an open-source markup language that allows for the creation of an interactive expert system, which guides users through a set of questions and arrive at an answer. In short, the SIMPLAW project can help people make decisions, both legal and non-legal, the statement notes. For its first project, SIMPLAW created an expert system for the College of Law Externship programme that helps students decide where they would like to do an externship. In that project, Dana Ahan and Rana Bashir worked as researchers, Aisha AlKubaisi worked as programmer, Aljazi Almarri worked as logician and translator, and Maryam AlOtoum acted as project supervisor.  While in the process of using technology to help the public make legal decisions, the students learned skills relating to leadership, management, research, problem solving, strategic and entrepreneurship. With new students joining, the SIMPLAW team is currently collaborating with the Law and Development Centre, headed by Dr Jon Truby, to create an expert system that will help public users analyse potential violations of the law regulating air pollutants. The potential uses for the SIMPLAW project is limited only to the imagination with potential uses for educational, administrative as well as legal processes, the statement adds.
In order to share this project and the benefits of the new technology, the SIMPLAW team will hold a workshop on April 19 at LAWC in collaboration with QU’s Office of Faculty and Instructional Development programme. Those interested in the attending the programme should contact Professor Brown at [email protected]