Future events

Details of events planned by the Centre for Empirical Legal Studies will be posted here when confirmed.

Past events

Empirical Legal Research Workshop 2025

The Centre for Empirical Legal Studies hosted an Empirical Legal Research Workshop on March 19, 2025, at Bentham House. The workshop aimed to foster networking among those engaged in empirical legal research, inspire collaboration, identify training needs in social science research methods, and assess the potential for peer support initiatives. Key themes included the Faculty's strong tradition of empirical legal research, with surveys showing increased engagement in empirical projects. Participants discussed overlapping research interests and methodologies, highlighting opportunities for collaboration and targeted training. The workshop focused on the challenges of conducting empirical research within a law faculty and ways in which it can be supported at both staff and student levels.
 

Student Empirical Legal Research Conference 2024

The Centre for Empirical Legal Studies hosted a first Student Empirical Legal Research Conference, in Bentham House in Bloomsbury between on 20th March 2024. The conference showcased empirical research being undertaken by postgraduate research students, as well as the empirical project work of students on the undergraduate Law and Social Inquiry course. The conference was opened by Dean of Laws Eloise Scotford ahead of an interview of Professor Dame Hazel Genn on her ‘legal empirical journey’ by Professor Pascoe Pleasence. she starkly revealed she only became an empirical legal scholar because, as a young social scientist, she serendipitously responded to an advert looking for assistance on a new crime victim survey being conducted at the Institute of Criminology in Cambridge. She went on describe the unique technical and logistical challenges that continue to act as a barrier to rigorous empirical legal research, her disappointment that civil law focused empirical research has yet to find the scale or identity of criminology, but ended with cautious optimism that empirical legal research is now being more broadly embraced by younger researchers.

The main session of the conference saw UCL PhD students present their empirical work in progress, with a focus on their choice of empirical methods, as well as answer questions from the floor. Natalia Morales Cerda described how she always intended to focus her research into the experience of women’s political representation in Chile’s 2019-2022 constitution-making process on a programme of semi-structured interviews. Meanwhile, Sonam Gordhan and Tasneem Ghazi explained how it was only during their studies that they came to appreciate an empirical picture of context and real world practice would be essential to their research into, respectively, the role of courts in responding to climate change and the use and scrutiny of delegated legislation in different jurisdictions.

A final Question Time session, chaired by Professor Cheryl Thomas saw a panel of relatively new members of the faculty – Dr Amber Darr, Dr Allison Lindner, Dr Karen Nokes and Dr Pedro Schilling De Carvalho – show off the diversity of experience and empirical scholarship now established within the faculty.

You can find a full recording of the conference on YouTube.
 

2nd UCL International Conference on Access to Justice and Legal Services

The Centre for Empirical Legal Studies hosted the second UCL International Conference on Access to Justice and Legal Services between the 11th and 13th June 2018 at Bentham House in Bloomsbury, Central London.

Legal service delivery continues to undergo change the world over; brought about as a result technological advancement, market transformations, processes of democratisation, shifts in the delivery of public legal services, and a renewed focus on access to justice following the implementation of United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 16.3. Set against this backdrop, the 2018 UCL International Access to Justice Conference provided a forum for knowledge-exchange between international researchers, policy makers and legal service professionals involved in the funding, delivery, development and evaluation of legal services.

The conference provided an opportunity to reflect on recent developments and innovations and to consider how to best prepare for the emerging challenges and opportunities set to define the access to justice agenda in coming years. Amidst the digitisation of justice; growing social inequality; diminishing investment in public legal services in the UK; and the UK’s exit from the European Union, the UCL conference provided a critical focus on access to justice in turbulent times.

The conference booklet, including the programme can be viewed here: UCL International A2J Conference Booklet 2018

Conference on Access to Justice and Legal Services – 19th and 20th June 2014

The Centre for Empirical Legal Studies, in conjunction with the Centre for Ethics and Law and Centre for Access to Justice, hosted the first UCL International Conference on Access to Justice and Legal Services on the 19th and 20th June 2014 in the UCL Faculty of Laws.

The global financial crisis, technological advancement, processes of democratisation and market transformation are fuelling rapid change in the funding, availability and delivery of public legal services across the world. In England and Wales, legal services and legal aid are in the midst of a period of unprecedented change, following the Legal Services Act 2007 and Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012.

The UCL International Conference on Access to Justice and Legal Services provided a UK centred focus on these changes, and brought together researchers, policy makers and legal services professionals from 6 continents to share new findings, ideas and innovations in the access to justice sphere.