Need Legal Tech? Hire an Architect.

Today at SMU CCLaw we had a seminar from Dr. Joaquín Arias Herrero of the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Spain. Dr. Arias is one of the researchers responsible for s(CASP), which is my new favourite programming language for Rules as Code.

I was delighted to learn about the existence of s(CASP) late last year. I have been spending a lot of time working in it in the first half of 2021, and that delight has not diminished.

I needed to introduce Dr. Arias to my colleagues, and so took a look at his CV. There I learned that like me, he is an interdisciplinary expert. He has a PhD in computing science, but he is also a highly trained architect. I understand his entry into the world of computing science came from a desire to automate tasks in the world of architecture.

If you have a 3d digital design of a building, you should be able to automatically check whether or not there is a power outlet every 12 linear feet, right? That seems like a reasonable expectation. We already have 3D modelling software. We just need building code modelling software, and then we can glue them together.

So it turns out that the best programming language currently available for encoding written legal rules is a tool that was created by an architect. And I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

Interdisciplinarity has emergent properties.