Chairholder | Karim Benyekhlef

Karim Benyekhlef has been a professor in the Faculty of Law at the Université de Montréal since 1989.He is now the Director of the Cyberjustice Laboratory, which he founded in 2010 and the work of which is  to increase and facilitate access to law and justice. The Cyberjustice Laboratory has obtained in 2015 the award «Mérite Innovation» from the Bar of Quebec (Innovation Award). He holds the Chaire de recherche en information juridique Lexum (Lexum Research Chair on Legal Information). He initiated the first online dispute resolution projects in the world (the CyberTribunal Project, 1996-1999; eResolution, 1999-2001; ECODIR, 2000-2001).  He and his team at the Laboratory have developed online dispute resolution platforms and chatbots for public administrations and courts in Canada.

From 2018 to 2026, he lead a project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada in the context of the Partnership Program, "Autonomy through Cyberjustice Technologies and Artificial Intelligence" (ACT Project) ). ACT aims to increase access to justice through the use of artificial intelligence (AI). ACT is able to count on a multidisciplinary and international team of 50 researchers, as well as 42 partners including research centers, public institutions, legal professionals, representatives from civil society and private sector actors. He received in 2016 from the Bar of Quebec the distinction Advocatus Emeritus.

My work primarily aims to ensure citizens' access to law and justice, the foundation of the rule of law. To this end, my teams and I are developing online dispute resolution tools to facilitate access to justice, as well as chatbots to simplify access to law. AI is a tool that can contribute to these objectives. We must also consider the technical methods of regulation. Beyond the legal text, how can we ensure regulation that is embedded in the technology itself? Regulation that complements and enriches the legal text without distorting it, and while offering the same guarantees of predictability and legibility.