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Legal Priorities Lab Logo

The Legal Priorities Lab is a series of informal, weekly online meetings where we discuss ongoing research of our members and invited academics. The 1-hour sessions are generally open to the public. They take place every Friday at 3:00 PM (GMT) unless otherwise specified. You can find and register for upcoming events below.

See upcoming events and register

If you have attended previous labs and would like to give us some feedback, we would love to hear it in our feedback form.

If you are interested in giving a talk at a lab session, please fill out our expression of interest form.

Other Upcoming Events

No upcoming events

Past Events

Law & Longtermism Dinner - EA Global Bay Area 2023

As part of EA Global Bay Area 2023, we are organizing an informal dinner and hangout for anyone interested in our work. Come meet our team!

Cullen O'Keefe: Mitigating Extreme AI Risk - How Lawyers Could Help

Cullen O’Keefe (Research Scientist in Policy at OpenAI and LPP Affiliate) gave a talk at Harvard Law School Effective Altruism on “Mitigating Extreme AI Risks: How Lawyers Could Help”.

Existential Advocacy: A Conversation with Professor John Bliss

Prof John Bliss gave a talk at Harvard Law School Effective Altruism on “Existential Advocacy".

Legal Priorities Summer Institute 2022

The Legal Priorities Summer Institute (LPSI) is an intensive, week-long program with the goal of introducing altruistically-minded law and policy students to projects, theories, and tools relevant to tackling critical issues affecting the long-term future. Read more here.

  • Oxford, UK
  • 3–8 September 2022

Law & Artificial Intelligence

In this seminar, Christoph Winter will speak about the intersection of AI and the law, with a focus on mitigating risks from AI.

  • Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (Mexico City)
  • Summer 2022

2022 Multidisciplinary Forum on Longtermism and the Law

Together with the University of Hamburg, the Legal Priorities Project co-organized the 2022 Multidisciplinary Forum on Longtermism and the Law on 9-11 June 2022.

Cullen O'Keefe: Existential Risks and the Future of Humanity

We may be living in one of the most consequential centuries of humanity’s history. Humans have only recently developed the power to destroy our own species, whether it be through nuclear war, runaway climate change, a global pandemic, or misaligned artificial intelligence. Before us lies the risk of our total demise or the opportunity for thousands of generations of prosperity and peace, giving us time to address our most entrenched injustices. On this scale, humanity’s history has just begun. But how can we ensure humanity’s existence doesn’t end in its infancy? This Yale Legal Priorities Society lunch talk was with Cullen O’Keefe, Founding Advisor at the Legal Priorities Project and Counsel for Policy & Governance at OpenAI.

Podcast episode on legal priorities research

LPP Director Christoph Winter was featured on an episode of the podcast Hear This Idea where he talked about:

  • Our global survey of legal academics about protecting future generations;
  • How constitutional law might best help in this effort;
  • Abstract endangerment of humanity and the "risk of creating risk";
  • What LPP’s research and community-building efforts currently look like;
  • And lots more!

Listen to this podcast

Cass Sunstein: Averting Catastrophe

In this event co-hosted by the Legal Priorities Project and ITAM, best-selling author Cass Sunstein will talk about his recent book Averting Catastrophe, in which he examines how to avoid worst-case scenarios. The 20–30 min talk will be followed by a discussion with Christoph Winter. The event will be recorded and made available online.

Legal Priorities Lab flyer for Averting Catastrophe event

Report launch of 'Responsible AI for the Indian Justice System'

An event organized by the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, featuring presentations by Justice S.A. Bobde (Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of India), LPP's Christoph Winter, and more.

  • Online. See details here.
  • April 15, 2021

Responsible AI for the Indian Justice System event flyer

Online course: Introduction to Effective Altruism

LPP Research Affiliate Cecil Abungu led this 9-week course for 61 newcomers to effective altruism (EA). The course was designed for people from countries in the global south with little to no idea about EA. As part of the program, we scheduled guest sessions on x-risk from some of the leading EA-oriented scholars.

  • Online
  • May–July 2021

SERI Conference: Q&A with Christoph Winter

Christoph Winter discusses his work as LPP Director in this Q&A organized by the Stanford Existential Risks Initiative.

AI, Decision-Making, and the Law

Presented by the "Digital Ideas Lunch Series: Law in Algorithmic Society" of the European Law School at Humboldt University Berlin, in cooperation with KCL's Centre for Technology, Ethics, Law and Society. With a talk by Christoph Winter on "The Challenges of Artificial Judicial Decision-Making for Liberal Democracy".

  • Online
  • April 7, 2021

Law + Effective Altruism: How Can We Do Good Better?

Lawyers have a huge opportunity to do a lot of good in the world - but also a dizzying number of options. Should you pursue a traditional legal career and earn to give? Could you represent those affected by an issue you care about or join an EA organisation as legal counsel? Or should you go into politics and advocacy to create systemic change? In this panel discussion, Cullen O’Keefe and others discussed impactful career paths in law.

  • Online
  • March 31, 2021

Working for the Most Good with Your Law Degree

Many come to law school to use their law degrees to do good, but questions of how to maximize impact often go underexplored. Different trajectories can have impacts that are not just different, but orders of magnitude different. How can law students think about moving toward greater impact? What kinds of legal careers are best suited to large-scale, sustainable change? In this talk, Cullen O’Keefe will start these sorts of discussions.

  • Harvard Law School (Cambridge, MA)
  • 22 October 2020

Evolving Law: From Human Cognition to Artificial Intelligence

In this seminar, Christoph Winter spoke about the intersection of AI, cognitive science and the law.

  • Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (Mexico City)
  • Summer 2020

Legal Priorities Seminar

In this series of guest speakers, we introduced legal priorities research to law students and faculty members.

  • Harvard Law School (Cambridge, MA)
  • Spring 2020

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