Interdisciplinary Dickinson Law Team Wins Third Place in AI Challenge

INTERDISCIPLINARY DICKINSON LAW TEAM WINS THIRD PLACE IN AI CHALLENGE

September 2022 — Penn State Dickinson Law J.D. students Tony Fernando ’23, Jeremy Garcia ’23, Scott Lovejoy ’23, and recent LL.M. graduate Lyubomir Avdzhiyski ’22 recently received third place in the Nittany AI Challenge. The Nittany AI Challenge offers Penn State students the opportunity to address pressing global issues and build solutions using AI and machine learning.

More than 50 teams across all Penn State campuses participated in the Nittany AI Challenge. The Dickinson Law team was the only team which consisted of legal students while most, if not all, consisted of students studying STEM subjects.

The Dickinson Law project, titled LexNectare, aims to build a tool for legal aid or student clinic settings that use AI/ML language processing to categorize issues from prospective client narratives and propose possible solutions, including the generation of legal documents. After an 8-month process, they were awarded third place and a $5,000 grant.

“I felt elated and surprised when we received third place! While doing market research for our proposal, the bulk of legal technology, especially AI and ML legal technology, is very limited and misunderstood,” said Garcia.

Now that the challenge is over, the four students plan to finish their work on LexNectare’s pardon workflow. That will help prospective pardon applicants to create their application forms.