Pre-conference workshop
Empirical Strategies for Causal Inference in Legal Studies
Course Description
This one-day intensive workshop introduces the core empirical strategies used to identify causal effects from observational data, with a particular focus on applications in law, legal institutions, courts, and public policy. The course is designed for lawyers and legal scholars who wish to understand, evaluate, and conduct empirical research using modern econometric tools, even without formal training in advanced mathematics or econometrics.
The emphasis is on identification, assumptions, intuition, and interpretation, rather than technical derivations. Each method is motivated by concrete legal and institutional examples, highlighting both strengths and limitations in empirical legal research.
Target Audience and Prerequisites
The workshop is intended for legal scholars, PhD students, post-doctoral researchers, judges, policy analysts, assistant professors and senior academics as well as interdisciplinary researchers working in law and economics or empirical legal
studies. Basic familiarity with regression analysis is helpful but not strictly required. No programming skills are required.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:
Distinguish causal inference from descriptive and correlational analysis in
legal research
Understand when and why different empirical strategies are appropriate
Identify key assumptions underlying modern causal methods and assess their
plausibility
Critically evaluate empirical legal studies using matching, panel data, RDD,
DiD, and synthetic control methods
Interpret estimated treatment effects and communicate results clearly to legal
and policy audiences
Engage effectively with empirical collaborators, referees, and reviewers
Date: Wednesday 17 June 2026
Location: Ljubljana (details follow after registration)
Level: All levels (beginner – advanced)
Instructor: Rok Spruk
Registration fee: free of charge
No-Show Policy
Please note that the workshops are given by experts in the field who do this on a voluntary basis. Places are limited and we often have people on the waiting list. In case you are prevented from attending the workshop, kindly send an email to well before the workshop to make space available for people on the waiting list.
If you do not attend the workshop without prior cancellation, you will unfortunately no longer be able to register for future workshops. This is very unfortunate, but can easily be prevented with a simple e-mail.
Registration form