The Centre for Legal Innovation and Digital Society (CLINDS) at CUHK LAW held the 6th Machine Lawyering Conference on 21-22 May 2026. Esteemed scholars and practitioners from 26 institutions in 14 jurisdictions presented 31 papers, featuring pressing issues surrounding international technological competition, agentic AI, humanoid robots and embodied AI, algorithmic harm, digital money laundering, AI in criminal justice, digital competition law and platform governance, and stablecoins.  These papers were selected from more than 130 submissions through anonymous peer review by the conference organizing committee, consisting of Professors Kevin Cheng, Stuart Hargreaves, Robin Huang, Jyh-An Lee, Sandra Marco Colino, Eliza Mik, Jingyi Wang, Normann Witzleb, and Dr. Chimdessa Tsega. Other speakers and moderators from the Faculty included Professors Bryan Druzin, Steve Gallaegher, Siyi Lin and Mr. Ernest Southworth.

As part of the anonymous peer review process, the conference organizing committee selected two best submissions for the Best Paper Awards and three high-quality papers for Honorable Mentions from the pool of accepted papers.

Best Paper Award:

• Prof. Eric POSNER, Kirkland and Ellis Distinguished Service Professor of Law, University of Chicago; Mr. Shivam SARAN, Research Specialist, University of Chicago, Silicon Formalism: Rules, Standards, and Judge AI (First Place)
• Prof. Stergios Aidinlis, Associate Professor in AI Law, Durham Law School; Dr. Rebecca OWENS, Post-Doctoral Research Associate, Durham Law School, The Evidential Reliability of Agentic Systems: A Socio-Technical Framework for Industrial Liability (Second Place)

Honorable Mention:

• Prof. Kevin Crow, Associate Professor II of International Law and Ethics, Asian School of Business; Ms. Jessica CHUAH, Chief Compliance Officer of a European Foreign Exchange Trading Platform (Undisclosed), Money Laundering via Digital Currencies: An Invisible Challenge to International Criminal Law
• Prof. James Zeng, Associate Professor, The University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law, The Legal Structure and Regulation of Stablecoins
• Dr. You Zhou, Lecturer, School of Law and Justice, University of Newcastle; Prof. Angela Daly, Professor, School of Law and Justice, University of Newcastle, University of Newcastle; Professor Bin LI, Associate Professor, School of Law and Justice, University of Newcastle; and Professor Ivan Y. SUN, Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, Delaware University, Governing Humanoid Robots in Policing: An Intelligent Assemblage or A Risk Vector?

Click here for more information of the conference.