Elen Irazabal Arana is an Isaac Asimov Fellow and PhD candidate in Law and Economics at Universidad de las Hespérides. She specializes in Artificial Intelligence law, economics, governance, and philosophy of law.

She is the author of “La Inteligencia Artificial explicada para abogados” (Artificial Intelligence Explained for Lawyers) published by Aranzadi La Ley, and runs the newsletter AdvocatusAI focused on AI and law.

Interests

• AI
• Law and Economics
• Governance
• Philosophy of Law

Books

La Inteligencia Artificial explicada para abogados (Artificial Intelligence Explained for Lawyers)
Aranzadi La Ley | Amazon Link

Comprehensive guide explaining Artificial Intelligence for legal professionals. Two editions published.

Media Interviews

Interview on AI and Legal Reasoning – EITB (Basque Public Broadcaster)
Discussed the potential risks of substituting human legal reasoning with AI systems.
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Interview – Elen Irazabal on Law + AI (Software 2.0)
A conversation on the intersection of legal practice and artificial intelligence, exploring how programming and AI intersect with legal reasoning and the law.
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Interview – “Is Web3 Advancing or Fading? Experts See a Future” – El Confidencial
Featured in El Confidencial (September 21, 2024), discussing recent shifts in generative AI models, particularly highlighting that “a paradigm shift has occurred in recent weeks because OpenAI’s new model seems to take more time to reflect and reason when delivering its responses.” Part of a broader discussion on digital assets, blockchain decentralization, and DAO evolution.
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Interview – Confilegal
Interviewed on the impact of artificial intelligence in the legal profession, highlighting the risks of misunderstanding AI tools and stressing that, once lawyers discover their potential, “there is no turning back.” (Confilegal, December 2024)
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Conference Speaking

Legal Management Forum 2023 – “Future Tech, Human Touch”
Organized by Fundación Aranzadi LA LEY & think tank Inkietos. Spoke on the panel “Implications of Generative AI for Law Firms and In-House Legal Teams”, alongside Asier Crespo (Microsoft) and Idoya Fernández (Cuatrecasas), discussing how combining generative AI with structured internal knowledge systems can deliver a competitive advantage, emphasizing that “a generative AI is like a junior, it needs the firm’s library to work,” and that the real value stems from the quality of the underlying data.
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Tarugo22 – “Should a Lawyer Learn to Code?” – Speaker
Explored how the tech industry has long overlooked the broader legal domain beyond mere document management, emphasizing how technology can better connect the justice system with citizens and empower legal professionals to increase their effectiveness.
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Educational Content

Webinar – “PLN: The Uniqueness of Legal Texts” – Deusto Big Data Series
Offered as part of the Deusto Big Data webinar series during the COVID‑19 pandemic, exploring the current state of open data in the legal sector and examining the unique challenges involved in analyzing legal texts. This presentation delved into how legal language and structure pose distinct difficulties for natural language processing techniques.
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Workshop – “Introduction to Programming with Python for Lawyers”
Delivered a workshop for legal professionals on how programming illustrates the logic of machines, highlighting why technology lawyers should understand computational logic, even without becoming coders themselves.
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The Impossibility of Ethical Calculation: Centralised AI Governance and the Suppression of Moral Discovery

The paper analyzes the ethical governance of AI through the Mises–Hayek critique of centralized planning, introducing the notion of an “impossibility of ethical calculation.” It argues that the AI Act and the GDPR impose a preventive, compliance-based model that blocks the decentralized discovery of ethical preferences and limits the adaptive capacity of information flows. The conclusion is that such centralization reduces moral autonomy and fosters regulatory capture.

Seminar on Elinor Ostrom’s Economic Thought

October 25-27, 2024 | Universidad Católica de Ávila

Participated in an intensive seminar examining the economic theories and contributions of Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom, focusing on commons governance and institutional analysis.

Blog Posts & Articles

• Free Resources to Learn Programming and Artificial Intelligence - Spanish Bar Association (CGAE), January 2020

• Artificial Intelligence is Now Inevitable for the Legal Profession - Spanish Bar Association (CGAE), July 2019

• I’m Tired of Being a Lawyer, Should I Switch to Technology? - Spanish Bar Association (CGAE), December 2020

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