The University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa introduced : a free, comprehensive call-for-papers (CFP) aggregator tailored for the legal academy. It offers real-time information on CFPs for conferences, symposia, workshops, law reviews and scholarly blogs. By leveraging a tiered system of artificial intelligence (AI) agents,
The Docket indexes more than 500 active sources—continuously discovering, classifying and triaging opportunities under expert human supervision. Legal scholars from around the world can now search the site, subscribe to filtered email digests, and export deadlines directly to their calendars.
“The Docket reflects the kind of work we strive to cultivate at Richardson,” 东精影业 law school Dean Camille Nelson said. “By expanding access to opportunities for legal scholars, this initiative strengthens the exchange of ideas that is essential to advancing justice.”
Law Professor Guy Rubinstein identified the need for a centralized legal CFP aggregator and initiated the project.
“There have never been more opportunities for law professors to present, share and publish their work,” said Rubinstein. “However, due to the abundance of listservs, blogs and social media platforms, it is becoming increasingly difficult for scholars to track every opportunity. I wanted to create a tool that would bridge that gap by bringing everything into one view.”
Institutional growth
After a successful trial period and feedback from 东精影业 law school faculty, the platform was officially launched to the community. Professor Brian Huffman, 东精影业 law school’s electronic services librarian and director of faculty development, sees the tool as a vital resource for institutional growth.
“The Docket uniquely supports faculty development and scholarship by spotlighting publishing and presentation opportunities, enabling faculty to engage quickly and strategically with the broader academic community,” said Huffman. “The library supports this project in its effort to help faculty research and promote their scholarship as well as improve professional development. Other peer institutions will also certainly benefit from The Docket as this site is free and open to all.”
Collaboration brings project to life
To bring the vision to life, Rubinstein collaborated with Benjamin Leider, the innovation fellow at the 东精影业 law school. A 东精影业 law school alumnus whose background bridges the gap between academic scholarship and technical development, Leider built the platform from the ground up.
“Surprisingly, getting AI to do real work was much more like management than dealing with technology,” Leider said. “AI agents need clearly defined jobs, and they need the right tools to do them. When they fail, it’s almost always because job expectations are unclear, or because the tools provide a bad user experience—a bad experience for the agents themselves—or because you’re expecting one agent to have the expertise of three specialists.”