Methodenlehre SS 2026 I

Hearty welcome, dear colleagues, to a very special edition of Asboni. This time, it is once again an event that has two functions. On the one hand, it is aimed at the general public who have an interest in digital law issues. On the other hand, and above all, it is aimed at students of law at the Juridicum, who are currently taking a course that includes methods teaching, legal work, and Legaltech, and in whose context three such discussions are being held. Those who are familiar with it will recognize that it is such a special format by the fact that so many faces are visible here. Besides our guest, Professor Dr. Florian Möslein, whom I will introduce very briefly in a moment, we have Conor Mosa, Wolfgang Cola, and Stefan Erhard here. These three are part of the team for this course and will, together with me, try to keep things technically running. This is necessary, among other things, because the students, if they wish, have another comment and interaction option in addition to the usual YouTube comment function, which you all know, namely via the so-called Student Response System of the University of Vienna. This is also monitored, so if you feel uncomfortable posting YouTube comments or similar, and you study at the University of Vienna and participate in this event, then this would be the opportunity to do so. We will bring the three back at the end. Then all questions, including those on YouTube that have remained open, will hopefully be answered. Now the three will disconnect, and in parallel, I am very, very excited to introduce Professor Dr. Florian Möslein. Mr. Möslein is a direct colleague, currently still working at the University of Marburg. What exactly he does there, he will tell us himself in a moment. However, I am pleased to announce the good news. I hope I am the first to tell most of you that Professor Möslein will be moving to the Faculty of Law at the University of Vienna on May 1st of this year. So he is the most recent and an extraordinarily important reinforcement not only for the faculty but also, in particular, for the institute, because he works visibly across Europe in this field. Dear Mr. Möslein, thank you very, very much for being here. It is a great pleasure, a great honor. Perhaps you could start by simply telling us how you became who you are, and what you would do, if you were 18 again today, the same or perhaps differently than back then. Very, very gladly. But first, thank you very, very much for the invitation, and I can disclose that the excitement is entirely on my side. However, at the same time, I cannot imagine a nicer occasion than here in the virtual washhouse to share the news with the world. To my knowledge, this is indeed still insider information, but I am happy that it will soon be an official date that I can come to Vienna. Yes, my name is Florian Möslein, and I came to law through detours. I'll start with my private background. I have two older siblings; my brother is 10 years older than me, also studied law, and I always saw him sitting there with the thick law books and honestly could never imagine going in the same direction. After graduating from high school, I started working in a bank, doing an apprenticeship, for two years. There, you get a theoretical background in vocational school and also learn about the different practical stations in the bank. And that brought me a lot, not only to get to know the practice but also to better understand the legal, economic, and banking contexts. And honestly, I probably wouldn't have thought or foreseen it back then, but it still brings me a lot today because you got to know the practice, the reality there very well. At the same time, during this bank apprenticeship, I started studying business administration. My mother always said, "You have to study something sensible, absolutely no business administration." So I thought, I'll do it on the side as a hobby. That might then satisfy parental expectations. And it was actually through this combination that I came to law. I realized that these were the subjects that I enjoyed most in my business administration studies and that interested me most in my banking practice. And that's why I started law with a very strong focus on business, banking, and corporate law from the outset. I then began my studies in Munich, but I also enjoyed being abroad from time to time. During my studies, I spent a year in Paris. There was an exchange program between the universities of Munich and Paris. That whetted my appetite, and after my first state examination, I spent another year in London, where I did my Master's. And so, step by step, it led to me starting a doctoral thesis. And with a colleague, Stefan Grundmann, whom I highly respect and who now teaches at Humboldt University, and who also took me on as an assistant at Humboldt University, I began to get to know, appreciate, and live science there, and then I completed my doctorate at Humboldt University. And then there were stations in St. Gallen, in Bremen, and now for a long time in Marburg, and I am very much looking forward to and can hardly wait to enter the next station. And now the question was, what would I do if I were 18? I don't know if I would do much differently than perhaps stumbling into law. I probably wouldn't have been passionate about it from the start, but I learned to appreciate it gradually. I think that's a very good starting point. You are probably still muted. I know. Yes, thank you. When you say you learned to appreciate it gradually, and you would probably stumble into it again, I still want to ask. Of course, one can do things in one's studies one way or another. For example, one can try to invest as much time as possible in law and learn everything there, and do relatively little on the side. So, little business administration, little IT, little foreign languages, little time abroad, or one can do the opposite. One can try to aim for broad knowledge at the beginning of one's career, or conversely, go into great detail right from the start. One can try to pursue one's academic interests as broadly as possible or, conversely, try to do as much practical work as possible. How did you approach each of these? Were these conscious decisions, or did they also just happen somehow? And above all, would you do it the same way again today, or would you approach something differently? Some things happen by chance, and afterwards, you think it was a grand plan, and the coincidences turned out well. What will probably not surprise you as an answer, and what is perhaps already implied in the question, is that I approached my studies interdisciplinarily from the outset because I had that economic and banking background, because I was always incredibly interested in it, and because it is simply an exciting interplay between the economy on the one hand and law on the other. And at the same time, I was also very interested in travel and internationality. That was also a reason why law initially put me off, because I always thought it was limited to one legal system, to one country. I couldn't go abroad until I eventually realized that that's what makes it exciting, that you can compare with other legal systems, that you can learn from foreign legal systems. These are things that may not immediately pay off in exams, but they give you a broad perspective beyond the horizon, which pays off very quickly and very well in academia, but I believe also in many other legal professions. Conversely, I wouldn't want to say that approaching it interdisciplinarily and internationally is the only right way. On the contrary, I have many good friends who focused on their studies, who did little else, who sometimes wrote better exams and got great jobs. I think that's something where you can't give a master plan or any advice that fits everyone one-to-one, but it's something that has to suit the individual person and the individual student well. However, what I would definitely say is that one should not be discouraged if one is enthusiastic about travel, if one is interested in other areas, other disciplines. If one is particularly interested in IT and technology today, then one should not be discouraged. Because these are the best prerequisites for being good at it and making something of it. The beauty of law is that there are many different professional fields and therefore application areas for different career paths. That is the great advantage. Today, my children sometimes ask me, even though they are far from starting their studies, "Would you study the same thing again?" And I hesitate, to be honest. On the one hand, because the professional landscape is currently changing radically due to AI and other digital developments, but at the same time, I am still convinced that there will be a need for lawyers, but perhaps in the future, even more need for lawyers with a technical background and, above all, the ability to communicate with technical scientists. Yes, Mr. Möslein, you will not be surprised that we will talk a bit more about this technical background, but first, I would perhaps like to stay with the career in a more general sense, namely, if one comes from a banking and economic background, as you do, and studies law, then it is quite natural to go back into that area afterwards. Either into a company, or to found a company yourself, or to go to a law firm specializing in business law and provide advice there. However, you have become a university lecturer. Why, and would you do it again? Flamboyantly, I almost said. I was good for nothing else, but that's probably only half the answer. In Germany, after studying, you do a legal clerkship, and there you have the great advantage of being able to do various stations, each for a few months. And I tried out many different legal professions and used various stations to get a taste of everything. I was in a bank, actually. I was in various law firms. But I was also, for example, in an organization that primarily deals with development aid and was advising China at the time in legal matters and worked on economic legislation. I then also had a station at the OECD and worked there in the Corporate Governance department. In the end, these many stations gave me the impression that research excites me, that I enjoy research, and that I especially enjoy the freedom to choose my own tough nuts to crack. Many of these jobs or professional profiles were too dictated by others, either in terms of content or in very practical terms. And that was ultimately the decision to go into academia, combined with some practical coincidences that then paved a nice opportunity and a nice path into academia for me. Can you perhaps briefly describe, for someone who is completely new to studying and has never experienced anything like it, what research is like? What does a university lecturer do when they research? That is a very good question. One can research in very different ways. One can try to find open legal disputes or new arguments for open legal disputes, how certain provisions are to be interpreted, how certain legal contexts are to be interpreted, how contradictions between different norms in the same law or in different laws can be resolved, how they can be reconciled. One can also research by looking at new developments that are not yet foreseen by the law, not foreseen by the legislator, and that therefore do not fit well into the wording of the law. One can try to consider how these can be resolved with the existing law, or if new legal rules are needed. And digitalization is, of course, the perfect example. If you have an AI that makes a contractual declaration. That is, of course, a situation that the legislator could not have anticipated, and one then has to ask oneself how to deal with such a mechanized declaration. Contract law possibly allows for various interpretations, and that is, in my view, the more exciting research: trying to reconcile new developments, new trends with the old law. And that also explains the affinity for digitalization. Perhaps you could briefly tell us what the topics are that you are currently working on, which have to do with digitalization, and also explain another question, which in my view is very important, namely, how much of what is happening, what is technically happening, do you try to understand yourself or believe you need to understand yourself, and how much of it do you "buy" by simply adopting results from other disciplines? Gladly. Perhaps I'll start by explaining how I myself got into digitalization. It's simply because the financial market, the banking sector, is one that is particularly affected by digitalization. It involves a lot of numbers, and it also involves intangible services that can be digitized relatively well. And therefore, financial innovation, and what is now called Fintech, was something that occupied me very early on and also showed me how digitalization can change an entire industry and, indeed, raises many, many new legal questions. This approach also explains why I couldn't say there is one technology, one digital technology, that I focus on, but artificial intelligence plays a big role, whether it's when AI gives investment advice or assesses borrowers, or also facilitates trading on trading platforms and stock exchanges. But it also includes blockchain technology, which allows for tokenized assets to be generated instead of traditional securities and traded, and to do so much more efficiently than with traditional securities. But it goes as far as platforms, like those known from social media, which also change lending, for example, because you no longer have the situation where a customer goes to their bank and gets a loan, but where something like crowdfunding, crowdlending, i.e., borrowing through digital platforms, becomes possible. Therefore, it is a mixture of different technologies, and whenever you hear about new technologies, it makes sense to curiously ask what connections they have to the legal areas you are dealing with. One example where I am still not entirely sure how it affects the law is quantum technology. I am still poking around a bit myself and asking if it has any impact. And so, new technological developments constantly emerge that can be questioned. Now, your second question was, how deeply do you need to delve into technical sciences to research their legal implications? The more, the better. But at the same time, you are limited because you have limited time and because you only understand it to a limited extent. I think you will never become a computer scientist or a quantum physicist. But it is sensible and helpful to work your way in as deeply as possible. Whether by talking to colleagues from these disciplines, or by trying to read as much as possible. However, you will probably always remain an amateur to some extent, and you are primarily a legal scholar, and you can only try to acquire it as well as possible. Yes, this issue arises not only for university lecturers but ultimately also for students. You have already indicated that you expect the professional landscape for lawyers to change, also due to technologies like artificial intelligence. So, naturally, the question arises: should we advise our students to start a second degree in computer science, or should we advise them to play around with common LMs more than their professors, or should we advise them to go into industries by doing relevant internships, or a combination of all? What would be your answer? A combination of all of the above is probably the answer, or rather, a different path or a different combination is probably better suited to each individual student. I believe a second degree in computer science will only be something that very few can manage and which could often be at the expense of legal studies. But if someone dares to do it and can manage it, perhaps at the cost of the overall study taking longer, then it might be quite right and sensible for one or the other. In that case, I believe it is our task as university lecturers to think very carefully about how we can create opportunities within legal studies to deal with these technologies. And then, the advice to work a lot with AI is indeed good. At the same time, however, there needs to be a certain direction and guidance on how to use such models sensibly. So, not just using them to write exams that you should actually write yourself, but really learning to use this tool. And I believe that is indeed a challenge for lectures, probably in most legal fields, but especially in the area of methods teaching. Yes, that also raises a follow-up question, doesn't it? If you look at the German, especially, where it is probably even more pronounced, but also the Austrian studies, it's not like everything will suddenly change the day after tomorrow because AI has appeared, but many things that you see in Germany are ultimately 200 years old and somehow come from the 19th century at best. This starts with the form of examination, the state examination, which is still largely written by hand and without any aids, apart from the law, but also and up to the training in studies, where it is still, of course, very traditionally organized according to the usual pillars. So, does that... So, two questions arise from this. The first is, how do you change that? So, that's a question for us as university lecturers now. And the second question is, how do students deal with it? Because probably not much fundamental will change in the organization of studies during the study period of those who are listening now and have just started studying, until they finish. Yes, so how to deal with it? How to deal with it? These are two questions, and they are two big questions. Indeed, the situation in Germany is even more difficult than in Austria because of the state examination system, which offers very few opportunities for university lecturers to change anything about it. It is very, very limited. At the same time, one notices even in Germany how dramatically the technological change is currently generating a need for reform in studies. Just the fact that there are now many universities that are abolishing the traditional term paper. This is a very sensible examination format in itself, where you have six weeks to solve a major case at home. I have always found this to be very helpful work, simply because it is very similar to what one does later in law firms or courts, where you don't just have a limited few hours, but you have the opportunity to solve cases over a longer period and, above all, with a lot of sources, a lot of literature, a lot of books, and a lot of articles. If that disappears, a significant price in competencies is lost with it, but it is simply due to the development that today you can give such a factual situation to an AI, and it solves it much faster and sometimes with at least passing grades than was classically the case. So, now, the question is, how does studying change, and above all, how can students ensure that they are future-proof? And I believe we come back to the point we just discussed, namely, does it make sense to do other things on the side, on your own initiative? And I would answer that with an even stronger yes. So, make sure that you perhaps do an internship not only in a law firm but also in a Legaltech startup or in another tech company. Perhaps also try to work in student startups or in student working groups that deal with technological developments. Try to keep your eyes and ears open and absorb as much of these developments as possible, and then always think about what it means for the law, what it changes, what questions arise from it, what challenges arise from it. I believe this thought process is the crucial thing that prepares you well to deal with future technological leaps. Yes, that is now slowly leading towards the core of this event, namely methods, isn't it? It's not only that studies in Germany and Austria are quite old in their tradition, but it's also that the legal methods we learn, not always the ones we apply, but at least the ones we learn, are also quite old, aren't they? They go back to the 19th century, at least what is commonly understood as interpretation methods, is ultimately Friedrich Carl von Savigny, re-read a bit today, so 19th century, pre-BGB, and the era that permeates it. What changes in the methods due to digitalization? And the question has two aspects: a theoretical one, i.e., is that still a valid description of what lawyers do? And it has a practical perspective, i.e., will lawyers who are trained now work in such a way that they start with the wording and then look at the systematic approach, the will of the legislator, the purpose, and so on, or will they not much more likely work by throwing something into an LM and then something comes out that is checked for plausibility? The questions are getting bigger and bigger and more difficult to answer. But first, I am of course delighted when the name Savigny is mentioned, who was famously from Marburg, studied in Marburg, and also gave his first lecture on methods in Marburg. In that respect, I, who have also given the lecture on methods in Marburg for many years, am a great fan of his and have always been happy to at least try to fill his footsteps in a small way. After this preamble, I would like to give an example that shows how important classical methods are even today, and at the same time how much they need to be supplemented. The example is based on a project that I was recently allowed to co-supervise, where a German ministry asked the question: how can AI help us not in the usual legal professions, but how can AI help the legislator? That is, how can AI support the legislator in writing better laws? Frankly, this question initially shocked me, because one can well imagine lawyers using AI, but with the legislator, I had the initial intention, "Does the fun stop a bit here?" Because that is a political decision that must be democratically legitimized, and there are many value judgments involved. But the longer I dealt with it in this project, the clearer it became to me that AI can indeed make a great contribution in this area as well, especially when it comes to how existing laws can be simplified, for example, by ensuring that terms are used consistently in different legal contexts, that laws are better coordinated with each other, that new laws fit with existing laws. And AI can make a very significant contribution here, but ultimately, AI does nothing more than work with classical methods teaching, because there too, questions arise: is the wording in one law to be understood in the same way as in another law? Is the systematic approach between the two laws consistent? Do they fit together? In that respect, it became increasingly clear to me over the course of the project that methods teaching and the use of AI are by no means a contradiction in themselves, but that they fit together very well. What also belongs here is that often the term "code law" or "codified law" is mentioned. And behind that, there is a bit of the question: can't we translate laws into computer code? And in my opinion, this question is very, very helpful and valuable for the question we are discussing now, because it makes us aware of what legal thinking and computer thinking actually are, and what distinguishes them from each other. It's about rules in both cases, but in law, it's also about rules that are open to interpretation and that need to be further developed. Where value judgments play a role, where legal development also plays a role, where teleological reduction may also play a role. And these are tools that lawyers have at their disposal or that law has developed, where a purely technology-based system would fall far short. And this also proves to me to some extent that classical methods remain important, remain valuable, and show how much a legal system can and must achieve. So. That was the justification for why methods remain important, or at least an attempt at justification. At the same time, I think we simply have to go beyond classical methods by also considering the use of AI, by thinking about questions like AI as a legislator, and thus trying to understand the old methods in a new light. Yes, but if you do that, wouldn't you have to expand your interest to another area that we haven't talked about at all yet, namely the social sciences? Because the understanding of systematic approach or the understanding of wording, etc., doesn't arise out of nothing, but is based on the socialization of the lawyer who interprets it. This socialization is surprisingly little thought about or spoken about in classical methods. And I would suspect that under the heading of algorithmic bias and so on, because we are discussing these questions of discrimination through algorithms quite intensively in AI research, I would suspect that these questions will become even more important, because these social science predispositions or prior decisions will no longer only flow into decisions through people, but possibly automated, i.e., faster, in larger numbers, harder to check, and so on. So, wouldn't it be the case that if you become a lawyer today, you should also have studied sociology or political science, or preferably both, to do it right, in addition to computer science? Yes. But probably it would have always been useful, and ultimately these are probably also sub-points that fit under the heading of teleological interpretation, because laws can only achieve their purpose if they fit into the social, cultural, and political environment. From that perspective, I don't think it has been completely overlooked, but it is, as it were, a sub-point of teleological interpretation in classical methods teaching. At the same time, of course, you can't achieve that. The broader the range of requirements, the more impossible it becomes for a single person to cope with it all. This brings me back a bit to the point we made earlier about understanding technology. I believe you have to learn to be open to these other disciplines and try to be able to communicate with these other disciplines and at the same time be open to understanding and trying to understand what they can tell you. The dialogue with other disciplines will, I believe, become increasingly important, and this ability to dialogue is something that one must learn, should learn, and should also impart in legal studies. Yes, I also believe that my personal lesson from this situation is that I try more and more to work in teams, knowing that I cannot encompass everything in my own head, and in these teams, I try to be interdisciplinary. Incidentally, this is also increasingly the case in legal professions, where lawyers increasingly work with economists, computer scientists, political scientists, and so on. So, perhaps that is also advice that can be given to young people, and I would be very interested in your assessment of this, that perhaps a little differently than 50 or 100 years ago, if you want to become a lawyer, you no longer have to and can only focus on developing the most brilliant, independent, and best dogmatic idea, but that it is at least equally important to place value on processing and jointly managing economic input, economic science, social science, and technical input. This also happens in legal practice, by the way, not just in studies. Studies are a special situation because you are surrounded only by people who do the same thing as you. That is rarely the case later, isn't it? Absolutely. Absolutely. For example, when you advise a client as a lawyer, you have to learn to speak that practical language. And the same applies to the exchange with other disciplines. And you can learn that in many different ways. So, it's not something you can certainly read from a book, but this ability to dialogue also presupposes a lot of conversation.

This is also not always so formalized, learnable like legal content, um, but rather it is a very, very colorful path. Um, which makes it difficult to learn systematically, but at the same time also makes it much more entertaining and exciting than learning some, um, some specialized legal knowledge. At the same time, an experience I've had over the years is that the words "dialogue skills" and "interdisciplinarity" always sound so soft and simple, but in reality, it's not easy at all, because different disciplines often have completely different concepts of thinking and also use different terms or understand the same terms differently. Um, therefore, um, this should not be underestimated at all, but rather a difficult-to-learn, but at the same time extremely important, um, skill, um, that one simply must learn and must learn more and more in the future. Yes, and the difficult thing about it, I share the unreserved assessment, the difficult thing about it are all the unknown unknowns, yes, where you talk past each other for years without realizing that the other person understands it differently than you do yourself. No, it is very, very difficult to identify these points. However, it is also difficult to pursue an academic career with such an interdisciplinary focus, still, no? That leads back to the question of how to organize education, no? I suspect that your personal biography, as well as that of almost all university teachers, also ultimately became successful because you asserted yourself in a monodisciplinary way in the legal sciences, no? Uh, and that was, so to speak, the hard currency against which you compete and by which you are measured, no? That makes, uh, that makes this call for interdisciplinarity, especially towards the young, if they stay at universities, quite difficult to follow, in my opinion, still, or? The answer is a clear "yes and no," but with an emphasis on "yes" and only a small admixture of "no." Uh, yes, because in the end, the grades in the exam count, so that you can pursue a doctorate. The grade of the doctorate counts so that you can aim for habilitation, and, um, when you then look for a professorship, then what counts first is that you can also, uh, hold the standard lectures well. At the same time, however, research presupposes a certain novelty. You have to find something new, and only then can you really deliver attractive research results, um, that are also perceived and read somehow. This does not mean that you necessarily jump back and forth completely between disciplines, but it also means, even in the classic academic path, that you have this openness to other disciplines that we talked about earlier. So, the standing leg must clearly be in jurisprudence, but the playing leg should, should certainly be brave enough to go into other disciplines. And a second, a second addition, um, to your statement, which I otherwise fully agree with, um, concerns the view into other, into other academic systems. In the USA, there has long been, or has been for many years, a very strong trend of Law and Economics research, strongly focused and preferred. So, precisely the interface between, between law and economics, and a very macroeconomically shaped kind of economics. At the same time, in my view, this has not necessarily led to a much more diverse academic environment, but rather again to a kind of monoculture, but with this, with this, uh, Law and Economics slant. Um, therefore, not necessarily better, um, even if perhaps a little different. Yes. Which brings me to, Mr. Möslein, what I would like to conclude with, if you agree, namely to the question of what you plan to do in Vienna. Yes, how do you want to make a program out of all that we have discussed now in the coming months and years, um, in Vienna? The questions are getting harder and harder, and the hardest comes at the end, but it is also the most beautiful, because it looks into the future and, um, and awakens enthusiasm. I am coming to Vienna without a fixed, pre-made program and concept that I absolutely want to push through, but rather I am coming to Vienna primarily because I am finding an institute there, um, where I am already starting to feel very comfortable, even before I have arrived, and where, I believe, um, together, and here we are again with the team, where I believe we can work together to make education, teaching, and also science more future-proof to some extent and to consider precisely these questions that we have just discussed. For this, one cannot simply think on a blank sheet of paper, but one must also develop ideas that fit the existing concepts, study plans, um, study procedures. Therefore, this is something that I have to develop. But I believe that when you come from outside, you always bring fresh new ideas with you, and at the same time, you can combine them well. And that is how something new arises, by bringing together combinations and the best from different worlds. Um, and therefore, I am looking forward above all to the dialogue, to the exchange, and to the team in the best sense. Great. And we are looking forward to you. And the 280 people who are watching live right now, just like the 250 who will watch this later, are looking forward to it just as much. I think I would like to end this dialogue now, bring the colleagues back in for additional questions, and I would also like to present you, Mr. Möslein, with a question that has just come in via YouTube. Can the use of AI lead to an improvement in the quality of legal decisions, or is its benefit primarily limited to increasing efficiency and saving time? Great question. Um, and even the second half of the sentence should be put in large question marks. When you work with AI models, you always think you're saving a lot of time because the AI delivers output very quickly. When you look more closely, you realize that it doesn't actually save that much time, because although it delivers a lot and quickly, it doesn't always deliver well, and because the effort to check it is often not much less, um, than the effort you would have had if you hadn't used, um, AI. Uh, therefore, it is by no means a given that time will be saved. But I believe that if you learn to use it as a tool sensibly, then you can save time. But it requires skills in handling it, which we are all just learning now, because there is, um, not yet too much experience with these different models. The first question, or the first part of the question, goes even deeper, and here too I would say that if you use the tools sensibly, effectively, and efficiently, then you can indeed improve the quality of legal decisions, and that is because an AI can process a much larger amount of data than any human could. And because, uh, therefore, with sensible prompts, with sensible, uh, sensible use of AI, um, this much larger, this much larger data pool, um, can be used, and then accordingly, the quality of the decisions will be even better. Mhm. Good, next question. Now come the questions. Could AI provide an unbiased result in a judicial position, I assume, an unbiased result in a judicial position, as a human? AI has some bases that we humans have, so it can decide more neutrally at first glance. At the same time, we already discussed algorithms earlier. We know, um, that AI can also discriminate. Um, therefore, there is no "yes" or "no" answer to this question, but rather, um, research is needed to look very carefully at how AI decides, what are the decision patterns of technologies, how do they differ from human decision patterns, and how can these two decision patterns be combined to produce the best result? Mhm. Perhaps I would like to add something to that. AI is important in courts not only because it creates, so to speak, the robot judge, but it can also support judges much more banally in, uh, in formulating file notes and other orders. Um, in Germany, there are now commercial courts that decide in English. AI can be used there to take over very mundane translation tasks. So, from that perspective, I don't think AI use should be reduced to this somewhat science fiction-like image of the robot judge. Yes, good. Another question, um, from YouTube. When does the use of AI in the legal field become critical? So, in which areas is the use of AI models suitable, and in which areas is it not suitable? This is a question that quickly makes me think of the European AI Regulation. This regulation is structured by risk and, um, attempts to prohibit or very strictly regulate certain fields of AI application because they involve high risks. I believe that this risk gradation that the European legislator or regulator has made is not perfect, but it serves at least as a first approach to where AI is to be viewed critically and in which areas, um, it is better suited or not so well suited. For example, when it comes to, um, personnel decisions, the use of AI, the exclusive use of AI, is to be critically assessed. Um, when it comes to criminal convictions, similarly, also in the legislative field, it is not unproblematic, but even in all these areas, AI can still perform certain detailed tasks sensibly. That would perhaps be an attempt at an answer. Great. For those who want to read more, this is Article 5 for prohibited practices and Article 6 for high-risk applications in the AI Regulation. Yes, I believe those were all the questions from YouTube. Are there any questions from the student response system, Wolfgang? Yes. Um, the first question would be, um, which AI you would recommend in the, um, legal field, uh, whether you could give a recommendation. So, I'll spill the beans from my inbox, when I use AI myself, especially for research questions or to get a first approach to research questions, I typically use several models in parallel. Um, Cloud, Perplexity, um, GGBT, and the like. It's astonishing to observe, but also important and interesting to observe, how different the output is, and it's damn time-consuming to pick out the best from these different models, but I believe the work cannot be avoided. So, one should not indulge in the illusion that there is one good AI that is the best for all tasks in the legal field. Um, but rather, it depends on the prompting, it depends on the specific task, and it is probably often sensible to combine them. Addition, um, an AI like the one that has now been developed by, um, Becknox Tour or by Mans Tour, is particularly well suited for legal activities because it can build on the treasure trove of data of these legal publishers, because it is also designed in such a way that it does not store all the input you provide in a large cloud, but rather keeps it on the user's desktop. This is, of course, very important in legal, um, practical activities, that no client secrets are violated by this. Um, therefore, these models are probably particularly well suited for many legal activities. For research, especially comparative law, um, they quickly reach their limits, however. Um, therefore, I believe one must combine. Okay. Um, perhaps thank you. Perhaps directly following this question. What would you recommend on how students can best learn to use AI? Tinkering, experimenting, and working with it a lot, but not working with it uncritically. Um, no blind trust, but openness, curiosity, but also judging the results very critically. Thank you. And now in a completely different direction. Um, in your opinion, how important is it to build a legal network? Um, and the second sub-question, um, what would you recommend on how to best build it, especially if you don't come from a family where there are already lawyers in the family? Very good question and a very important one that goes far beyond, um, the questions we have discussed. I consider it extremely important. Of course, it always has a bit of the flavor of, of networks and of, um, so to speak, one hand washes the other, but nevertheless, I believe that it is important for students to build such networks. They grow slowly, they can be, um, they can be developed to some extent in a planned way by doing internships, by looking into different professional sectors. Um, but they also grow simply by having fellow students who later become judges, prosecutors, practitioners, um, and some of these friendships last a lifetime. And therefore, here too, it is a mixture of planned development and a bit of accidental development, and both, um, both must, uh, come together, and both help you. I believe above all because you get role models, role models to orient yourself by, from whom you can perhaps also distance yourself to some extent, but in any case, you are inspired by how others do it, how you might do it differently, in which direction others are going, and that is incredibly important, especially in a field like law, where there are so many different professional profiles. Yes, good. Um, I think we can leave it at this point for today. Um, there are still many opportunities to meet you, Mr. Möslein, in Vienna, and there are also many opportunities, um, at the Juridicum and beyond, to further deepen these questions in your studies. Be assured, you will often ask yourself many of these things anew later on. And be assured that many of your colleagues will pursue careers parallel to yours, which will interest you all, and which can also create a network. I believe that is the most important message from me, if I may add it. Do not underestimate the person sitting next to you, virtually or in person. It is quite possible that this will be the next president of the Supreme Court or the next president of the Constitutional Court, or the one after that. And that is very, very important. Mr. Möslein, for today, I thank you very, very much. May I, uh, once again express our great joy that we will have more to do with each other soon. Thank you also for today in advance most heartily, just as I also heartily thank the colleagues who actively participated here. I wish you a pleasant evening and successful further studies. See you soon. Goodbye. Thank you very much. The ancestors.