Šavelka

Jaromír

Affiliation

Contact

Research Interest

In my research, I focus on applications of natural language processing and machine learning to the legal domain. I am a recipient of the Graduate Research Fellowship in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics from the National Institute of Justice which supported my dissertation research on the computer-assisted interpretation of statutory concepts. I obtained my doctorate from the School of Computing and Information of the University of Pittsburgh (2020). I have published at top-tier Artificial Intelligence and Law conferences on topics ranging from a network analysis of public institutions to legal information retrieval. Currently, I am a post-doctoral fellow at the School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, focusing on the advancement of workforce training in emerging domains via hands-on learning in the areas of machine learning, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing.

Invited Talks and Other Presentations

Jun. 23

2021

Jaromír Šavelka, Hannes Westermann, et al. Lex Rosetta: Transfer of Predictive Models Across Languages, Jurisdictions, and Legal Domains. ICAIL 2021, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 2021. [url, presentation]

Dec. 10

2020

Jaromír Šavelka and Kevin D. Ashley. Learning to Rank Sentences for Explaining Statutory Terms. JURIX 2020 Workshop on Automated Detection, Extraction and Analysis of Semantic Information in Legal Texts, Prague, Czech Republic, 2020. [url, presentation]

Aug. 30

2019

Jaromír Šavelka, Huihui Xu, and Kevin D. Ashley. Improving Sentence Retrieval from Case Law for Statutory Interpretation. ISP Seminar Series, Intelligent Systems Program, University of Pittsburgh, 2019. [url, presentation]

Jun. 18

2019

Jaromír Šavelka, Huihui Xu, and Kevin D. Ashley. Improving Sentence Retrieval from Case Law for Statutory Interpretation. International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law 2019, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Canada, 2019. [url, presentation]

Apr. 6

2018

Jaromír Šavelka and Kevin D. Ashley. Detecting Agent Mentions in US Court Decisions. ISP Seminar Series, Intelligent Systems Program, University of Pittsburgh, 2018. [url, presentation]

Dec. 14

2017

Jaromír Šavelka and Kevin D. Ashley. Detecting Agent Mentions in US Court Decisions. JURIX 2017: The 30th International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems, University of Luxemburgh, 2017. [url, presentation]

June 16

2017

Jaromír Šavelka and Kevin D. Ashley. Using CRF to Detect Different Functional Types of Content in Decisions of US Courts with Example Application to Sentence Boundary Detection. ICAIL 2017 Workshop on Automated Detection, Extraction and Analysis of Semantic Information in Legal Texts, King's College, London, UK, 2017. [url, presentation]

Mar. 17

2017

Jaromír Šavelka. Sentence Boundary Detection in Decisions of the US Courts. ISP Seminar Series, Intelligent Systems Program, University of Pittsburgh, 2017. [url, presentation]

Mar. 9

2017

Jaromír Šavelka. Automatic Methods for Statutory Analysis: Health Emergency Response and Preparadness. Friends of eDiscovery Meeting, U.S. District Court, Pittsburgh, 2017. [presentation]

Aug. 12

2016

Jaromír Šavelka and Kevin D. Ashley. Extracting Case Law Sentences for Argumentation about the Meaning of Statutory Terms. 3rd Workshop on Argumentation Mining, ACL, Berlin, 2016. [presentation]

April 8

2016

Jaromír Šavelka. Extracting Case Law Sentences for Interpretation of Terms from Statutory Law. ISP Seminar Series, Intelligent Systems Program, University of Pittsburgh, 2016. [url, presentation]

Nov. 13

2015

Jaromír Šavelka. Applying an Interactive Machine Learning Approach to Statutory Analysis. ISP Seminar Series, Intelligent Systems Program, University of Pittsburgh, 2015. [url, presentation]

June 12

2015

Jaromír Šavelka and Matthias Grabmair. (Very Brief) Introduction to (Selected Aspects of) Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning. ICAIL 2015 Workshop on Automated Detection, Extraction and Analysis of Semantic Information in Legal Texts, University of San Diego, San Diego, CA, 2015. [url, presentation]

June 12

2015

Jaromír Šavelka and Kevin D. Ashley. Multi-label Classification of Public Health System Emergency Statutes. ICAIL 2015 Workshop on Automated Detection, Extraction and Analysis of Semantic Information in Legal Texts, University of San Diego, San Diego, CA, 2015. [url, presentation]

June 9

2015

Jaromír Šavelka and Kevin D. Ashley. Transfer of Predictive Models for Classification of Statutory Texts in Multi-jurisdictional Settings. International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law 2015, University of San Diego, San Diego, CA, 2015. [url, presentation]

March 19

2015

Jaromír Šavelka. Transfer of Predictive Models for Classification of Statutory Texts in Multi-jurisdictional Settings. GRAD Expo, Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pittsburgh, 2015. [url, poster]

March 2

2015

Kevin D. Ashley and Jaromír Šavelka. Analyzing Public Health System Emergency Preparedness and Response from Statutory Texts. PHDL Research Meeting, School of Public Health, University of Pittsburgh, 2015. [url, presentation]

January 23

2015

Jaromír Šavelka. Transfer of Predictive Models for Classification of Statutory Texts in Multi-jurisdictional Settings. ISP Seminar Series, Intelligent Systems Program, University of Pittsburgh, 2015. [url, presentation]

December 12

2014

Jaromír Šavelka. Mining Information from Statutory Texts in Multi-jurisdictional Settings. JURIX 2014: The 27th International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems, Jagiellonian University in Krakow,, 2014. [url, presentation]

November 13

2014

Jaromír Šavelka. Transfer Learning. Advanced Topics in Machine Learning Course, Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pittsburgh, 2014. [url, presentation]

April 11

2014

Jaromír Šavelka. Information Extraction from Public Health Statutes. ISP Seminar Series, Intelligent Systems Program, University of Pittsburgh, 2014. [url, presentation]

April 11

2013

Jaromír Šavelka. Libraries Connected: Can Open Definition Help in Creating Universal Library Catalogue? In BILETA 2013. University of Liverpool, 2013.

June 1

2012

Jaromír Šavelka. Object-oriented Conceptual Analysis of Law. In Seminar on Legal Philosophy. Jagiellonian University in Krakow, 2012. [presentation]

November 14

2012

Jaromír Šavelka. Never-ending Story: Collective Administration of Rights to Software. In Colloquium on ICT/IP Law. University of Goettingen, 2011. [presentation]

August 16

2011

Jaromír Šavelka. Coherence Computation and Complexity of Judicial Reasoning. In Artificial Intelligence, Coherence and Judicial Reasoning. 2011. [url, presentation]

Selected Publications

Peer-reviewed Publications

2021

Savelka, J., and Ashley, K. D. (2021). Legal Information Retrieval for Understanding Statutory Terms. Artificial Intelligence and Law. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10506-021-09293-5 [fulltext]

2020

Westermann, H., Savelka, J., Benyekhlef, K. Paragraph similarity scoring and fine-tuned BERT for legal information retrieval and entailment. In: COLIEE (2020). [fulltext]

2020

Westermann, H., Savelka, J., Walker, V. R., and Ashley, K. D. (2020, December). Sentence Embeddings and High-Speed Similarity Search for Fast Computer Assisted Annotation of Legal Documents. In JURIX 2020 Proceedings (pp. 164-173). [fulltext]

2020

Savelka, J., Westermann, H., Benyekhlef, K. Cross-Domain Generalization and Knowledge Transfer in Transformers Trained on Legal Data. In Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Automated Detection, Extraction and Analysis of Semantic Information in Legal Texts, King's College, London, UK, 2017. [fulltext]

2019

Westermann, H., Savelka, J., Walker, V. R., and Ashley, K. D. (2019, December). Computer-Assisted Creation of Boolean Search Rules for Text Classification in the Legal Domain. In JURIX 2019 Proceedings (pp. 123-132). [fulltext]

2019

Savelka, J., Xu, H., and Ashley, K. D. (2019, June). Improving Sentence Retrieval from Case Law for Statutory Interpretation. In Proceedings of the Seventeenth International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Lawem> (pp. 113-122). ACM. [fulltext, preprint]

2018

Savelka, J., and Ashley, K. D. (2018, December). Segmenting U.S. Court Decisions into Functional and Issue Specific Parts. In Proceedings of JURIX 2018. [fulltext]

2018

Harašta, J., Šavelka, J., Kasl, F., Kotková, A., Loutocký, P., Míšek, J., Procházková, D., Pullmannová, H., Semenišín, P., Šejnová, T. and Šimková, N., 2018, September. Annotated Corpus of Czech Case Law for Reference Recognition Tasks. In International Workshop on Temporal, Spatial, and Spatio-Temporal Data Mining (pp. 239-250). Springer, Cham. [fulltext]

2018

Savelka, J., Walker, V. R., Grabmair, M., and Ashley, K. D. (2017). Sentence Boundary Detection in Adjudicatory Decisions in the United States. Traitement automatique des langues, 58(2), 21-45. [fulltext]

2017

Savelka, J., and Ashley, K. D. (2017, December). Detecting Agent Mentions in US Court Decisions. In JURIX (pp. 39-48). [fulltext]

2017

Harasta, J., and Savelka, J. (2017, December). Toward Linking Heterogenous References in Czech Court Decisions to Content. In JURIX (pp. 177-182). [fulltext]

2017

Jaromír Šavelka, and Kevin D. Ashley. Using Conditional Random Fields to Detect Different Functional Types of Content in Decisions of United States Courts with Example Application to Sentence Boundary Detection. In Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Automated Detection, Extraction and Analysis of Semantic Information in Legal Texts, King's College, London, UK, 2017. [fulltext]

2016

Jaromír Šavelka, and Kevin D. Ashley. Extracting Case Law Sentences for Argumentation about the Meaning of Statutory Terms. In Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on Argument Mining. ACL, 2016, pp. 50-59. [fulltext]

2015

Jaromír Šavelka, Gaurav Trivedi, and Kevin D. Ashley. Applying an Interactive Machine Learning Approach to Statutory Analysis. In Antonino Rotolo. Legal Knowledge and Information Systems (JURIX 2015). Amsterdam: IOS Press, 2015.

2015

Jaromír Šavelka and Jakub Harašta. “Open Texture in Law, Legal Certainty and Logical Analysis of Natural Language”. Logic in the Theory and Practice of Lawmaking, Springer, 2015.

2015

Jaromír Šavelka and Kevin D. Ashley. Transfer of Predictive Models for Classification of Statutory Texts in Multi-jurisdictional Settings. In Katie Atkinson. Fifteenth International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law (ICAIL 2015). New York: ACM, 2015, pp. 216-220.

2014

Jaromír Šavelka, Kevin D. Ashley and Matthias Grabmair. Mining Information from Statutory Texts in Multi-jurisdictional Settings. In Rinke Hoekstra. Legal Knowledge and Information Systems (JURIX 2014). Amsterdam: IOS Press, 2014, pp. 133-142.

2013

Jaromír Šavelka. Coherence as Constraint Satisfaction: Judicial Reasoning Support Mechanism. In Michał Araszkiewicz and Jaromír Šavelka (eds.). Coherence: Insights from Philosophy, Jurisprudence and Artificial Intelligence, Law and Philosophy Library, vol. 107, 2013, pp. 203-216.

2013

Matěj Myška and Jaromír Šavelka. A Model Framework for publishing Grey Literature in Open Access. Journal of Intellectual Property, Information Technology and E-Commerce Law, Digital Peer Publishing, 2013, vol. 4, issue 2, pp. 104–115.

2013

Michal Koščík and Jaromír Šavelka. Dangers of Over-Enthusiasm in Licensing under Creative Commons. Masaryk University Journal of Law and Technology, Brno: Masarykova univerzita, 2013, vol. 7, issue 2, pp. 201–228.

2012

Matěj Myška, Terezie Smejkalová, Jaromír Šavelka and Martin Škop. Creative Commons and Grand Challenge to Make Legal Language Simple. In Monica Palmirani, Ugo Pagallo, Pompeu Casanovas, Giovanni Sartor. AI Approaches to the Complexity of Legal Systems. Models and Ethical Challenges for Legal Systems, Legal Language and Legal Ontologies, Argumentation and Software Agents. Berlin,Heidelberg, New York: Springer, 2012, pp. 271–285.

2012

Michał Araszkiewicz and Jaromír Šavelka. Refined Coherence as Constraint Satisfaction Framework for Representing Judicial Reasoning. In Burkhard Schäfer. Legal Knowledge and Information Systems (JURIX 2012). Amsterdam: IOS Press, 2012, pp. 1–10.

2012

Michał Araszkiewicz and Jaromír Šavelka. The Quest for Coherence in Judicial Reasoning. i-lex, Rome, 2012, vol. 7, issue 17, pp. 173–190.

2011

Jaromír Šavelka. Exploring the Boundaries of Copyright Protection for Software: An Analysis of the CJEU-Case C-393/09 on the Copyrightability of the Graphic User Interface. Medien und Recht International, Wien: MuR Wien, 2011, vol. 8, issue 1, pp. 11–16.

2011

Michał Araszkiewicz and Jaromír Šavelka. Two Methods for Representing Judicial Reasoning in the Framework of Coherence as Constraint Satisfaction. In Katie M. Atkinson. Legal Knowledge and Information Systems (JURIX 2011). Amsterdam: IOS Press, 2011, pp. 165–166.

Edited Volumes

2014

Michal Koščík, Jakub Harašta, Libor Kyncl, Matěj Myška, Radim Polčák, Václav Stupka and Jaromír Šavelka (eds.). European ICT Law 2014 Texts, Cases, Materials. 2014.

2013

Jaromír Šavelka, Michał Araszkiewicz, Markéta Klusoňová, Matěj Myška and Martin Škop (eds.). ARGUMENTATION 2013: International Conference on Alternative Methods of Argumentation in Law. Brno: Masarykova univerzita, 2013.

2013

Michał Araszkiewicz and Jaromír Šavelka (eds.). Coherence: Insights from Philosophy, Jurisprudence and Artificial Intelligence. Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York: Springer, 2013. Law and Philosophy Library 107.

2013

Michal Koščík, Libor Kyncl, Matěj Myška, Radim Polčák, Václav Stupka and Jaromír Šavelka (eds.). European ICT Law 2013 Texts, Cases, Materials. Brno: Tribun EU, 2013.

2012

Jaromír Šavelka, Michał Araszkiewicz, Matěj Myška, Terezie Smejkalová and Martin Škop (eds.). ARGUMENTATION 2012: International Conference on Alternative Methods of Argumentation in Law. Brno: Masarykova univerzita, 2012.

2012

Michal Koščík, Libor Kyncl, Matěj Myška, Radim Polčák, Václav Stupka and Jaromír Šavelka (eds.). European ICT Law 2012. Brno: Masarykova univerzita, 2012.

2012

Michał Araszkiewicz, Jaromír Šavelka, Terezie Smejkalová, Matěj Myška and Martin Škop (eds.). Law and Literature. Argumentation 2012 Workshop Proceedings. Brno: Masarykova Univerzita, 2012.

2011

Martin Škop, Michał Araszkiewicz, Jaromír Šavelka, Terezie Smejkalová and Matěj Myška (eds.). Argumentation 2011. Brno: MUNI Press, 2011.

2011

Michal Koščík, Libor Kyncl, Matěj Myška, Radim Polčák, Václav Stupka and Jaromír Šavelka (eds.). European ICT Law – Texts, Cases, Materials. Brno: Tribun EU, 2011.

Books and Other Publications

2016

Kevin Ashley and Jaromír Šavelka. Book Review of “Conflict Resolution and its Context From the Analysis of Behavioural Patterns to Efficient Decision–Making by Davide Carneiro, Paulo Novais, Josè Neves, Springer, 2014.” [to appear in International Journal of Online Dispute Resolution]

2012

Josef Donát, Martin Maisner, Radim Polčák, Jaromír Šavelka, Matěj Myška a Tereza Kyselovská. Software Protection – A Comparative Perspective. München: Medien und Recht, 2012.

2012

Jaromír Šavelka. Economic Rights to Results of Scientific Research and Making the Results Available to the Public. Proceedings from the Fifth Workshop on Making Grey Literature Accessible. Praha: NTK, 2012, pp. 1–9.

Curriculum Vitae

since

2020

Postdoctoral Fellow, Carnegie Mellon University, School of Computer Science Pittsburgh, PA.
Artificial Intelligence, Cloud Computing

2019-

2020

Adjunct Professor, University of Pittsburgh, School of Law Pittsburgh, PA.
Applied Legal Analytics and Artificial Intelligence

2017-

2020

Data Scientist, Reed Smith, LLP and GravityStack, LLC Pittsburgh, PA.
Data analysis and development of ML, NLP, data analytics, and visualization solutions

2013-

2020

PhD study in Artificial Intelligence, Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA.
Specialized in Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, AI and Law; Advisor: Kevin D. Ashley

2016-

2017

Client Technology Operations Analyst (Internship), Reed Smith, LLP, Pittsburgh, PA.
Software Analysis and Development

2007-

2014

Deputy editor-in-chief, Masaryk University Journal of Law and Technology, Masaryk University in Brno, Brno (CZE).
IT Law journal

2009-

2013

Lecturer and Research Assistant, School of Law, Masaryk University in Brno, Brno (CZE).
IT Law and legal informatics

2009-

2013

BA in Computer Science, Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University in Brno, Brno (CZE).
Specialized in natural language processing; BA thesis: XML Markup of Legal Documents; Advisor: Zdeněk Říha

2007-

2012

Head of Legal and Financial Department, Student Cyber Games, Brno (CZE).
Non-profit non-governmental entity

2008-

2009

Paralegal, Vašíček, Frimmel a Honěk, attorneys at law, Brno (CZE).
Specialized in Commercial Law

2004-

2009

Master's degree in Law, School of Law, Masaryk University in Brno, Brno (CZE).
Specialized in IP and IT Law and Legal IT; MA thesis: Software law; Advisor: Radim Polčák

2008

Erasmus Exchange, Department of American Law at the School of Law, Catholic University of Lublin, Lublin (PL).
Specialized in American Law

Awards

2020

Best Paper Award at JURIX 2020: Legal Knowledge and Information Systems
Prague, Czech Republic

2019

Best Student Paper Award at JURIX 2019: Legal Knowledge and Information Systems
Madrid, Spain

2019

Pitt Cyber Accelerator Grant (PCAG) for the Annotating Cases for Learning to Summarize project.

2018

Pitt Cyber Accelerator Grant (PCAG) for the Statutory Interpretation Data Set project.

2017-

2018

Graduate Research Fellowship in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics
National Institute of Justice

2016-

2017

Graduate Research Fellowship in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics
National Institute of Justice

2016

Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences (University of Pittsburgh) Fellowship
University of Pittsburgh

2015

Best Student Paper Award at JURIX 2015: Legal Knowledge and Information Systems
Braga, Portugal

2015-

2016

Andrew Mellon Predoctoral Fellowship
University of Pittsburgh

2015

Grad Expo 2015 Outstanding Presentation Award
University of Pittsburgh

2013-

2014

Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences (University of Pittsburgh) Fellowship
University of Pittsburgh