Yiolanti Maou


Research

My primary fields of research are private international law and AI in judicial decision-making, with civil procedure, international commercial arbitration and legal informatics as secondary fields.

I work mainly with doctrinal methods, and more recently with empirical and computational ones. Much of my work draws on comparative and post-colonial perspectives, shaped by my multijurisdictional background and by Cyprus itself as a small, mixed, post-colonial jurisdiction.

Areas of research

Private international law(primary)

Background

I studied US conflict of laws under Professor Linda J. Silberman at NYU School of Law, and, thereafter, spent five years practising in the field, mainly under the European Regulations. I have also been teaching private international law at the University of Nicosia since 2024.

My current research is in:

  • the interaction between the EU conflicts framework and AI (including the circulation of AI-assisted judgments);
  • the gaps within the Cypriot conflicts framework and the case for codification; and
  • the conflicts-related performance and blind spots of LLM tools used for legal advice and judicial decision-making.

Ongoing projects

  • ‘To Trust or Not to Trust? AI-Assisted Judgments and the Future of Mutual Trust under Brussels Ia’ (accepted for presentation at the 11th JPIL Conference, April 2027, co-authored paper in preparation)

    Our paper asks what becomes of mutual trust when AI-assisted judgments circulate across the Union free of exequatur. It is the second paper in our line of research on the interaction between the existing European private international law instruments and AI. Our first paper is forthcoming in the same journal, and was presented at the JPIL’s 20th Anniversary Conference at UCL, in September 2025.

  • Cypriot Private International Law (commentary with five co-authors, Hippasus Publishing, in preparation)

    I am part of a team of five authors writing the first scholarly commentary on Cypriot private international law, in Greek. Our work covers the European Regulations, the residual Cypriot common law, and arbitration. It will be published by Hippasus Publishing, and is expected in 2027.

  • ‘The Achilles Heel of Rome II: Article 5, “Marketing”, and Digital Products’ (presented at the 2nd Riga PIL Conference, June 2026, paper in preparation)

    In this work, I examine whether the product liability rule in Article 5 of Rome II, with its connecting factor of marketing, can accommodate digital products.

  • EAPIL Young Research Network 5th Research Project (co-authored book chapter, forthcoming)

    An ongoing project of EAPIL’s Young Research Network, examining the rules on the law applicable to privacy and personality rights across twenty-three jurisdictions. As one of the two National Rapporteurs for Cyprus, I co-wrote the national report and presented the comparative findings at the EAPIL YRN Conference at the University of Luxembourg in March 2026. The report is forthcoming as a chapter in the project volume, published by Edward Elgar in its EAPIL Series.

Judicial decision-making and artificial intelligence(primary)

Background

I came to this field through my prior work in judicial analytics. In 2023 I conducted a self-directed study of its potential as a tool for the evaluation of judges in Cyprus, which I presented at the Procedural Law Unit’s 3rd Annual Symposium and published in the symposium volume.

My current work is on LLMs in judicial decision-making, and combines doctrinal and empirical methods. I study:

  • the institutional conditions under which AI-assisted adjudication can be reconciled with judicial independence, accountability and procedural fairness;
  • human oversight models for the judge–LLM interaction; and
  • the performance of LLMs on legal reasoning tasks, particularly in multilingual and multi-jurisdictional settings and on problems of private international law.

Ongoing projects

  • ‘Blind Spot by Design: Legal Triage Chatbots and the Conflicts Dimension of EU Employment Disputes’ (accepted for presentation at the IDEA Project Final Conference, October 2026, paper in preparation)

    Party-facing legal triage chatbots are built for one jurisdiction at a time, which leaves them with a private international law blind spot. In this work I trace that blind spot and set out design specifications for a tool that detects the cross-border element unprompted.

  • Research programme on AI-assisted adjudication in civil justice (Procedural Law Unit, funding applications in preparation)

    I lead the Procedural Law Unit’s team in designing a multi-year research programme on AI-assisted decision-making in civil procedure. I am responsible for the research, planning and outreach behind the programme’s applications to European research funding schemes, which are currently in preparation.

  • Language-conditioned outcome variation in LLM legal reasoning (empirical study in progress)

    Details to follow.

Civil procedure and comparative procedural law(secondary)

Background

I came to the subject of comparative civil procedure through my practice as a litigator in Cyprus and, later, through cross-qualifying as a solicitor of England and Wales.

In 2023, Cyprus replaced its colonial-era civil procedure rules with an adaptation of the English CPR. My research focuses on this reform, and specifically on:

  • the conditions for the success of the Cypriot CPR 2023 as a legal transplant;
  • the overriding objective and the conditions for its operation in a pre-Woolf procedural culture; and
  • the authority of English CPR doctrine in the Cypriot post-reform era.

Ongoing projects

  • Empirical study of Cypriot procedural reform (in progress)

    I am conducting an empirical study of interim applications decided under the Cypriot Civil Procedure Rules 2023, based on a dataset of first-instance decisions. The project is at the data analysis stage (dataset available on request).

  • Cypriot Civil Procedure (commentary, N Kyriakides and others eds, Nomiki Bibliothiki 2025)

    This is the first scholarly commentary on the new Cypriot Civil Procedure Rules. It was a collaborative work bringing together more than twenty Cypriot academics and practitioners. I wrote the freezing injunctions section of chapter 14, on interim applications and remedies. The commentary is being revised as case law under the new Rules develops.

International commercial arbitration(secondary)

Background

Arbitration was the focus of my graduate studies at NYU School of Law, where I followed the Litigation and Arbitration specialisation and wrote my thesis on unilateral arbitration clauses under Professor Franco Ferrari. It has also been part of my practice as a litigator in Cyprus, where I have mainly acted in proceedings for the recognition and enforcement of foreign arbitral awards.

My research interests have centred on:

  • the treatment of international instruments (the New York Convention and the UNCITRAL Model Law) in small, post-colonial jurisdictions; and
  • empirical analysis of award recognition and enforcement trends across jurisdictions.

Ongoing projects

  • Empirical study of arbitral award enforcement in Cyprus (working paper in preparation)

    I am conducting an empirical study of recognition and enforcement applications under the New York Convention before the Cypriot courts, based on a hand-coded dataset of first-instance decisions. Data collection and analysis are complete, and a working paper is in preparation (dataset available on request).

Legal informatics and free access to law(secondary)

Background

I came to this field as a practitioner, through the ordinary difficulty of finding Cypriot case law. No public body in Cyprus publishes court judgments systematically, and access depends largely on CyLaw, a private non-profit platform run under the auspices of the Cyprus Bar Association.

My research draws on this gap, and concerns:

  • the limited potential for automated processing and analysis of Cypriot case law, and the downstream impact on the development and performance of LLMs for Cypriot law; and
  • on the doctrinal side, frameworks for access to legal information and the state’s role in providing it, and publication bias and its effect on the development of doctrine.

Ongoing projects

  • Legal information policy in Cyprus (advisory work, Cyprus Bar Association, ongoing)

    I conducted an independent comparative study of the legal basis, accessibility and publication channels of court judgments across all 27 EU Member States, aimed at identifying the gaps and risks in the current Cypriot framework. I was invited to present it before the Cyprus Bar Association’s Committee on Civil Procedure Rules and Reform, and to submit a policy memorandum on reform. A working paper drawing on the study is in preparation.