Information Retrieval in the Legal Environment

Introduction to Information ScienceYolanda Jones

Villanova University Law LibraryFebruary 2006

What is Legal Informatics?

• Legal informatics pertains to the application of information within the context of the legal environment and therefore involves law-related organizations (e.g. law offices, courts, and law schools) and users of information and information technologies within these organizations. – Erdelez (1997)

4 Aspects of Legal informatics:

1. Access

2. Policy

3. Retrieval

4. Practice

Access• Making legal and government

information more accessible to the public such as with open source legal information portals.

• Egovernment, Digital Libraries, Legal Information Portals

• Public v. Private Sector Tensions (overlap with policy): right to know versus privacy/copyright/security

Free access to legal information?

• Federal Court Locator– http://www.law.villanova.edu/library/researchguide

s/fedcourtlocator.asp

• Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute– http://www.law.cornell.edu

• Findlaw? – http://www.findlaw.com

• LexisOne? – http://www.lexisone.com

• Firstgov – http://www.firstgov.gov

Policy

• Societal impacts -issues such as privacy, copyright, and security

Privacy Issues?

• Identity Theft waiting to happen?• SSNs were removed from some Lexis

databases over privacy concerns. – See Electronic Privacy Information Center

http://www.epic.org/privacy/ssn/

• Accurint (must be a lawyer, police officer, etc. to access) http://www.accurint.com – Can find driver’s license, bankruptcy, past

housing and phone information back 20 years

Copyright• Who owns the law?

– Do database vendors use copyright laws to stifle competition?

– http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.05/the.law.html – http://vls.law.villanova.edu/staff/yjones/timeline.htm

• Code (Lessig) – Computer code as regulating force in society.– Argues pressures to suppress technologies such as file

sharing (Napster) will ultimately stifle creativity and lead to a more repressive society.

• Copyright and computer software issues– Example- UCITA – Uniform Computer Information

Transactions Act

Learning and Practice

• Administrative Systems/Law office automation– Law office management systems such as Abacus law

(combining document management, calendaring and time management, conflict of interest checking, and billing functions)

– See ABA Law Technology Resource Centerhttp://www.lawtechnology.org/lawlink/home.html

• Educational Systems – Computer Assisted Legal Instruction tutorials

• http://www.cali.org

Retrieval

• Legal information retrieval - Lexis, Westlaw and other commercial legal document retrieval systems

• AI, Expert Systems, etc.

• Information Behavior

Gap between theory and practice

• There is a disconnect between research systems being tested by legal informatics researchers and systems used by practicing attorneys and law librarians.

• Result - Few widely used commercial applications of AI, Expert systems, etc., in the legal arena.

What is the Law?

• A rule of conduct or action prescribed or formally recognized as binding or enforced by a controlling authority.

– Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law ©1996

• When doing legal research, you must consider both:

1. Legal Rules and

2. Legal Authority

How do lawyers use the law?

• Substantive (formal) legal reasoning– Writing appellate

briefs and memos

• Transactional (informal)– Writing contracts,

letters– Negotiation

Two basic types of task

Most applications support more formal tasks.

How do attorneys reason about the law?

Case-Based

Rule-Based

2. Compare/ Contrast Specific Cases

1. Categorize by Legal Topic

Tension:Situational versus Categorical thinking

• Print legal editors create indexes using certain categories.

• While practitioners are trained to think situationally.

In print, lawyers must match the categories of information

generated by the indexer“Thinkable Thoughts”

Importance of Authority

• Lawyers are taught to evaluate cases in terms of authority.

• Authority is part of whether a legal document will be accepted as a PRECEDENT. Eg. Whether a court will follow it.

Primary Authority-Cited in Legal Documents

Primary Authority(Main Sources of Law, By Branch of Government)

Cases(Courts)

JUDICIAL BRANCH

Statutes/Constitutions(Legislatures)

LEGISLATIVE BRANCH

Regulations(Administrative Agencies)

EXECUTIVE BRANCH

Secondary authority explains and leads to primary authority.

Keyword searching developed to break away from manual indexing

systems• The Legal IR System Needed by Attorneys is

(OBAR, circa 1970-later became LEXIS):– Non-indexed– Fulltext– Online– Interactive– Computer-assisted legal research service

Villanova Study

• Utilized qualitative methods to observe users information need, searching behavior, and uses of information.

• Focus on more naturalistic contexts of use.

• Found more collaborative activities than currently accounted for in existing information behavior models.

Major Vendors: Lexis and Westlaw

• Lexis and Westlaw are the major commercial legal information retrieval systems in the market today.

• They both provide fulltext of cases, statutes, regulations, news, business information, legal periodicals, and other secondary sources of information such as legal encyclopedias.

• US Supreme Court cases added within 24 hours. Other cases between 24 hours and one week.

Live search examples in Westlaw http://lawschool.westlaw.com:

• My Westlaw Customization• Find known item: Kelly v. Arriba Soft, 280

F.3d 934 • West Reporter Image (Digital Library?)• West Digest System allows you to search for

cases on same topic (metadata?)

• Keycite (Bibliometrics?) 532 US 504– Graphical Keycite (information visualization?)

• Search by topic– Keysearch (Artificial Intelligence?)

Other Trends in Legal IR:

• Disaggregation of large database vendors, such as Lexis and Westlaw (competing webs)

• Egovernment (pay taxes, parking online)– For example, http://www.firstgov.gov.

• E-filing- https://ecf.paed.uscourts.gov/ecf22/ • Weblogs- http://theblogsoflaw.com/ • Knowledge Management

– Westlaw’s West KM• http://www.elite.com/solutions/product-fam/westkm/index.asp

• Semantic Web– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web

Class Readings• 1) Retrieval

– "Law and the Semantic Web" - http://vls.law.villanova.edu/staff/yjones/advancedresearch/law_and_the_semantic_web.pdf.

• 2) Access – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_research – http://my.findlaw.com – http://www.lexisone.com

• 3) Policy– http://vls.law.villanova.edu/staff/yjones/timeline.htm

• 4) Technology for Practice– http://vls.law.villanova.edu/staff/yjones/advancedresearch/

ABA_2003_Technology_Survey_Summary.pdf