Information Retrieval in the Legal Environment Introduction to Information Science Yolanda Jones Villanova University Law Library February 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 – s/fedcourtlocator.asphttp:// s/fedcourtlocator.asp Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute – Findlaw? – LexisOne? – Firstgov –

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 Accurint (must be a lawyer, police officer, etc. to access) –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? – – 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 Center Educational Systems –Computer Assisted Legal Instruction tutorials

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 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, E-filing- Weblogs- Knowledge Management –Westlaw’s West KM Semantic Web –

Class Readings 1) Retrieval –"Law and the Semantic Web" - h/law_and_the_semantic_web.pdf. h/law_and_the_semantic_web.pdf 2) Access – – – 3) Policy – 4) Technology for Practice – h/ABA_2003_Technology_Survey_Summary.pdfhttp://vls.law.villanova.edu/staff/yjones/advancedresearc h/ABA_2003_Technology_Survey_Summary.pdf