Scott et al.: Text Mining for Quality Control of Court Records

Eric O. Scott , Haleh Vafaie , Zelal Gungordu , Charles E. Horowitz , and Bradford C. Brown are scheduled to present a paper entitled Text Mining for Quality Control of Court Records, at SemADoc 2014: Semantic Analysis of Documents Workshop, to be held 16 September 2014 in Fort Collins, Colorado, USA. The workshop is being held in conjunction with the DocEng 2014 conference.

Here is the abstract, from the event program:

Attorneys across the United States use government-provided electronic databases to submit docket entries and associated case files for processing and archival in public judicial records. Data entry errors in these repositories, while rare, can disrupt the court process, confuse the public record, or breach privacy and confidentiality. Docket quality assurance is thus a high priority for the courts, but manual review remains resource-intensive.

We have developed a prototype application of text mining and human language technologies to partially automate quality assurance review of electronic court documents. This solution uses document classification and named entity recognition to extract metadata directly from documents. Discrepancies between the extracted metadata and the user-provided metadata indicate a possible data entry error. On two independent samples of publicly available court documents, we find that for a small number of classes with a sufficient number of training documents, the document class can be automatically classified with greater than 94\% accuracy in one case, but only 81\% in the other. Our attempts to extract case numbers and the names of parties from documents via a conditional random field model met with less success. Future work with more extensive training data is necessary to more accurately evaluate both applications.

Filed under: Applications, Articles and papers, Conference papers, Technology developments, Technology tools Tagged: Automatic classification of legal documents, Automatic legal information extraction, Bradford C. Brown, Charles E. Horowitz, Conditional random fields in legal text processing, Court information systems, DocEng, DocEng 2014, Eric O. Scott, Haleh Vafaie, Judicial information systems, Legal document classification, Legal information extraction, Legal metadata extraction, Legal text mining, Legal text processing, Machine learning and legal documents, MITRE Corporation, Named entity recognition in legal documents, Quality control of court documents, Quality control of court records, Quality control of digital court documents, Quality control of digital court records, Quality control of electronic court records, Quality control of electronic legal documents, Quality control of electronic legal information, Quality control of legal documents, SemADoc, SemADoc 2014, Semantic Analysis of Documents Workshop, Zelal Gungordu



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Holler: 3 Cases of Schadenfreude for Lawyers to Learn From

What do we have for you this week, in our favorite posts from across the blawgosphere roundup? How about three cases of lawyers behaving stupidly, all of which you can learn a lesson from. A copyright defender turns troll, both...



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Glassmeyer and Smith: Open law: Technology in service of the rule of law

Sarah Glassmeyer and Pete Smith have posted their new article entitled Open law: Technology in service of the rule of law , forthcoming in Legal Information Management , 14(3) (2014).

Here is the abstract:

As law librarians we have ready access to the full range of legal materials – from free sources and powerful commercial legal databases, from medieval times to the modern day. We can have the entirety of primary law (and the secondary materials needed to decipher it) at our fingertips within seconds.

For those without such access- which is the majority of the general public – what are their options? How do those who do not have access to the likes of Lexis and Westlaw, or even a library with printed legal materials, find legal information- and why is it important that they can?

This article will consider these questions, covering the United Kingdom and the United States of America, with a particular focus on the issue of open law. First we will have a short historical overview of access to legal information; we will then turn to the reasons why wide and full access to legal information is important, and look at some examples of systems which aim at providing such access. Some of the issues with such systems are discussed, followed by a brief outline of an ideal open law system. We end with a look at the social and political elements needed to make the technology of open law systems work.

HT @reddite

Filed under: Applications, Articles and papers, Policy debates, Technology developments Tagged: Free access to law, Legal Information Management, Open law, Open law systems, Open legal data, Pet Smith, Public access to legal information, Sarah Glassmeyer



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The New Law Firm: Ditch Old Traditions to Grow a Business

In the time of the "start up" business, where young people fresh out of college start a business, get some venture capital, and then make a bajillion dollars, the law firm seems like a vestige of an older time, when...



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Edmond and Vuille : Comparing the Use of Forensic Science Evidence in Australia, Switzerland, and the U.S.

Gary Edmond and Joëlle Vuille have published Comparing the Use of Forensic Science Evidence in Australia, Switzerland, and the United States: Transcending the Adversarial-Nonadversarial Dichotomy , Jurimetrics Journal , 54, 221–276 (2014).

Here is the abstract:

This article compares responses to incriminating expert evidence (that is, forensic science) in Australia, Switzerland, and the United States. It begins with an outline of the three systems. Then, drawing on recent reviews of the forensic sciences, it explains that many of the forensic sciences have not been formally evaluated—that is, never subjected to validation studies. This means that in many cases we do not know if techniques work, nor how well. It also means that standards, claims about proficiency and experience, as well as the expressions used by analysts are not empirically based. These critical findings from a range of peak scientific organizations and commissions of inquiry (for example, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and National Institute of Standards and Technology) are then used to illuminate the impact of rules, procedures, and the performance of personnel (such as forensic scientists, prosecutors, defense lawyers and judges) across our three jurisdictions. The article explains how three different criminal justice systems each failed to identify or credibly respond to deep structural and endemic problems with many types of forensic science and medicine evidence routinely used by investigators and prosecutors. Serious problems with forensic science techniques and derivative evidence are rarely identified, let alone explained and conveyed in ordinary criminal proceedings. Indeed, there is very limited evidence that lawyers and judges are conversant with emerging critiques or the corrosive impact of speculative expert evidence on criminal proof. The article endeavors to understand these failures and the weakness of processes and safeguards across advanced criminal justice systems that include adversarial and nonadversarial elements. It also considers why many of the problems were initially identified in the United States, although not necessarily in courts, and what might be done in each of these jurisdictions to improve awareness and enhance legal responses to weak and speculative forms of incriminating expert evidence.

Filed under: Articles and papers, Policy debates Tagged: Expert evidence, Expert evidence about forensic science evidence, Expert testimony about forensic evidence, Expert testimony about forensic science evidence, Forensic evidence, Forensic evidence information systems, Forensic science, Forensic science evidence, Forensic science evidence information systems, Gary Edmond, Joëlle Vuille, Jurimetrics, Legal evidence information systems



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Koehler on errors in probabilistic reasoning about forensic science evidence

Jonathan J. Koehler has published Forensic Fallacies and a Famous Judge , Jurimetrics Journal , 54, 211–19 (2014).

Here is the abstract:

Probabilistic reasoning in the law is replete with well-documented errors and pitfalls. The errors include the prosecutor and defense attorney fallacies, the transposed conditional, the source probability error, the numerical conversion error, the probability of another match error, the false positive fallacy, the base rate fallacy, selection bias, the individualization fallacy, the fingerprint examiner fallacy, the uniqueness fallacy, the conjunction fallacy, disjunctive errors, the imperfection fallacy, misconceptions of chance, and pseudodiagnosticity. These errors arise most often in cases that include forensic science evidence. Because statistical reasoning can be both complex and counterintuitive (for example, application of Bayes Theorem to conditional probability matters), it is not entirely surprising when jurors and attorneys commit these errors. But it is more surprising, and more damaging to the legal system as a whole, when those we trust to get it right commit and perpetuate those errors.

Filed under: Articles and papers Tagged: Errors in legal reasoning, Forensic evidence, Jonathan J. Koehler, Jurimetrics, Legal evidential reasoning, Legal evidentiary reasoning, Legal reasoning, Reasoning about forensic evidence, Reasoning about legal evidence, Statistical reasoning in law



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5 Tips for Becoming a Business Travel Ninja

Business trips combine the best elements of vacation with the best elements of working. Wait, maybe they actually combine the worst of each of those things.In any case, when you're away from your law office on business, here are some...



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Nastygrams to Opposing Counsel: How Far Is Too Far?

Sometimes, civility will not do. Your opposing counsel pushes every single one of your buttons, and hell, you're nobody's doormat.  But how far do you go? Sharp tones, a threat of sanctions, or gasp, a profanity or two? And what...



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ICAIL 2015 Mentoring Program announced

Professor Ted Sichelman of the University of San Diego, and Conference Chair of ICAIL 2015, scheduled to be held 8-12 June 2015 in San Diego, California, USA, sends the following information:

The International Association of Artificial Intelligence and Law (IAAIL) is offering a mentoring program for papers being submitted to its [2015] biennial ICAIL conference, the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law.

The program is intended primarily for junior authors who have not previously published an Artificial Intelligence and Law paper at a conference or in a journal. If you would like help with your submission, you may ask for a mentor ― a person who will help you with your submission to the IAAIL audience through one-on-one advising, usually via e-mail. A mentor can also familiarize you with the standards and deadlines of ICAIL submissions. Mentors are volunteers familiar with successful submissions. To request a mentor, please send email by the Mentoring Program Request Deadline to the organizers: Guido Governatori, Guido.Governatori@nicta.com.au; Burkhard Schafer, b.schafer@ed.ac.uk; and John Zeleznikow, John.Zeleznikow@vu.edu.au. Please include:

• Your name and the names of your co-authors;


• The name of your school (or department) and institution;


• A plain-text description of your work (a title and abstract is a minimum requirement);


• Any specific questions or areas in which you would like help;


• But don’t include your draft paper.

Reasonable expectations for a mentor include the following. A mentor may be able to advise you about the most appropriate forum for your work, suggest improvements to your submission, suggest how to deal with language problems, or refer you to relevant research of which you might not have been aware. Typically, a mentor might spend 3-7 hours on a submission. We carefully match mentors to mentees, and wish to support you in developing your work into a high-quality submission with a good chance of being accepted and published.

Note the following:

• People requesting mentoring must have a complete draft ready for the mentor to review by the Mentoring Program Paper Deadline;


• If there is an experienced AI & Law-related researcher in your department, it is expected that you would approach her/him first;


• No notification of mentor/mentee assignments will be made until after the Mentoring Program Paper Deadline;


• Reviewers will not be informed of whether a paper has been mentored. That is, the fact that a paper was mentored is not considered during the paper selection process.

Important Dates

• Mentoring Program Request Deadline: Wednesday, October 15, 2014
  
  Send notice to Guido.Governatori@nicta.com.au; b.schafer@ed.ac.uk; and John.Zeleznikow@vu.edu.au.


• Mentoring Program Paper Deadline
  
  Shortly after mentor assignment

Mentoring Program Organizers

• Guido Governatori—NICTA and Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia


• Burkhard Schafer—Edinburgh University, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK


• John Zeleznikow—Victoria University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Filed under: Conference Announcements Tagged: ICAIL, ICAIL 2015, ICAIL 2015 Mentoring Program, International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law, Legal informatics conferences



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PACER says large numbers of U.S. federal court documents are no longer available in its databases

PACER, the fee-based information service for the U.S. federal courts, announced recently that large numbers of court documents are no longer in its databases, as of August 10, 2014.

Journalist John Hawkinson, citing a source at the Second Circuit, said yesterday that the reason was a “system integration issue — didn’t prioritize backwards compatibility”.

Here is the text of the announcement, on the PACER Website:

As of August 10, 2014 the following information will no longer be available on PACER:

• U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit: Cases filed prior to January 1, 2010


• U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit: Cases filed prior to CM/ECF conversion


• U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit: Cases filed prior to January 1, 2010


• U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit: Cases filed prior to March 1, 2012


• U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California: Cases filed prior to May 1, 2001

For further information please contact the court directly. Contact information for each court is available on the Court Locator page.

HT @adamliptak

Filed under: Applications, Data sets, Policy debates, Technology developments Tagged: Loss of public access to legal information, Missing legal data, PACER, Public access to legal information



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3 Ways to Turn a Volunteer Legal Gig Into Paying Work

Whether you're a new attorney who's just found nonprofit work or a seasoned associate looking for something new, nonprofit legal services can provide a break if you spend your day on M&As. And if M&As were never really your thing...



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Holler: Our Favorite Posts From the Blawgosphere (Week of Aug. 17)

4chan users posted graphic rape porn in the comments section of Jezebel, a feminist blog. You won't believe what legal issues arose next! And what happens when an attorney develops a meth addiction? When a prosecutor breaks bad, can be...



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Do Robot Lawyers Dream of Billable Seconds? ILTA 2014 Program: Storify, links, and resources

A program entitled Do Robot Lawyers Dream of Billable Seconds? was held 21 August 2014 at ILTA 2014: International Legal Technology Association Annual Educational Conference, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.

The Website for the program does not appear to have a stable, publicly available URL, but those with a username and password may be able to access the site at: http://ift.tt/1traIxy

Here is a summary of the program, from the program’s Website:

Imagine a future of robot lawyers — real technology doing real legal work. Throughout history, the future of technology has been studied, analyzed and predicted, sometimes with shocking accuracy. We know changes are coming, but what do they mean? How will they impact the law firm structure, efficiency, client relations and the legal realm as a whole? Come hear the observations and predictions of a dynamic lineup of legal technology experts to find out.

The speakers were:

• Stuart Barr of HighQ


• Joshua Lenon of Clio [click here for slides]


• Ryan McClead of Norton Rose Fulbright


• Michael Mills of Neota Logic


• Noah Waisberg of DiligenceEngine

The Twitter hashtag for the program was: #SPEC18

Click here for a storify of Twitter tweets and photos from the event.

HT @jhutschu

Filed under: Applications, Conference resources, Policy debates, Presentations, Slides, Storify, Technology developments, Technology tools Tagged: #ilta14, Artificial intelligence and law, Disintermediation of lawyers, Do Robot Lawyers Dream of Billable Seconds?, IBM Watson, ILTA, ILTA 2014, Intelligent agents and law, International Legal Technology Association Annual Conference, Joshua Lenon, Law firm technology, Law practice technology, Lawyer disintermediation, Legal intelligent agents, Legal prediction, Legal robots, Michael Mills, Noah Waisberg, Quantitative legal prediction, Robot lawyers, Ryan McClead, SPEC18, Stuart Barr, Watson



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5 Ways to Maximize Your Billable Hours (Without Being Unethical)

Groan. The dreaded billable hour, which, like the last five minutes of a football game, never seems to end. Obviously you need to bill all your time, and you've got to be ethical about it, but are you selling yourself...



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Top 3 Networking Tips for Solo Practitioners

So you've decided to "hang your shingle" (oh, do I hate that phrase). Being a solo practitioner, by definition, is a solitary affair. That seems obvious from the word "solo," but it's solitary in a metaphysical sense, too.If you're part...



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Transactional legal hackathon, NYC: Code the Deal: September 19-21, 2014

Code the Deal: A Transactional Legal Tech Hackathon is scheduled to be held 19-21 September 2014 in New York City.

Here is a description from New York Legal Hackers, one of the organizers of the event:

[...] Code the Deal is a hackathon that will take place on September 19 to 21, 2014, at Dev Bootcamp‘s NYC financial district campus.

Participants will compete to create tech-enabled products that will improve transactional legal practice–tools that aid in counseling businesses through the legal and regulatory hurdles of consummating a sale or purchase. We believe that this is a huge, untapped market for entrepreneurship. Join us as we build some amazing products and compete for generous prizes.

More info at: http://codethedeal.com

Find teammates and projects at: http://ift.tt/1kUf93A

[...]

What’s at Stake?

Grand Prize: $2500

Second Prize: $1000

Third Prize: $500

[...]

For more details, please see the event Website or the Hacker League site.

HT New York Legal Hackers

Filed under: Applications, Conference Announcements, Hackathons, Hacking, Technology developments, Technology tools Tagged: Code the Deal, Code the Deal: A Transactional Legal Tech Hackathon, Legal hackathons, Legal hacking events, New York Legal Hackers, Transactional legal information systems, Transactional Legal Tech Hackathon



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Hagan: Applications invited for: Access to Justice Design Sprint

Margaret Hagan of Stanford University has posted Access to Justice Design Sprint , at the Program for Legal Tech + Design .

Here are excerpts from the post:

Are you a User Experience or Interface designer with an interest in public service? Do you want to use your design skills to help millions of Californians get better access to legal help? [...]

Stanford Law School & d.school are holding an Access to Justice Design Sprint — to redesign the California Courts’ official website that provides self-help resources to any Californian who wants to understand & resolve their legal problems. The website has millions of visitors every year, searching for help with their legal challenges. The Court’s staff & IT team are partnering with us to redesign how their large collection of self-help resources can be designed for more people to access, in a more user-friendly & engaging way.

We invite you to apply to join the working group of designers & legal experts that will develop new designs for the site. If you are not located in the Bay Area, we still invite you to apply to work with us remotely. [...]

To apply or for more information, please see the complete post.

HT @legaltechdesign

Filed under: Applications, Projects Tagged: California courts, California judiciary, Court information systems, Court Websites, Design of legal information systems, Design of self-help legal resources, Judicial information systems, Legal design, Legal information design, Legal information resources for self-represented litigants, Legal information services for self-represented litigants, Margaret Hagan, Program for Legal Technology and Design, Self-help legal resources



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Windowless Offices Bad for Sleep: How to Shine Light on Employees

It's only mid-August, and the days are getting shorter already. I'm noticing it's darker out at my usual wake up time, and I'm thankful that I invested in my Philips Wake-Up Light so I can awake not only to...



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Lawyer Marketing Trends: 'Local-Mobile Searches' On the Rise

Here's a fun statistic: 31 percent of traffic to law firm websites comes from mobile search. That's nearly one-third of all of your Web traffic coming from smartphone and tablet users. And make no mistake about it, mobile Google results...



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Do Small Firms, Solos Need Law Student Interns?

It's approaching back-to-school time for law school, which means students will be looking for internships and externships (if they don't have them already). With all these students out there, should your small firm get in on the action by hiring...



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Lawyers: 1 Question You May Want to Ask All Potential New Hires

Running your own law firm is no easy task -- and then come the growing pains. Inevitably, there will come a time when you need to bring more people onto your team. First, you'll consider whether you should hire...



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LegalTech Startup Weekend San Francisco 2014: Results, storify, links, and resources

LegalTech Startup Weekend San Francisco was held August 15-17, 2014, in San Francisco, California, USA.

The event’s Website is at: http://ift.tt/1sxon5U

The Twitter hashtag for the event was #legaltechSW

The Twitter account for the event was @LegalTech_SW

Click here for a storify of Twitter tweets and photos from the event.

Here is a list of the projects presented at the event:

• Tiny Terms


• JDocs


• Clozer


• LawVideos


• Bail Date


• Pragmatico


• CloudL

Preston Clark has posted a summary of the project presentations: The Pitches from #LegalTechSW (#CloudL Wins)

Here is a description of the event, from the event’s Website:

The intersection of law and technology presents unique challenges and exciting opportunities for growth and creativity. Recent years have seen a surge of answers to law’s need for innovation, such as e-discovery tools, contract generation apps, virtual firms, and websites changing the way we research. Myriad possibilities remain to integrate tech into solutions for attorneys, clients, businesses, and the government. SF LegalTech Startup Weekend will bring together legal professionals, policy geeks, programmers, and designers to disrupt the legal services market and bring it into the 21st Century – one solution at a time.’

The challenges will address:

(1) Access to justice for consumers

(2) Development and implementation of legal tech tools

• for other industries


• for in-house counsel


• for law firms


• for document/knowledge management

(3) Open-sourcing the law

(4) Legal Education

• for more informed citizenry


• for law school curricula

[...]

SF LegalTech SW will:

(1) Leverage the knowledge of legal professionals and students to explore new directions for legal tech products, services, and resources.

(2) Foster positive relationships among Bay Area law schools and the local tech and legal communities.

(3) Provide the opportunity for people across industries to brainstorm, collaborate, design, and develop innovative products and services to address challenges facing the legal system. [...]

Maria Zilberman has published an article about the event in The Recorder : Legal Hackathon Planners Want to Cure Industry’s ‘Pain Points’ .

The event’s judges were:

• Ron Dolin


• Noah Aron


• Charles Belle


• Morris Ratner


• Julio Avalos

The event’s organizers were:

• Kristen Killian


• Beth McCarthy


• Hannah Konitshek


• Gabby Grinberg


• Ashley Diamond

For more details, please see the event’s Website.

HT @rightbrainlaw

Filed under: Applications, Conference resources, Hackathons, Hacking, Storify, Technology developments, Technology tools Tagged: #a2j, #LegalHack, #legaltechSW, @LegalTech_SW, Access to justice and legal information systems, Free access to law, Law practice technology, Legal document management, Legal educational technology, Legal hackathons, Legal hacking events, Legal instructional technology, Legal knowledge management, Legal startup events, Legal startups, Legal Tech Startup Weekend, Legal Tech Startup Weekend San Francisco, Legal Tech Startup Weekend San Francisco 2014, Open legal data, Public access to legal information, Technology for access to justice



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Camilleri et al.: A Controlled Natural Language for Contract-Oriented Diagrams

John J. Camilleri , Gabriele Paganelli , and Gerardo Schneider have published A CNL for Contract-Oriented Diagrams , in CNL 2014: 4th International Workshop on Controlled Natural Language, Galway, Ireland, August 20-22, 2014 (Springer, 2014).

Here is the abstract:

We present a first step towards a framework for defining and manipulating normative documents or contracts described as Contract-Oriented (C-O) Diagrams. These diagrams provide a visual representation for such texts, giving the possibility to express a signatory’s obligations, permissions and prohibitions, with or without timing constraints, as well as the penalties resulting from the non-fulfilment of a contract. This work presents a CNL for verbalising C-O Diagrams, a web-based tool allowing editing in this CNL, and another for visualising and manipulating the diagrams interactively. We then show how these proof-of-concept tools can be used by applying them to a small example.

Filed under: Applications, Articles and papers, Technology developments, Technology tools Tagged: CNL, CNL 2014, Contract information systems, Contract law information systems, Contract-oriented diagrams, Controlled natural language and law, Gabriele Paganelli, Gerardo Schneider, International Workshop on Controlled Natural Language, John J. Camilleri, Legal controlled natural language, Visualization of contract information, Visualization of contract law information, Visualization of contracts, Visualization of legal information



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Holler: Our Favorite Posts From the Blawgosphere (Week of Aug. 10)

Those who are so bad at test-taking that they cannot break the median LSAT score probably shouldn't go to law school. And yet, there are scores of subprime schools, places that charge $50,000 a year for a degree that carries...



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Lawyer Yogis Share Relaxation, Mindfulness Tips in 'Yoga for Lawyers'

In honor of National Relaxation Day on Friday (August 15) -- yes that is a thing -- we thought we would cover a book that the ABA sent us to review" "Yoga for Lawyers: Mind-Body Techniques to Feel Better All...



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Could House-Sharing Open the Door for ADA Litigation?

The rise of house-sharing via services like Airbnb raises an interesting question: Could this open the door for ADA lawsuits? The Americans with Disabilities Act provides for a private right of action by disabled people against establishments that aren't ADA...



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LegalTech Startup Weekend San Francisco, 15-17 August 2014: Links and resources

LegalTech Startup Weekend San Francisco is scheduled to be held August 15-17, 2014, in San Francisco, California, USA.

The event’s Website is at: http://ift.tt/1sxon5U

The Twitter account for the event appears to be @LegalTech_SW

The organizers of the event say (here and here) that coding and design work are scheduled to take place during the event.

Here is a description of the event, from the event’s Website:

The intersection of law and technology presents unique challenges and exciting opportunities for growth and creativity. Recent years have seen a surge of answers to law’s need for innovation, such as e-discovery tools, contract generation apps, virtual firms, and websites changing the way we research. Myriad possibilities remain to integrate tech into solutions for attorneys, clients, businesses, and the government. SF LegalTech Startup Weekend will bring together legal professionals, policy geeks, programmers, and designers to disrupt the legal services market and bring it into the 21st Century – one solution at a time.’

The challenges will address:

(1) Access to justice for consumers

(2) Development and implementation of legal tech tools

• for other industries


• for in-house counsel


• for law firms


• for document/knowledge management

(3) Open-sourcing the law

(4) Legal Education

• for more informed citizenry


• for law school curricula

[...]

SF LegalTech SW will:

(1) Leverage the knowledge of legal professionals and students to explore new directions for legal tech products, services, and resources.

(2) Foster positive relationships among Bay Area law schools and the local tech and legal communities.

(3) Provide the opportunity for people across industries to brainstorm, collaborate, design, and develop innovative products and services to address challenges facing the legal system. [...]

Maria Zilberman has published an article about the event in The Recorder : Legal Hackathon Planners Want to Cure Industry’s ‘Pain Points’ .

For more details, please see the event’s Website.

HT @rightbrainlaw

Filed under: Applications, Conference Announcements, Hackathons, Hacking, Showcases, Technology developments, Technology tools Tagged: #a2j, #LegalHack, Access to justice and legal information systems, Free access to law, Law practice technology, Legal document management, Legal educational technology, Legal hackathons, Legal hacking events, Legal instructional technology, Legal knowledge management, Legal startup events, Legal startups, Legal Tech Startup Weekend, Legal Tech Startup Weekend San Francisco, Legal Tech Startup Weekend San Francisco 2014, Open legal data, Public access to legal information, Technology for access to justice



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5 Decorations You Don't Want in Your Law Office

As you may recall, this blog has already covered the decorations you should have in your law office. That includes items that command respect, like your degree, or imply that you're an approachable person, like your family photos. There's a...



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Satterthwaite and Simeone: A Conceptual Roadmap for Social Science Methods in Human Rights Advocacy

Margaret L. Satterthwaite of New York University School of Law and Justin Simeone of Princeton University have posted An Emerging Fact-Finding Discipline? A Conceptual Roadmap for Social Science Methods in Human Rights Advocacy , forthcoming in Philip Alston and Sarah Knuckey (Eds.), The Future of Human Rights Fact-Finding.

Here is the abstract:

Human rights advocates seek to find, interpret, and communicate facts about rights violations amidst some of the most complex social, economic, and political circumstances. To meet these challenges, fact-finders have developed research procedures that increasingly draw on a wide range of interdisciplinary tools and perspectives — with a notable expansion in the use of qualitative and quantitative methods from social science during recent years. Yet there is little discussion of investigative principles, research components, and methodological standards in the human rights field — a reality that often fuels tension and uncertainty over the extent to which social scientific research standards can and should inform evolving fact-finding conventions. As a result, fundamental questions about such standards remain unaddressed. To fill this gap, this chapter offers three core contributions. First, this chapter contextualizes the discussion by presenting data concerning the methods and conventions used by researchers at Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch in the years 2000 and 2010. Second, this chapter interrogates the nature of social scientific inquiry and the degree of overlap between social science research and human rights fact-finding by comparing investigative principles, research components, and methodological standards. These comparisons reveal that social scientific research and human rights fact-finding share many common foundations and suggest that there is great potential for further convergence — especially in relation to methodological transparency. Third, drawing on some of the key distinctions between social science research and human rights fact-finding, this chapter highlights some of the methodological trade-offs that human rights investigators will likely confront when more directly considering social scientific strategies. This chapter ultimately cautions against the creation of a social science of human rights fact-finding, given the unique challenges and irreducible ethical commitments of human rights fact-finding. It instead calls for open and inclusive conversations about the most promising and appropriate standards for the evolving practice of human rights fact-finding.

Filed under: Articles and papers, Chapters, Methodology, Research findings Tagged: Future of Human Rights Fact Finding, Human right investigation, Human rights information systems, Human rights methodology, Justin Simeone, Legal evidence information systems, Legal evidence investigation, Legal evidence methodology, Legal evidentiary information systems, Margaret L. Satterthwaite, Social science research methods in legal information studies, The Future of Human Rights Fact Finding



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Judge Judy Settles With Lawyer Over TV Ad: 3 Lessons for Your Firm

Judge Judy -- yes, that Judge Judy -- has reached a settlement with a Connecticut lawyer accused of using images from her TV show in his own commercial, TMZ reports. The fact that this case exists at all seems silly,...



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Should Your Firm Expand Into Debt Collecting?

Following the Great Recession of 2008, many firms found it lucrative to expand their practices to encompass debt collection. They became "debt buyers," third parties who purchased the debt from the original creditor -- or even from another debt buyer...



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Legal Shark Week: 4 Ways to Be a Social Media Shark

It's baaaack! Yes, it's that time of year again -- Discovery's "Shark Week" (already? We've barely had time to recover from "Sharkando 2: The Second One") -- which of course means it's time for FindLaw's "Legal Shark Week" series of...



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Vlek et al.: Building Bayesian networks for legal evidence with narratives: A case study evaluation

Charlotte S. Vlek , Henry Prakken , Silja Renooij , and Bart Verheij , have published Building Bayesian networks for legal evidence with narratives: a case study evaluation , forthcoming in Artificial Intelligence and Law .

Here is the abstract:

In a criminal trial, evidence is used to draw conclusions about what happened concerning a supposed crime. Traditionally, the three main approaches to modeling reasoning with evidence are argumentative, narrative and probabilistic approaches. Integrating these three approaches could arguably enhance the communication between an expert and a judge or jury. In previous work, techniques were proposed to represent narratives in a Bayesian network and to use narratives as a basis for systematizing the construction of a Bayesian network for a legal case. In this paper, these techniques are combined to form a design method for constructing a Bayesian network based on narratives. This design method is evaluated by means of an extensive case study concerning the notorious Dutch case of the Anjum murders.

Filed under: Applications, Case studies, Methodology, Research findings Tagged: Artificial intelligence and law, Bart Verheij, Bayesian methods in legal informatics, Bayesian networks and legal evidential reasoning, Bayesian networks and legal evidentiary reasoning, Bayesian statistical methods in legal informatics, Charlotte S. Vlek, Charlotte Vlek, Henry Prakken, Legal evidence information systems, Legal evidential reasoning, Legal evidentiary reasoning, Legal narrative, Modeling legal evidential reasoning, Modeling legal evidentiary reasoning, Modeling legal reasoning, Narrative and legal evidence, Narrative and legal evidential reasoning, Narrative and legal evidentiary reasoning, Silja Renooij, Statistical methods in legal informatics



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EUCases project workshop: Towards Linked Legal Open Data in Europe, Turin, 16 June 2014

A workshop entitled Towards Linked Legal Open Data in Europe was held 16 June 2014 at the University of Turin, Campus Luigi Einaudi.

The event was organized by the EUCases Project, which aims to “develop a unique pan-European law and case law Linking Platform transforming multilingual legal open data into linked open data after semantic and structural analysis.”

Click here for the agenda of the event.

Here is a description of the event, from the event Website:

The objective of the workshop was to:

• Introduce the project and its main expected outputs: The EUCases Linking Platform, The ConsumerCases online service and the EU LinksChecker add-in tools.


• Present the state-of-the-art in Legislative XML, the basis for linked open data in the legal domain.


• Discuss user requirements of the project’s main target audience, i.e. legal professionals who need access to case law from other Member States.


• Identify synergies with other ongoing RTD activities operating in related areas.

Here are links to slides of some of the presentations given at the event:

• APIS: The market for EUCases linked legal open data services


• APIS: Legal Open Data – Overview of the State of the Art


• Guido Boella: Introduction to EUCases


• Andrea Maurino: COMSODE meets EUCases


• Marc van Opijnen: Developments in the EU


• Monica Palmirani: Legal XML


• Reinhard Sander: e-Services for Legal Professionals


• Clemens Wass: Openlaws overview

HT Guido Boella

Filed under: Applications, Projects, Slides, Technology developments, Technology tools Tagged: ConsumerCases, EU Cases Project, EU LinksChecker, EUCases, EUCases Linking Platform, EUCases Project, Guido Boella, Legal Linked Data, Linked Data and law, Towards Linked Legal Open Data in Europe, Workshop: Towards Linked Legal Open Data in Europe



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ABA Journal Access to Justice Hackathon: Hackcess to Justice 2014: Results, storify, links, and resources

ABA Journal’s Access to Justice Hackathon — called Hackcess to Justice 2014 — was held 7-8 August 2014 at Suffolk University Law School, in Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

Click here for the event schedule.

Twitter hashtags used for the event included #HackcesstoJustice and #hackjustice

Click here for a storify of photos and Twitter tweets from the event.

Here are the projects worked on or presented at the event, from the Submissions page:

• disastr : “Mobile disaster legal assistance at your fingertips”


• Divorce Decoded : “Divorce Made Simple: Your Guide to Massachusetts Divorce”


• Due Processor : “Interactive tool for Massachusetts indigence and sentencing calculations”


• Legal Apptitude : “Determine whether self-representation is the right option for you”


• PaperHealth : “A quick way to create HealthCare Proxy and Living Wills”


• ReEntry App : “Helping ReEntrants and Reducing Recidivism” [video of presentation]


• 
  

  Video of LSC president James Sandman’s opening presentation is at: http://ift.tt/1kQD1Fr

  
  

Here is a description of the event, from the event’s Website:

Technology has taken a firm hold in the legal industry. Every day legal professionals use technology-enabled tools for discovery, litigation support, document assembly and information needs. But the promise of technology has been fleeting when it comes to the access to justice arena. Last year the Legal Services Corporation produced a seminal report outlining five key ways that technology can expand access to justice, especially through computers and mobile devices. [...]

We are challenging lawyers, law students developers, coders and others interested in improving access to justice through technology to devise a technology-enabled solution to one of the five areas outlined in the LSC report at two-day, judged hackathon.

Prize money will be awarded to the top three hacks. [...]

The judges for the event were:

• K. Krasnow Waterman of MIT


• Robert Ambrogi


• Glenn Rawdon of the Legal Services Corporation

A new post at ABA Journal describes the event and lists the winning projects: Victor Li: Winning apps in ‘Hackcess to Justice’ help write wills, navigate disasters and calculate jail time .

For more details, please see the event Website.

HT @Molly_McDonough

Filed under: Applications, Conference resources, Hackathons, Hacking, Storify, Technology developments, Technology tools, Videos Tagged: #HackcesstoJustice, #hackjustice, #LegalHack, ABA Journal, ABA Journal Access to Justice Hackathon, ABA Journal Legal Hackathon, Access to justice and legal information systems, Bob Ambrogi, Divorce law information systems, Family law information systems, Glenn Rawdon, Hackcess to Justice, Hackcess to Justice 2014, Health law information systems, K. Krasnow Waterman, Legal document assembly systems, Legal hackathons, Suffolk University Law School, Technology for access to justice, Technology for self represented litigants



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