Toward a general theory of document modeling

ABSTRACT

Most legal tasks involve document preparation and review. Drafting effective texts is central to lawyering, judging, legislating, and regulating. How best to support that work with intelligent tools is an ancient topic in AI-and-Law research. For those tools to work, they must have good quality knowledge content to work with. Many alternative theories and techniques for modeling documents have been developed for particular kinds of situations. This article sketches a basic general theory of legal document modeling, with a focus on the key role of argumentation.

REFERENCES

• 1: T. J. M. Bench-Capon , G. Staniford, PLAID: proactive legal assistance, Proceedings of the 5th international conference on Artificial intelligence and law, p.81-88, May 21-24, 1995, College Park, Maryland, United States [doi>10.1145/222092.222142]
• 2: C. Biagioli , E. Francesconi , P. Spinosa , M. Taddei, A legal drafting environment based on formal and semantic XML standards, Proceedings of the 10th international conference on Artificial intelligence and law, June 06-11, 2005, Bologna, Italy [doi>10.1145/1165485.1165530]
• 3: Alexander Boer , Radboud Winkels , Fabio Vitali, Proposed XML Standards for Law: MetaLex and LKIF, Proceeding of the 2007 conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems: JURIX 2007: The Twentieth Annual Conference, p.19-28, June 15, 2007
• 4: Branting, L. K. Techniques for Automated Judicial Document Drafting, International Journal of Law&Information Technology, 6(2): 214--229 (1998).
• 5: Branting, L. K., Lester, J., and Callaway, C. Automating Judicial Document Drafting: A Discourse-Based Approach, Artificial Intelligence and Law, 6(2--4): 105--110 (1998)
• 6: Branting, L. K., Callaway, C., Mott, B., and Lester, J. Integrating Discourse and Domain Knowledge for Document Drafting. Oslo, Norway, July 14--17, 1999
• 7: L. Karl Branting , James C. Lester , Charles B. Callaway, Automated drafting of self-explaining documents, Proceedings of the 6th international conference on Artificial intelligence and law, p.72-81, June 30-July 03, 1997, Melbourne, Australia [doi>10.1145/261618.261635]
• 8: Aspassia Daskalopulu , Marek Sergot, A constraint-driven system for contract assembly, Proceedings of the 5th international conference on Artificial intelligence and law, p.62-70, May 21-24, 1995, College Park, Maryland, United States [doi>10.1145/222092.222130]
• 9: ESTRELLA Project. The legal knowledge interchange format (LKIF). Deliverable 4.3, European Commission, 2008.
• 10: ESTRELLA Project. The reference LKIF inference engine. Deliverable 4.3, European Commission, 2008.
• 11: ESTRELLA Project, Reference Open Source Legal Content Management System (CMS), Deliverable 3.4, European Project IST-2004-027655, 2008. {Available at http://www.estrellaproject.org/}
• 12: Gordon, T. F. A Theory Construction Approach to Legal Document Assembly. Expert Systems in Law. Ed. Antonio A. Martino. North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1992. 211--25.
• 13: Carole D. Hafner , Marc Lauritsen, Extending the power of automated legal drafting technology, Proceeding of the 2007 conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems: JURIX 2007: The Twentieth Annual Conference, p.59-68, June 15, 2007
• 14: Shawn Kerrigan , Kincho H. Law, Logic-based regulation compliance-assistance, Proceedings of the 9th international conference on Artificial intelligence and law, June 24-28, 2003, Scotland, United Kingdom [doi>10.1145/1047788.1047820]
• 15: Kowalewski, D. L. and Schneeberger, J.; KOKON: Wissensbasierte Konfigurierung von Verträgen; GI-16. Jahrestagung; Springer-Verlag; Berlin; 1986.
• 16: Lauritsen, M. Technology Report: Building Legal Practice Systems with Today's Commercial Authoring Tools. 1 Artificial Intelligence and Law 87--102 (1992)
• 17: Marc Lauritsen, Knowing documents, Proceedings of the 4th international conference on Artificial intelligence and law, p.184-191, June 15-18, 1993, Amsterdam, The Netherlands [doi>10.1145/158976.159000]
• 18: Lauritsen, M. Ontologies and Openness in Law Practice Automation. Workshop on "Legal Knowledge Systems in Action," Eighth International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law, St. Louis, Missouri. May 2001 {http://www.capstonepractice.com/OntoOpen.html}
• 19: Lauritsen, M. 2007. Current Frontiers in Legal Drafting Systems. Working paper for a tutorial at the Eleventh International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law, Palo Alto, California. July 2007. {Available at http://www.capstonepractice.com/CurrentFrontiers.pdf}
• 20: Lupo, C. and Batini, C. (2003). A federative approach to laws access by citizens: The "Norme in Rete" system. In Traunmüller, R., editor, Proceedings of Second International Conference Electronic Government (EGOV), pages 413--416. Springer-Verlag.
• 21: Moens, M. Improving Access to Legal Information: How Drafting Systems Help. In Lodder and Oskamp eds., Information Technology&Lawyers: Advanced technology in the legal domain, from challenges to daily routines (Springer, 2006), pp. 119--136
• 22: Daniel Poulin , Guy Huard , Alain Lavoie, The other formalization of law: SGML modelling and tagging, Proceedings of the 6th international conference on Artificial intelligence and law, p.82-88, June 30-July 03, 1997, Melbourne, Australia [doi>10.1145/261618.261637]
• 23: M. J. Sergot , F. Sadri , R. A. Kowalski , F. Kriwaczek , P. Hammond , H. T. Cory, The British Nationality Act as a logic program, Communications of the ACM, v.29 n.5, p.370-386, May 1986 [doi>10.1145/5689.5920]
• 24: Sprowl, J. 1979. Automating the Legal Reasoning Process: A Computer that uses Regulations and Statutes to Draft Legal Documents. 1 Am. B. Found. Res. J. 1--8
• 25: Toulmin, S. E. The Uses of Argument. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1958.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.2 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
      I.2.1 Applications and Expert Systems
          Subjects: Law

Additional Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.6 SIMULATION AND MODELING
      I.6.m Miscellaneous

  K. Computing Milieux
  K.5 LEGAL ASPECTS OF COMPUTING
      K.5.0 General

General Terms:
Legal Aspects