AI + Law: A Primer

An Introduction to Artificial Intelligence + Law

daniel martin katz

edu | illinois tech - chicago kent law

edu | bucerius law school

page | DanielMartinKatz.com

corp | elevateservices.com

lab | TheLawLab.com
the conversation continues online
#BuceriusLegalTech
 ARTIFICIAL
INTELLIGENCE -
AN INTRODUCTION
THE VAST MAJORITY
OF #LEGALTECH
PRODUCTS PURPORT
TO LEVERAGE
ARTIFICIAL
INTELLIGENCE
(AI)
 SO I THINK IT WOULD
MAKE SENSE TO REALLY
EXPLORE AI
BOTH IN GENERAL
AND WITHIN LAW
BECAUSE MANY OF
THE APPLICATIONS
WITHIN LAW TRADE
ON CONCEPTS
DEVELOPED
OUTSIDE OF LAW
SO WE WILL START
WITH AI OUTSIDE
OF LAW
THEN WE WILL TALK
ABOUT AI+LAW
 ARTIFICIAL
INTELLIGENCE IS ALL
AROUND US …
 INDEED -
THE PAST FEW YEARS
HAVE WITNESSED SOME
PRETTY IMPRESSIVE
DISPLAYS …
NOT JUST THESE …
BUT ALSO THESE …
 Beat the best
human players at
Texas Hold 'Em
poker
Detected Crop
Disease
Identified diabetic
retinopathy (a
leading cause of
blindness) from
retinal photos
 Spotted cancer in
tissue slides better
than human
epidemiologists
 Wrote sports
articles for the
Associated Press
 Wrote its own
machine learning
software
 and
Painted a pretty
good van Gogh
MORE EXAMPLES HERE …

http://www.businessinsider.com/artificial-intelligence-ai-most-impressive-
achievements-2017-3#what-ai-cando-everyday-humanstuff-1
IT SEEMS LIKE EVERY
COMPANY IS RACING
TO EMBED AI INTO
THEIR PRODUCTS /
SERVICES
 THERE ARE AT LEAST
TWO REASONS WHY AN
INDIVIDUAL LAWYER,
LAW FIRM OR LEGAL
DEPARTMENT …
SHOULD BE INTERESTED IN
RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
 (1)
THIS IS WHAT THE
WORLD IS
BECOMING
AND BY EXTENSION
THIS WHAT YOUR
CLIENT’S WORLD
IS BECOMING …
 (2)
MUCH LIKE THE REST
OF THE BUSINESS
WORLD, THE
DELIVERY OF LEGAL
SERVICES ARE BEING
IMPACTED BY A.I.
 IT IS IMPORTANT TO
UNDERSTAND HOW TO
LEVERAGE SUCH TOOLS
TO HELP DELIVER VALUE
 A.I. HISTORY
AND OVERVIEW
 I WOULD LIKE TO
REMIND EVERYONE
AT THE OUTSET
 BEFORE THERE
WERE COMPUTERS
HUMANS DID ALL OF
THE COMPUTING
 IF YOU REFLECT
UPON OUR OWN
DECISION MAKING …
WHAT DO WE DO?
 LOOK FOR PATTERNS

WEIGH VARIABLES

MAKE CONCEPTUAL LEAPS

(using analogical reasoning)
 ABSTRACTION OF A
PROJECTING WEIGHTS
INTO A DECISION
INPUTS

dimension 1

dimension 2

f( ) OUTPUT
dimension 3 (Prediction, Decision, etc.)
.
. and / or
.
.

dimension n
 PATTERN MATCHING

evolutionary biology is an algorithm

which privileges good pattern matching
PATTERN MATCHING

Biology is why you have

trouble with Pie Charts
PATTERN MATCHING

But are very good at

interpreting distances
 ANALOGICAL
REASONING

Lawyers are particularly

good at this task
TO START, WHAT
EXACTLY IS
‘ARTIFICIAL
INTELLIGENCE’ ?
 CAN SOMEONE
OFFER A WORKING
DEFINITION ?
BIG IDEA IN AI IS TO DEVELOP
IN MACHINES SOME LEVEL OF
SYNTHETIC (OR ARTIFICIAL)
REPRESENTATION OF A
PREVIOUSLY HUMAN
CENTERED PROCESS
A.I. HAS A LONG
HISTORY
John Von Neumann

Alan Turing
“BEFORE 1949, ‘COMPUTERS LACKED A
KEY PREREQUISITE FOR INTELLIGENCE:
THEY COULDN’T STORE COMMANDS,
ONLY EXECUTE THEM …”

http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/history-artificial-intelligence/
WE HAVE HAD A RANGE
OF FALSE STARTS AND
A.I. WINTERS
EVEN SOME OF THE
WORLD’S LEADING
EXPERTS HAVE
GOTTEN THINGS
WRONG …
 “MACHINES WILL BE CAPABLE,
WITHIN TWENTY YEARS, OF DOING
ANY WORK THAT A MAN CAN DO.”
– Herbert Simon
in 1965
 “MACHINES WILL BE CAPABLE,
WITHIN TWENTY YEARS, OF DOING
ANY WORK THAT A MAN CAN DO.”
– Herbert Simon
in 1965
IT TURNS OUT THAT
LOTS OF THE IDEAS
THAT WE ARE
LEVERAGING TODAY
 WERE ACTUALLY
DEVELOPED MANY
DECADES AGO …
THERE IS NO DOUBT
THIS IS A HYPE
CYCLE OF SORTS …
BUT IT IS ALSO POSSIBLE
(AND IN MY VIEW LIKELY)
THAT THIS TIME WILL BE
DIFFERENT (IN THE
MEDIUM TERM)
 SO WHAT IS
POWERING
THIS
A.I.
REVOLUTION?
 INCREASING
COMPUTING
POWER

DECREASING
DATA STORAGE
COSTS
 Moore’s law
!
 Kryder’s Law
is the other half
of the story …
Kryder’s law

!
 Today’s AI is
all (mostly) about
Prediction
Some Key Ideas
About
Prediction
(1) Inverse Problem

(2) System Dynamics

 Hypothesis Testing
is the Core of
Mainstream Science
Deduction
 Popperian
Falsification
 Partial or
Complete Induction
Is the Alternative
In Case You
Did not Know
 This is an
Inductive
Age
This is the Age of Aspirational Spelling
(Spelling is 1.0 Thinking)
(a) Induce a Plausible Model
from Existing Data
(b) Validate Model
 Either:
Out of Sample
Forward Prediction

Or Both
(2) System Dynamics
Imagine Two Different
Complex Systems
Weather
Tides
 vs.

TIDES ALMANAC
Easy/ Predictable Difficult / Chaotic
Formal Treatment of the
question of prediction in
alternative Domains
THE DIVISION BELL
IN ARTIFICIAL
INTELLIGENCE
 DATA VS. RULES
THE DIVISION BELL
IN ARTIFICIAL
INTELLIGENCE
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IS A BROAD FIELD
 COMPETING
METHODOLOGICAL
ORIENTATIONS IN
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

data driven AI rules based AI

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IS A BROAD FIELD
data driven AI rules based AI
 EXPERT
SYSTEMS
 http://www.reinventlawchannel.com/richard-susskind-
future-of-artificial-intelligence-and-law

RICHARD SUSSKIND
DEVELOPED THE FIRST
EXPERT SYSTEM IN
LAW IN THE 1980’S
“In artificial intelligence, an expert system is a computer system that emulates
the decision-making ability of a human expert.

Expert systems are designed to solve complex problems by reasoning through

bodies of knowledge, represented mainly as if–then rules rather than
through conventional procedural code.

The first expert systems were created in the 1970s and then proliferated in the
1980s.

Expert systems were among the first truly successful forms of artificial
intelligence (AI) software.

However, some experts point out that expert systems were not part of true
artificial intelligence since they lack the ability to learn autonomously
from external data.”
 JUST SOME OF THE
CHALLENGES FOR EXPERT SYSTEMS
Knowledge Acquisition Problem
how do I get the information that is being leveraged by the
Human Reasoner ? (including informal rules that the expert has
difficulty expressing)

Cost of Knowledge Acquisition

High Value Cognitive Experts tend to be in demand …

Bounding the Context

How do I limit the intellectual terrain for the system to evaluate ?
BUT THE BASIC IDEA
IS TO ENCODE THE
RULES THAT GOVERN
A DECISION MAKING
PROCESS AND TURN
IT INTO SOFTWARE
 LISTEN TO FIRST 14
MINUTES OR SO
http://www.reinventlawchannel.com/richard-susskind-future-of-artificial-intelligence-and-law
DATA DRIVEN
AI
THE ALTERNATIVE TO
HARD CODING THE
RULES IS TO LET DATA
DO THE LIFTING …
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IS A BROAD FIELD
data driven AI rules based AI
1980’s, 1990’s, Early 2000’s
rules based A.I. > data driven A.I.
1980’s, 1990’s, Early 2000’s
rules based A.I. > data driven A.I.

2005 - Present
rules based A.I. < data driven A.I.
ULTIMATELY WE ARE TRYING TO LEARN
THE RULES / DYNAMICS THAT
UNDERLIE SOME CLASS OF ACTIVITY
WITH THAT UNDERSTANDING
WE WANT TO BE ABLE TO
MIMIC / PREDICT
WHAT ARE SOME OF THE
RULES AND DATA HERE?

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE

RULES AND DATA HERE?
THE ALTERNATIVE TO
HARD CODING THE
RULES IS TO LET DATA
DO THE LIFTING …
 MACHINE
LEARNING
DATA DRIVEN
=
A.I. NATURAL
LANGUAGE
PROCESSING
 MACHINE
LEARNING
DATA DRIVEN
=
A.I. NATURAL
LANGUAGE
PROCESSING
MACHINE
LEARNING
 THE ULTIMATE
GOAL IS TO PREDICT
SOME CLASS OF
LEGAL OUTCOMES
 HERE ARE
JUST A FEW
USE CASES
IN LAW
#Predict Relevant Documents
Data Driven EDiscovery/Due Diligence
(Predictive Coding)
#Predict Relevant Documents
Data Driven EDiscovery/Due Diligence
(Predictive Coding)

#Predict Contract Terms/Outcomes

Data Driven Transactional Work
#Predict Relevant Documents
Data Driven EDiscovery/Due Diligence
(Predictive Coding)

#Predict Contract Terms/Outcomes

Data Driven Transactional Work

#Predict Rogue Behavior

Data Driven Compliance
#Predict Relevant Documents
Data Driven EDiscovery/Due Diligence
(Predictive Coding)

#Predict Contract Terms/Outcomes

Data Driven Transactional Work

#Predict Rogue Behavior

Data Driven Compliance

#Predict Case Outcomes / Costs

Data Driven Legal Underwriting
#Predict Relevant Documents
Data Driven EDiscovery/Due Diligence
(Predictive Coding)

#Predict Contract Terms/Outcomes

Data Driven Transactional Work

#Predict Rogue Behavior

Data Driven Compliance

#Predict Case Outcomes / Costs

Data Driven Legal Underwriting
#Predict Regulatory Outcomes
Data Driven Lobbying, etc.
SOME COMMERCIAL
EXAMPLES
IN A REAL SENSE,
THIS REPRESENTS
JUST A NARROW
SET OF POSSIBLE
PRODUCTS
 #ContractAnalytics
Quantitative Legal Prediction
 #ContractAnalytics
Quantitative Legal Prediction
 #JudicialAnalytics
Quantitative Legal Prediction
 #JudicialAnalytics
Quantitative Legal Prediction
#PredictiveCoding #E-Discovery
Quantitative Legal Prediction
General Counsels as Legal
Procurement Specialists

TyMetrix/ELM -
Using $80 billion+ in Legal
Spend Data to Help GC’s
Look for Arbitrage
Opportunities, Value
Propositions in Hiring Law
Firms

#LegalSpendAnalytics
Quantitative Legal Prediction
 #NegotiationAnalytics
Quantitative Legal Prediction
“Lawyers say the real value in mediation and arbitration might in the future
come from large-scale data analysis of arbitrators and mediators themselves,
in an effort to predict outcomes and potentially affect the course of
settlements … Matthew Saunders, partner at Ashurst, notes that data
analytics “could be extended to predicting which way arbitrators or a
mediator might go”.
IN ADDITION, THERE
ARE AN INCREASING
NUMBER OF
RELEVANT ACADEMIC
PAPERS
(AND IN SOME CASES
ASSOCIATED COMPANIES)
 “…I study choice of law by
analyzing the nearly 1,000,000
contracts that have been disclosed
to the Securities and Exchange
Commission between 1996–2012.”
 Katz DM, Bommarito MJ II, Blackman J (2017), A General
Approach for Predicting the Behavior of the Supreme Court
of the United States. PLoS ONE 12(4): e0174698.
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0174698
THIS IS SOMETIMES
CALLED ‘PREDICTIVE
ANALYTICS’
WHICH IN OUR FIELD
IS THEN CALLED
‘LEGAL ANALYTICS’
 I JUST WANT TO
REMIND YOU THIS IS
NOT ABOUT
PERFECTION BUT
COMPARATIVE
PREDICTIVE
PERFORMANCE
TWO MAJOR FORMS
OF MACHINE
LEARNING
 UNSUPERVISED
MACHINE LEARNING

SUPERVISED
MACHINE LEARNING
 CLUSTERING
IS AN EXAMPLE OF
UNSUPERVISED
MACHINE LEARNING
CLUSTERING IS ABOUT
PUTTING ‘SIMILAR’
ITEMS TOGETHER
KEY IDEA IS THAT WE
NEED TO CONVERT A
COLLOQUIAL NOTION
OF ‘SIMILARITY’
 INTO A
MATHEMATICAL
NOTION OF
‘SIMILARITY’
 ‘SIMILARITY’ IS A
MULTIDIMENSIONAL
CONCEPT
 0% similarity 100% similarity
threshold threshold

everything in one cluster everything in its own cluster

(i.e. everyone is a special snowflake)

unidimensional similarity spectrum

as we slide across this spectrum is where the groupings become interesting
hard question is where to stop as move from left to right
 The Heavy Lifting is the
develop/apply the optimal
similarity/distance function
for the substantive problem at issue
 IN REAL LIFE, IT
SOUNDS LIKE THIS…
WHAT WERE THE
LAST TEN DEALS
‘LIKE THIS DEAL’
 WHAT WERE THE
LAST TEN LAWSUITS
‘LIKE THIS LAWSUIT’
 CLUSTERING IS
PARTICULARLY USEFUL
IN LOCATING AND
ORGANIZING ITEMS
SUCH AS DOCUMENTS
CLASSIC EXAMPLE IS
THAT YOU ARE GIVEN
A BODY OF
UNORGANIZED
DOCUMENTS
 YOU MIGHT WANT TO
ROUGHLY GROUP THEM
BEFORE EXPLORING
EACH GROUP
K MEANS IS A PARTICULAR CLUSTERING ALGO
(THERE ARE MANY OTHERS)
 E-DISCOVERY AND
DUE DILIGENCE
A.I. MODULES
TYPICALLY LEVERAGE
SUPERVISED MACHINE
LEARNING
VISUAL EXAMPLE OF
HOW E-DISCOVERY
AND DUE DILIGENCE
A.I. MODULES WORK
 HOW CAN WE
USE
SUPERVISED
MACHINE
LEARNING TO
NEED TO
REVIEW TENS
OF THOUSANDS
OF DOCS
 Determine Whether a Given
Learning Task =
Document is Relevant?

Relevant
and/or f( )
010
Not Relevant
101
001
relevance?

Binary Classification (Supervised Learning)

WE WOULD
START BY
TAKING A
RANDOM
SAMPLE OF
DOCUMENTS
 THEN TAKE THE SAMPLE
SET AS A TRAINING SET
AND USE HUMAN EXPERTS
AS DISCUSSED THE
USE OF THE HUMAN
EXPERTS IS CALLED
“SUPERVISED
LEARNING”
BECAUSE IT IS THE
HUMANS THAT ARE
APPLYING THE
SUPERVISION
 IN THE SIMPLE
BINARY (0,1) CASE,
WE ASK HUMANS TO
ASSIGN OBJECTS TO
TWO PILES
APPLY HUMAN CODERS
AND RETURN THIS

yellow = relevant
white = non-relevant
Relevant Non - Relevant
gold standard labeled data

Relevant Non - Relevant

 SO HERE IS THE
KEY QUESTION …
 WHAT ALLOWS A HUMAN
TO SEPARATE THESE TWO
CLASSES OF DOCUMENTS?
THAT PRECISE HUMAN
PROCESS IS WHAT
“PREDICTIVE CODING”
IS TRYING TO MIMIC
 HUMANS ARE
SELECTING UPON
SOME “FEATURES”
OF THE DOCUMENTS
 TO PLACE THOSE
DOCUMENTS IN THEIR
RESPECTIVE BINS
(I.E. RELEVANT, NON-RELEVANT)
 FEATURES =?
TEXT,
AUTHOR,
DATE,
OTHER METADATA
BTW IF YOU EVER GET
TURNED AROUND
JUST THINK ABOUT
YOUR SPAM FILTER…
 SO WHEN WE
APPLY MACHINE
LEARNING THE
“LEARNING”
PROBLEM IS …
 WHAT IS IN THESE
DOCUMENT THAT
DISTINGUISHES THE
TWO CLASSES OF
DOCUMENTS?
MACHINE LEARNING TASK
IS TRYING TO RECOVER
(LEARN) WHAT SEPARATES
THE RELEVANT FROM THE
NON-RELEVANT
DOCUMENTS
 ONCE WE LEARN THE
RULE / BOUNDARY
WE CAN APPLY IT TO
SEPARATE THE REMAINING
DOCUMENTS INTO THE
TWO CLASSES
we will want to take what we learn here
we will want to take what we learn here
we will want to take what we learn here

and apply it here

 BUT FIRST WE NEED TO DO
SOME STATISTICAL
VALIDATION

So we would apply the

boundary we “learned” from
working with our gold standard
data and apply it to a new
sample of data
 BUT FIRST WE NEED TO DO
SOME STATISTICAL
VALIDATION

new sample
of data
sample #2

So we would apply the

boundary we “learned” from then we could collect
working with our gold standard a range of performance data
data and apply it to a new (precision, recall, accuracy)
sample of data
 BUT FIRST WE NEED TO DO
SOME STATISTICAL
VALIDATION

new sample
of data
sample #2

IF we are satisfied with the rate of performance on sample #2

ONLY then should we propagate this “learned”

boundary to the broader set of documents
In other words, only after validation
should we take this

and apply it here

 SO IN BOTH THE
E-DISCOVERY AND
DUE DILIGENCE
USE CASES WE HAVE
TAUGHT A MACHINE
TO CLASSIFY A
DOCUMENT
 BASED UPON
PROPERTIES WE HAVE
‘LEARNED’ ABOUT
OTHER DOCUMENTS
 SPEAKING OF
PROPERTIES ABOUT
DOCUMENTS
 I HAVE SO FAR
GLOSSED OVER ON
VERY IMPORTANT
ASPECT OF LAW
THAT IS CRITICAL TO
SUCCESS OF DATA
DRIVEN AI
 MACHINE
LEARNING
DATA DRIVEN
=
A.I. NATURAL
LANGUAGE
PROCESSING
 NATURAL
LANGUAGE
PROCESSING
(NLP)
 WHAT IS A ROUGH
DEFINITION OF NLP?
ROUGH IDEA
STATISTICAL
REPRESENTATION
OF LANGUAGE
 LANGUAGE IS ARGUABLY
THE ROOT OF CONSCIOUS
THOUGHT, CULTURE, AND
SHARED MEANING
 IN TURN,
LANGUAGE IS ‘THE
COIN OF THE
REALM’ HERE IN
LAW-LAW LAND
 INDEED MANY
LAW STUDENTS
CONSIDER THEIR
INITIAL FORAY
INTO THE FIELD …
 AS AN
EXERCISE IN
‘LEARNING A
NEW
LANGUAGE’
IN SUPPORT OF
THIS TASK …
LAW FEATURES
SPECIALIZED
DICTIONARIES
TEXT BASED
SUMMARIES
 AND MANY
OTHER
RESOURCES
DESIGNED TO
SUPPORT …
THE DEVELOPMENT OF
THE LINGUISTIC
IMMERSION PROGRAM

THAT WE CALL
#LEGALEDUCATION
 BUT IT IS NOT
JUST THE
CONSUMPTION
OF LANGUAGE …
 LAW / LAWYERING IS (IN
PART) AN EXERCISE IN
LINGUISTIC CONSTRUCTION
AND INTERPRETATION
 LAWYERS,
JUDGES AND
REGULATORS
ARE MASSIVE
PRODUCERS
OF TEXT
 BRIEFS,
MEMOS,
STATUTES,
OPINIONS,
REGULATIONS,
CONTRACTS,
ETC.
 ARE JUST
SOME OF THE
LEGAL WORK
PRODUCT …
 PRODUCED
ON A DAILY
BASIS ACROSS
THE WORLD’S
VARIOUS
LEGAL
SYSTEMS
 EVEN MANY
YEARS AGO…
 THE SCALE
AND
COMPLEXITY
OF THIS
SIGNIFICANT
VOLUME OF
INFORMATION
 DROVE BOTH
LABOR MARKET
SPECIALIZATION
 AS WELL AS THE
NEED FOR WHAT
MIGHT BE CALLED
PRE-MODERN
INFORMATION
TECHNOLOGY
INDEXING
SYSTEMS

SUMMARIES

TRACKING
SYSTEMS
THE SCALE AND
COMPLEXITY
OF LAW AND
LEGAL WORK
PRODUCT
CONTINUES
TO GROW …

The US Code features more than 24 million

words in a structure as shown here —
MJ Bommarito & DM Katz. A Mathematical
Approach to the Study of the United States
Code. Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its
Applications, 389(19), 4195-4200 (2010).
 NATURAL
LANGUAGE
PROCESSING
(NLP)
 TOGETHER
WITH OTHER
ALLIED
METHODS …
 CAN
POTENTIALLY
HELP IN A
VARIETY OF
WAYS …
SUDDENLY, HUGE
AMOUNTS OF
DIGITIZED TEXT
(RELATED DATA)
ARE AVAILABLE
 THERE ARE
PATTERNS IN
LEGAL LANGUAGE
THAT ARE
POTENTIALLY
MEANINGFUL TO
DETECT
 THE KEY OPEN
QUESTION IS HOW
TO RETROFIT
GENERAL
ADVANCES IN THE
SCIENCE OF NLP /
COMPUTATIONAL
LINGUISTICS …
TO THE DOMAIN
SPECIFIC NEEDS
HERE IN LAW
NLP + LAW
A QUICK
HISTORY
THE 1960’ SAW
THE FIRST
EFFORTS AT
COMPUTER
ASSISTED LEGAL
RESEARCH
 THE OHIO BAR
ASSOCIATION WORKED ON
A PROJECT WHICH WOULD
LATER BECOME
THE ‘LEXIS’ TERMINAL
 WEST PUBLISHING
WOULD BUILD A
COMPETITIVE PRODUCT
UPTAKE WAS FAIRLY SLOW AND
THE COST OF USING RESEARCH
SERVICES WAS VERY HIGH …
IN THIS TALK RICHARD
SUSSKIND NOTES THAT
IN THE EARLY 1980’S
THERE WERE FEWER
THAN 40 PAPERS ON
AI+LAW
(LET ALONE NLP+LAW)
 http://www.reinventlawchannel.com/richard-susskind-
future-of-artificial-intelligence-and-law

RICHARD SUSSKIND
DEVELOPED THE FIRST
EXPERT SYSTEM IN
LAW IN THE 1980’S
 BOTH THE
AI+LAW
CONFERENCE
AND THE JURIX
CONFERENCE
THEREAFTER
BEGAN TO FOCUS
ON THESE TOPICS
 FOR MANY YEARS, THE
STUDY OF LEGAL
ARGUMENTATION AND
LEGAL REASONING WERE
A SIGNIFICANT THRUST OF
THE RESEARCH AGENDA
 LEGAL THEORY AND
LEGAL NLP ALSO SHARE
A RELATIONSHIP …
REALISM VS. FORMALISM
 https://lsolum.typepad.com/legal_theory_lexicon/
2004/05/legal_theory_le_4.html

THE LOGIC
OF THE
LAW?

https://www.ics.uci.edu/~alspaugh/cls/shr/hohfeld.html
I DO *NOT* BELIEVE THAT
LAW IS A LOGIC
COMPUTER BUT IT
BEHAVES MORE OR LESS
AS IF DEPENDING ON
CIRCUMSTANCES
 SYNTACTIC NLP
VS
SEMANTIC BASED NLP
SYNTAX
 WORDS
WORD FREQUENCY
PART OF SPEECH FREQUENCY
ETC.
EXAMPLES SYNTACTIC NLP
 CRTL + F IS EXACT
‘STRING’ MATCHING
 REGULAR EXPRESSION
(REGEX)
RULE BASED METHOD(S) THAT CAN BE
USED TO LOOK FOR WORD PATTERNS AND
RETURN RESULTS FOR THOSE PATTERNS
 TF - IDF
INVERSE
TERM
DOCUMENT
FREQUENCY
FREQUENCY

EXPLOITS THE FREQUENCY OF

WORDS IN DOCUMENTS IN
ORDER TO PROFILE THEM
SEMANTICS
 SEMANTICS IS ABOUT THE
MEANING OF INDIVIDUAL WORDS

SEMANTICS IS RELATIONSHIP
BETWEEN WORDS THAT
INTERACT TO PRODUCE
HIGHER ORDER MEANING
 LOTS OF THE TRAINING FOR
LAWYERS IS ACTUALLY ABOUT
THE DEEP SEMANTIC
INTERPRETATION OF LANGUAGE

CONTRACTS
EXAMPLES —> STATUTES
REGULATIONS
JUDICIAL DECISIONS
SEMANTICS IS
HARD FOR
MACHINES
 MOST OF THE NLP TOOLS
LARGELY (OR COMPLETELY)
IGNORE SEMANTICS
I WOULD FRAME THE
CURRENT STATE OF
AFFAIRS AS
 HOW WELL CAN WE
PERFORM WITH MACHINES
WITHOUT HAVING A DEEP
SEMANTIC UNDERSTANDING
OF LEGAL LANGUAGE ?
 < SO AGAIN >
WHAT IS A ROUGH
DEFINITION OF NLP?
ROUGH IDEA
STATISTICAL
REPRESENTATION
OF LANGUAGE
 FIRST LET ME
START WITH THE
METHODS IN
GENERAL
(I.E. OUTSIDE OF LAW)
Sentiment Analysis
Sentiment
Analysis
Named Entity Recognizer
Named Entity Recognizer
Machine Translation
Machine Summarization
Question Answering
Question Answering
Note Chatbots
rely upon
QA pairs
 Topic
Identification
/ Modeling
 Topic
Identification
/ Modeling
 Each word is related to
“LIBOR”, but “eurodollar”
has the strongest direct
relationship

27

Quasi Semantic Search via

Word Embeddings
 LEGAL NLP HAS
SEEN AN
EXPANSION IN THE
TOPICS AND
METHODS
 AS NOTED EARLIER,
HISTORICALLY
LOTS OF FOCUS ON
LEGAL ARGUMENTATION
CASE BASED REASONING
KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION
 NOW IF WE LOOK
AT LAW AND NLP …
 TODAY LOT LESS
LEGAL FORMALISM
MORE FOCUS ON
PRACTICAL DATA
DRIVEN NLP …
 PROJECTED
TOWARD SPECIFIC
USE CASES …
 INDEED
LOTS OF
COMMERCIAL
AND ACADEMIC
INTEREST IN A
WIDE VARIETY
OF USE CASES
OFTEN NLP OR SOME
OTHER CLASS OF TEXT
ANALYSIS IS
COMBINED WITH
MACHINE LEARNING
(ML) …
 TO ANALYZE THE
LAW OR LEGAL
WORK PRODUCT IN
SOME FASHION …
 HERE ARE
JUST SOME OF
THOSE USE CASES …
 TECHNOLOGY
ASSISTED REVIEW
 TECHNOLOGY-
ASSISTED REVIEW
IN E-DISCOVERY
CAN BE
MORE EFFECTIVE
AND MORE
EFFICIENT
THAN EXHAUSTIVE
MANUAL REVIEW

Maura R. Grossman
Gordon V. Cormack

http://jolt.richmond.edu/v17i3/article11.pdf
http://www.abajournal.com/legalrebels/article/maura_grossman_profile
LEGISLATIVE AND
REGULATORY
PREDICTION
 Nay, J. J. (2017).
“Predicting and
understanding law-
making with word
vectors and an
ensemble model.” PLoS
ONE 12(5): e0176999.
https://doi.org/10.1371/
journal.pone.0176999
Consider
a simple
example

2009 10-K filing

 Lets look at just
one page of this 10-K

2009 10-K filing

 34,000+ Registered Companies

160,000+ Total Number of 10-K’s

1994 - 2016* Years in Question

Total Number of
4.5 million Act / Agency References
CONTRACT
ANALYTICS
 WE CAN DIVIDE THE
CONTRACT LIFECYCLE
INTO PRE AND POST
EXECUTION
(INCLUDING
OBLIGATIONS MGMT)
PRE EXECUTION CONTRACT ANALYTICS
CYCLE TIMES
NEGOTIATION OPTIMIZATION

POST EXECUTION BATCH ANALYSIS

EXAMPLES -
GDPR
LIBOR
BREXIT
REVENUE RECOGNITION
DUE DILIGENCE
PRE-EXECUTION
CONTRACT
STRATEGY
BRIEFS
 MIX OF
CITATIONS
& TEXT
QUANTITATIVE
LEGAL
PREDICTION
WITH NLP
 Katz DM, Bommarito MJ II, Blackman J (2017), A General
Approach for Predicting the Behavior of the Supreme Court
of the United States. PLoS ONE 12(4): e0174698.
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0174698
the conversation continues online
#BuceriusLegalTech
Daniel Martin Katz
@ Illinois Tech - Chicago Kent Law @ Bucerius Law

elevateservices.com

computationallegalstudies.com

@ computational

danielmartinkatz.com

thelawlab.com