1st Edition

Legal Data and Information in Practice How Data and the Law Interact

By Sarah A. Sutherland Copyright 2022
    170 Pages 11 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    170 Pages 11 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    Legal Data and Information in Practice provides readers with an understanding of how to facilitate the acquisition, management, and use of legal data in organizations such as libraries, courts, governments, universities, and start-ups.

    Presenting a synthesis of information about legal data that will furnish readers with a thorough understanding of the topic, the book also explains why it is becoming crucial that data analysis be integrated into decision-making in the legal space. Legal organizations are looking at how to develop data-driven insights for a variety of purposes and it is, as Sutherland shows, vital that they have the necessary skills to facilitate this work. This book will assist in this endeavour by providing an international perspective on the issues affecting access to legal data and clearly describing methods of obtaining and evaluating it. Sutherland also incorporates advice about how to critically approach data analysis.

    Legal Data and Information in Practice will be essential reading for those in the law library community who are based in English-speaking countries with a common law tradition. The book will also be useful to those with a general interest in legal data, including students, academics engaged in the study of information science and law.

    List of figures

    List of tables

    Acknowledgements

     

    Introduction

    How to Use this Book

    Book Overview

    Conclusion

    References

    Acknowledgements

     

    1 Legal Data Overview

    1.1 Introduction

    1.2 Why Look at Data?

    1.3 Applications

    Business Improvement

    Legal Research

    Academic Research

    Court Processes

    Customer Focused Applications

    1.4 Sources

    Courts and Tribunals

    Dockets

    Court Business Data

    Legislative Bodies

    Government Departments

    Law Firms and Lawyers

    Academic Research

    Legal Technology Companies

    1.5 Global Context

    United States

    Canada

    United Kingdom

    European Union

    Africa

    India

    Singapore

    Australia

    1.6 Conclusion

    1.7 Works cited

    2 Sources of Data

    2.1 Introduction

    2.2 Sources

    Governments

    Open Datasets

    Parliamentary Bodies

    Courts

    Case Law

    Court Pleadings

    Business processes

    Billing

    Web Logs

    Legal Publishers and Data Providers

    2.3 Developing Data

    Experimental Methodology

    Proxy Data

    2.4 Strategy

    2.5 Conclusion

    2.6 Works Cited

    3 Data Formats

    3.1 Introduction

    3.2 Categories

    3.3 Issues Particular to Law

    Case Citations

    Depth of Data

    Machine Readable Law

    3.4 Types

    Numerical

    Categorical

    Free Text

    3.5 Delivery Formats

    Spreadsheets

    Tagged Formats

    Databases

    APIs

    3.6 Considerations

    Data Standards

    Passively and Actively Collected Data

    Supervised and Unsupervised Machine Learning

    Law as Code and Law as Data

    3.7 Planning

    3.8 Conclusion

    3.9 Works cited

    4 Data Analysis Techniques

    4.1 Introduction

    4.2 Close Reading

    4.3 Statistical Analysis

    Normal Distribution

    Random Distribution

    Linear Distribution

    Multiple Points of Comparison

    Techniques

    T-Tests

    Regression

    Compared to Machine Learning

    4.4 Machine Learning

    Supervised Learning

    Unsupervised Learning

    Reinforcement Learning

    4.5 Natural Language Processing

    Bag-of-Words

    Vector Analysis

    4.6 Other Tools

    Knowledge Bases

    Decision Trees

    Network analysis

    4.7 Conclusion

    4.8 Works Cited

    5 Interpreting Legal Data

    5.1 Introduction

    5.2 Approaching Data Analysis

    5.3 Methodology

    Statistics

    Hypothesis Testing

    Regression

    Machine Learning

    Natural Language

    5.4 Considerations

    Correlation and Causation

    Proxy Data

    Sensitivity

    Suitability

    Complexity

    Extrapolation

    5.5 Concerns

    Overfitting

    Bias

    5.6 Conclusion

    5.7 Works Cited

    6 Issues with Using Legal Data

    6.1 Introduction

    6.2 Availability

    6.3 What Is Missing

    6.4 Ambiguity

    6.5 Limitations on Language Processing

    6.6 Sampling

    Analytics and Sample Size

    6.7 Cost

    6.8 Jurisdiction

    6.9 Structure

    Case Law

    Legislation

    Law Firms’ Data

    6.10 Risks

    6.11 Conclusion

    6.12 Works cited

    7 Artificial Intelligence

    7.1 Introduction

    7.2 Definition

    7.3 Promise and Limits

    7.4 Types of Artificial Intelligence

    Statistical Analysis

    Machine Learning

    Vapor Ware

    7.5 Process

    7.6 Likely Impacts

    7.7 Limitations

    7.8 Concerns

    Fairness

    Error and Bias

    Ethics

    7.9 Thinking Critically

    7.10 Conclusion

    7.11 Works cited

    8 The Law and Politics of Legal Data

    8.1 Introduction

    8.2 The Nature of Data Based Applications

    8.3 Access to Data

    8.4 Privacy

    8.5 Jurisdiction

    Infrastructure

    Legacy Systems

    Government Controls

    8.6 Primary Law

    8.7 Practice Data

    8.8 The Research Landscape

    8.9 Working Toward Change

    8.10 Conclusion

    8.11 Works cited

    9 Vision for the Future

    9.1 Introduction

    9.2 Thinking About the Future

    9.3 Forecasting

    9.4 Technology Adoption Dynamics

    9.5 Issues

    Data Availability

    Privacy laws

    Available investment

    Cultural acceptance

    Competing priorities

    Regulation of Technology

    Social Concerns

    9.6 Divergence

    Jurisdiction

    Population Segments

    Legal System

    Culture

    9.7 Predictions

    Near term

    Changing Productivity Paired with Changing Market Size

    Medium Term

    Born Digital Legal Data

    Long Term

    The Next Generation of Artificial Intelligence

    9.8 Conclusion

    9.9 Works Cited

    Bibliography

    Index

    Biography

    Sarah A. Sutherland is President and CEO at the Canadian Legal Information Institute (CanLII) where she works on advancing CanLII’s strategic priorities of providing access to law. She writes and presents regularly on legal data internationally and has a bi-monthly column on Slaw.ca.