
Ask YC: AI/NLP for legal analysis? - andr
I believe much of the legal texts in the US, and other legal systems, can be parsed into RDF triples/tuples/facts [0].<p>Of course people are trying to do this for all kinds of texts, but legal texts have a very specific structure, and a smaller vocabulary, which may make them easier to parse them.<p>Once we have a set of tuples it would be very easy to build an expert system that could replace a lawyer [1].<p>The system does not need to be 100% accurate. Each fact would keep a link to the original paragraphs in the corresponding legislature. This will allow people to improve the knowledge base of the system, wiki style. Also, if the system fails to parse a particular paragraph, but can understand the subject, for example, it can still present the particular paragraph when an inquiry is made about the subject. The user will then read the paragraph and enter its contents in tuple form.<p>Cases that form precedents can be a caveat. They usually are less structured than legislature, so it can<p>Has anyone tried something like this before? It definitely seems like a market begging to be shrunk.<p>[0] RDF triples are usually (subject, predicate, object). However, for legal texts (subject, predicate, object, condition) might work better.<p>[1] Of course, lawyers do a lot of other things, but for the sake of this idea let’s consider lawyers are paid $400/hr just to tell you what the law says.
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anamax
> The user will then read the paragraph and enter its contents in tuple form.

This has been tried before. It didn't work very well. Is that good enough? If
not, how are you going to do better? (Note "My project can't succeed unless we
do better" doesn't imply that you will.)

> Of course, lawyers do a lot of other things, but for the sake of this idea
> let’s consider lawyers are paid $400/hr just to tell you what the law says.

Since they're not, how is this a useful exercise?

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alek
Sorry for the unfinished sentence above (a case of noprocrast + getting
distracting and submitting). I meant to say:

Cases that form precedents can be a caveat. They usually are less structured
than legislature, so it can be harder to parse them. Perhaps the system would
work better for non-common law legislatures. However, I believe that even in
the US areas like corporate law would be less influenced by precedents.

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iphpdonthitme
I think this company tries to do stuff with legal texts: www.cataphora.com

