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The Legal Information Institute

The Legal Information Institute. Who we are and what we do. First legal web site; first web site for a profession other than physics. Primary source for Supreme Court decisions and United States Code Appx. 10 million hits/wk, with load spikes that have reached as high as 5K/minute.

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The Legal Information Institute

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  1. The Legal Information Institute

  2. Who we are and what we do • First legal web site; first web site for a profession other than physics. • Primary source for Supreme Court decisions and United States Code • Appx. 10 million hits/wk, with load spikes that have reached as high as 5K/minute. • LAMP/open source/custom software environment; XML + relationals. CS 502 4-21-2003

  3. Why publish legal information? • It’s not just for lawyers • “ignorance of the law is no excuse”, but… • …this is not pro-se representation or defense • Risk management • Policy and planning • Business/economic strategy CS 502 4-21-2003

  4. What legal information is and isn’t • Legal information isn’t e-government or legal advice • Legal information is (inter alia ) judicial opinions, statutes, and regulations. • There is a lot of legal information. • Publishing is at once highly distributed and highly concentrated • Some aspects are journalistic: law is news CS 502 4-21-2003

  5. Legal text and the IS problems it presents • Sheer volume (and longevity) • Process-related problems • Text-related problems • Time-related problems CS 502 4-21-2003

  6. Process-related problems • No integrated process model for legislation, at least in the US. • Poor or nonexistent standard-setting in courts. • Privacy issues, though these are less of a concern the higher in the court system you go. CS 502 4-21-2003

  7. Text-related problems • Interpretation rests on arrangement and structure • Markup must be done carefully: it might impart or distort authority or meaning. CS 502 4-21-2003

  8. Time-related problems • Law doesn’t stand still: there are always new laws, and changes to old ones. (one attempt to cope) • Different parts of the legislative life cycle occupy different name spaces and have different degrees of authority • Topical classification changes over time for a number of reasons, including use of analogy and the development of new concepts. CS 502 4-21-2003

  9. Intellectual access problems • Dealing with technical language and defined terms • Thinking differently about search strategy and behavior. • Designing and populating architectures for non-experts CS 502 4-21-2003

  10. Technical language and defined terms • Technical language vs. plain English (eg. promissory estoppel) • Finding and flagging defined terms • Finding and linking crossreferences CS 502 4-21-2003

  11. Information architectures for non-experts • A lame example (and another) • Situationally-derived pathfinders • Occupationally-derived pathfinders • Most-proximate-noun dictionaries or encyclopedias • All are editorially constructed and difficult to keep current CS 502 4-21-2003

  12. Searching strategy and behavior • Nonexpert search behavior employs different strategies and has different goals • Nonexperts use terms derived from fact patterns rather than abstract concepts or terms of art • To serve nonexperts, we must go beyond the ‘search engine as one-armed bandit’ CS 502 4-21-2003

  13. Social implications • The informed client represents an altered balance of power. • The ability to manage risk reduces litigation. • Legal transparency promotes investment and trade. CS 502 4-21-2003

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