Katz on Quantitative Legal Prediction

Professor Dr. Daniel Martin Katz of the Michigan State University College of Law and the ReInvent Law Laboratory has published Quantitative Legal Prediction – or – How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Start Preparing for the Data Driven Future of the Legal Services Industry, forthcoming in Emory Law Journal.

Here is the abstract:

Do I Have a Case? What is Our Likely Exposure? How much is this Going to Cost? What will happen if we leave this particular provision out of this contract? How can we best staff this particular legal matter? These are core questions asked by sophisticated clients such as general counsels as well as consumers at the retail level. Whether generated by a mental model or a sophisticated algorithm, prediction is a core component of the guidance that lawyers offer. Indeed, it is by generating informed answers to these types of questions that many lawyers earn their respective wage.

Every single day lawyers and law firms are providing predictions to their clients regarding their prospects in litigation and the cost associated with its pursuit (defense). How are these predictions being generated? Precisely what data or model is being leveraged? Could a subset of these predictions be improved by access to outcome data in a large number of ‘similar’ cases. Simply put, the answer is yes. Quantitative legal prediction already plays a significant role in certain practice areas and this role is likely increase as greater access to appropriate legal data becomes available.

This article is dedicated to highlighting the coming age of Quantitative Legal Prediction with hopes that practicing lawyers, law students and law schools will take heed and prepare to survive (thrive) in this new ordering. Simply put, most lawyers, law schools and law students are going to have to do more to prepare for the data driven future of this industry. In other words, welcome to Law’s Information Revolution and yeah – there is going to be math on the exam.

Click here for slides from the presentation version of the paper, Quantitative Legal Prediction.

Published Free on the Web: Full Text of 317 Proprietary Standards Incorporated by Reference in the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations

Full text of 317 proprietary standards that have been incorporated by reference in the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations have been published free on the Web by Public.Resource.Org, according to a post by Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing.

Click here for an earlier post that explains the background.

Gheen on A Law Classification Scheme as Linked Data

Tina Gheen, M.L.S., of the Law Library of Congress, has posted A Law Classification Scheme as Linked Data?, on the library’s In Custodia Legis blog.

In this post, Ms. Gheen writes:

As part of the Law Library of Congress’ Law.gov project, we are consulting with the great minds behind the id.loc.gov linked data service of the Library of Congress to research whether a linked data version of the Law schedule of the Library of Congress Classification system, Class K, would be useful. [...] We think there is potential for the user community to find this kind of value in a linked data version of the Law Classification scheme as well.

But we’d really like your opinion. How would you use a linked data version of Class K? Do you see other applications for this kind of linked data in the legal and library communities?

For more information, please see the complete post.

Click here for more resources on Linked Data and law.

HT @LawLibCongress.

Ching and Feltren on the National Inventory of Legal Materials

Tina S. Ching of the Seattle University School of Law, and Emily Feltren of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) have posted Protecting Access One Entry at a Time: An Update on the National Inventory of Legal Materials, on the VoxPopuLII blog, published by the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University Law School.

In this post, the authors describe the National Inventory of Legal Materials, an effort by U.S. law librarians to create a listing of all legal information resources in the United States, in order to facilitate efforts to authenticate, preserve, and make those resources more accessible to the public. The inventory is related to several projects, including the Law.gov legal open government data movement and AALL’s efforts to authenticate and preserve digital legal information, including the effort to persuade states to enact the Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act (UELMA).

The authors report that at least 7,000 resources had been added to the inventory as of last summer. Among the findings arising from analysis of those resources are that:

• U.S. state governments are not authenticating newly created digital legal resources;
• “Twenty-five states assert copyright on at least one legal resource, including Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island”;
• “Eighteen states require preservation and permanent public access of at least one legal resource, including Tennessee, Virginia, and Washington”; and
• “Ten states charge fees to access the official version [of their legal resources], including Kansas, Vermont, and Wyoming.”

The authors report that the first stage of the development of the inventory, focusing on state legal resources, has been completed. The current stage of the development of the inventory, focusing on U.S. federal legal resources, is currently underway. “Emily Carr, Senior Legal Research Specialist at the Law Library of Congress, and Judy Gaskell, retired Librarian of the Supreme Court, are coordinating this project.”

For more information, please see the complete post.

HT @stephdavidson.

Legislation.gov.uk Wins UK Public Sector Digital Award

Legislation.gov.uk, the UK’s official free and open online legislative service, has won the UK Public Sector Digital Award for “Best example of ICT-enabled innovation and enterprise,” according to a 20 January 2012 announcement on The National Archives Website.

The announcement describes Legislation.gov.uk as follows:

Legislation.gov.uk is a world first – the first linked data statute book. This means that people can re-use legislation data in other applications or link it to other databases. This has led to The National Archives developing a new, transferable business model for updating government databases.

For more information about Legislation.gov.uk, please see John Sheridan’s post, “Legislation.gov.uk,” at VoxPopuLII.

Click here for Paul Appleby’s recent post about new automatic updating technology being added to Legislation.gov.uk.

Click here for other resources on Linked Data and law.

Yu and Schultze: Using Software to Liberate U.S. Case Law

Harlan Yu of the Princeton University Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP), and Stephen Schultze of Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy, have published Using software to liberate U.S. case law, in XRDS: Crossroads: The ACM Magazine for Students, December 2011.

[The article appears in a special issue of XRDS: Crossroads on the topic, "Computer Science in Service of Democracy", edited by Peter Kinnaird of Carnegie Mellon University. Click here for Mr. Kinnaird's preface to the special issue.]

In their article, Mr. Yu and Mr. Schultze describe their development of RECAP, a Firefox extension that “crowdsources the purchase of the [U.S. federal courts'] PACER repository [of court records] by helping users automatically share their purchases.”

The authors also describe how features of PACER limit public access to judicial information. The authors discuss their research — presented here and here — showing that PACER’s information management practices permit disclosure of sensitive personal information online. The authors also recommend reforms to U.S. federal court information technology that would protect citizens’ privacy while improving citizens’ access to court records of public interest.

For more information on RECAP and reform of PACER, please see Mr. Schultze’s VoxPopuLII post: PACER, RECAP, and the Movement to Free American Case Law.

AALL 2011

The program for AALL 2011: The American Association of Law Libraries’ Annual Meeting, held 23-26 July 2011 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, includes several legal informatics presentations and posters.

Click here for the conference program.

Click here for the list of posters.

Click here for archived Twitter tweets from the conference.

Twitter hashtags for the conference appear to be #AALL11 and #AALL2011.

Slides and videos for some presentations are available here.

Audio for most presentations is (or will be) available here for a fee.

“A Tapestry of Data”: Open Legislation with The State Decoded

The State Decoded is a proposed open government data platform — currently in development — aimed at providing free online access in interoperable formats to U.S. state codes, and, where possible, at connecting such codes to pending legislation and court decisions. On June 22, a Knight News Challenge grant was awarded for The State Decoded to Waldo Jaquith, founder and developer of the project, and Web Developer at the Miller Center at the University of Virginia. (Click here a video in which Mr. Jaquith describes the project in connection with the award. Click here for Mr. Jaquith’s post about the project.) In early July I spoke with Mr. Jaquith about the technology and policy considerations that inform The State Decoded. The following is an account of our interview.

Overview, Core Functions, and User-Friendliness

The State Decoded is an open source software platform designed to make U.S. state legislative codes publicly available in open, interoperable digital formats, and, where possible, to connect those codes with proposed legislation and judicial decisions. Mr. Jaquith said that functionality to connect state codes with regulations is not included in the initial version of the platform, but might be included in subsequent versions.

The State Decoded has three principal functions: (1) display legislation so as to improve access to and understanding of the law by citizens, journalists, and researchers; (2) make data contained in state legislative codes available to automated systems through an open application programming interface (API); and (3) make that data available in bulk for download, so that researchers and developers can combine that data with other data, and so that developers can create new systems around that data.

Mr. Jaquith said that the State Decoded user interface would incorporate three features intended to make the law easier for citizens to understand: automatically displaying official definitions of statutory terms; where possible, integrating “plain language” definitions and explanations — obtained from “law for the layperson” materials provided by public interest legal organizations — of legal language with the display of primary legal materials; and displaying the text of legislation in “beautiful typography.”

“A Tapestry of Data”

Two attributes in particular characterize the relationship of The State Decoded platform to the wider information environment: aggregation of data from multiple sources, and open-endedness. According to Mr. Jaquith, data for The State Decoded would come from several sources. State codes would come either from the current online publishers of those codes — whether state legislatures or commercial publishers — or from open government data sources such as OregonLaws.org. Pending legislation and related data — such as information on legislators’ voting records — come from the Sunlight Foundation‘s Open States Project and GovKit. Court decisions may come from the state reporters of decisions, or from open sources such as Public.Resource.Org‘s RECOP service.

In addition to aggregating information from multiple sources, The State Decoded is in at least two respects an “open ended” project, Mr. Jaquith explained. First, when The State Decoded platform is operating in a state, respecting the system’s API and bulk access functions, data will pass through the platform to a variety of actors, including “journalists, researchers,” developers, and automated systems. Second, The State Decoded will be offered as an open source platform for use by diverse individuals and organizations, who will be free to modify the platform, experiment with its functionality, and mashup its data with a variety of other systems and information in ways that can’t be predicted. “Part of what’s interesting in this,” Mr. Jaquith observed, “is that I don’t know what people are going to do with” the system or the data made available through it. In light of the variety of data sources and the open-ended nature of the project, Mr. Jaquith uses the metaphor of a “tapestry of data” to describe the open government data environment to which he hopes The State Decoded will contribute. The platform will form “part of an open government tapestry, that we’re all weaving together,” he said.

Motivations

The open-ended nature of The State Decoded is echoed in Mr. Jaquith’s account of his motivations for pursuing this project. Asked about his motivations, Mr. Jaquith replied, “I’m doing this because I want this to exist. [...] I want to use systems like this. [...] I want this kind of data to exist. [...] Then I want others to step up; and then I can pass this along to them.”

Adopters

What kinds of individuals and organizations are likely to volunteer to set up a State Decoded platform for their state? Mr. Jaquith reported that, so far, he’s received expressions of interest in hosting the platform from three types of individuals or organizations (located in “at least half a dozen” different states): newspapers, who seek to expand the provision of primary legal data via their Websites or mobile platforms; organizations that advocate for open government; and individual “open government enthusiasts” who want to contribute to the availability of government information by publishing law online.

Technology

In describing The State Decoded‘s technology, Mr. Jaquith said that some of his approach derived from his experience in building the Richmond Sunlight open legislative platform. Mr. Jaquith explained that the architecture of The State Decoded consists entirely of open source components. The code is written in PHP — because it’s “widely understood and used” and Mr. Jaquith has many years of experience with it — data are stored in a MySQL database, Apache Web server software is used, and all run under the Linux operating system.

The platform will be licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL), and made available on GitHub.

According to Mr. Jaquith, data stored natively in the State Decoded MySQL database are not encoded in XML or any other structural metadata format. The State Decoded API — a RESTful API — outputs data in JSON, XML, and the EPUB open ebook format. (Mr. Jaquith said that he was inspired to offer EPUB functionality after seeing CALI‘s Free Law Reporter, which outputs EPUB versions of court decisions.) Respecting content negotiation, Mr. Jaquith said that the platform’s “architecture supported it,” and that he was considering enabling output of data in “PDF, plain text, and EPUB” formats, as well as in HTML.

Respecting Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs), Mr. Jaquith said, “I’m a huge fan of URI as command line.” He said that legislative URIs in The State Decoded would have a human- and machine-readable structure modeled on legal citations, in which the name of the legislative source would be followed by title and section numbers, separated by slashes. In some states in which the citation format for legislation omits the chapter number, chapter numbers would be omitted from the URIs. Mr. Jaquith said that the purpose of this URI format was to “maximize discoverability and improve ranking.” This approach to URIs seems similar to Rick Jeliffe’s PRESTO approach, which influenced the structure of URIs adopted by John Sheridan and Jeni Tennison in the Legislation.gov.uk system.

Mr. Jaquith said he planned for The State Decoded to enable bulk downloading of data, but that he was uncertain about the optimal format for bulk data, and would welcome suggestions. I noted that Robinson et al., in their influential article, Government Data and the Invisible Hand, recommend encoding bulk data in XML, because XML is an open standard that enables interoperability, XML is widely used among developers who work with government or legal data, and many programmers know how to create new systems around XML data.

Mr. Jaquith said that, although open publication of state codes is the primary objective of The State Decoded, the system will enable the “interfac[ing of] every one of these state codes with state legislative and court decision data, where available.” The system will accomplish this through “a simple screenscraper-based system,” as well as by receiving data through “others’ legislative and court APIs.”

Respecting updating of legislation, Mr. Jaquith said that The State Decoded‘s “import function” for proposed and newly enacted legislation invokes parsers that detect code provisions that would be affected by such legislation. This enables automatic updating of codified statutes.

Asked whether The State Decoded included point-in-time functionality for legislation, Mr. Jaquith said that it did not. He noted, however, that his Richmond Sunlight system has point-in-time functionality for Virginia statutes, and said that adding point-in-time functionality for every state was an aspirational goal for The State Decoded. He observed that the substantial differences in structure among the various state codes was an obstacle to building a system that enabled point-in-time functionality for the legislation of every state.

I asked Mr. Jaquith whether The State Decoded enabled authentication of legislative or judicial data. He said that authentication functionality could be included in the platform, but was not included at this time, because few or no states currently authenticate their online legal data. We discussed the U.S. Government Printing Office’s (GPO’s) infrastructure for authenticating federal primary legal materials as a possible model for the states. We also discussed the Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act (UELMA) — scheduled to be considered for approval by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL) shortly after our interview — which would require enacting states to authenticate legal information they publish online.

Principles: Open Government Data and the FCC’s “Information Needs of Communities” Report

Mr. Jaquith said that his approach in developing The State Decoded was generally consistent with the principles of the Open Government Data movement. He said that the design of The State Decoded as a readily usable platform for civil society information providers also resembled one goal of the Law.gov legal open government data movement: that of establishing specifications for an open source “turnkey platform” with which governments could publish free legal information online. Respecting the U.S. Federal Communications Commission‘s recent report on news media, “The Information Needs of Communities” — which identifies a recent decline in U.S. news coverage of state and local government affairs, and calls on nonprofit and new media organizations to fill this information gap — Mr. Jaquith agreed that The State Decoded sought in part to fulfill one dimension of this information need: the public’s need for information about the laws that govern them.

“It’s not very sexy, putting state codes online,” he admitted. But making state legislation and court decisions more accessible via the Web enhances the public information environment by “mak[ing] it possible for individuals to refer” directly to primary law, and “allow[ing] journalists to check the laws themselves,” rather than having to rely on lawyers or information intermediaries. In particular, Mr. Jaquith emphasized the potential value of The State Decoded for scholars and the press. The platform, he said, “will allow journalists and researchers, to take that data [and] to magnify it” in ways that serve the public interest.

Contacts and Staying Current

Mr. Jaquith welcomes input on The State Decoded; he can be contacted here. To stay up-to-date on the progress of The State Decoded, follow the project on Twitter at @StateDecoded, or sign up for the project mailing list at the project’s Website.

Conference: The Future of Law Libraries: The Future Is Now?

A conference entitled The Future of Law Libraries: The Future Is Now? will be held 16 June 2011 at Harvard Law School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

Click here for the conference Webcast.

Twitter tweets from the conference are archived here in .csv format.

The Twitter hashtag for the conference is #foll11.

Click here for the conference program.

The conference will cover the following topics:

• The Law.gov legal open government data movement
• Open access law journals
• Open legal collections
• Collaborative work in law libraries
• e-Casebooks and open legal educational resources
• Human resources requirements for law libraries

New on VoxPopuLII: Mayer on The Free Law Reporter

John Mayer of the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI), has posted The Free Law Reporter – Open Access to the Law and Beyond, on the VoxPopuLII Blog, published by the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University Law School.

In this post, Mr. Mayer describes The Free Law Reporter, CALI’s new free and open database of decisions from U.S. federal and state courts, built using data from Public.Resource.Org‘s RECOP database. RECOP is a project of the Law.gov legal open government data movement.

Mr. Mayer underscores the ebook functionality of Free Law Reporter: the system allows users to automatically transform their Free Law Reporter search results into ebooks in the open EPUB format. These ebooks can be used as casebooks for law school courses, as well as in other applications.

The Free Law Reporter‘s ebook functionality complements CALI’s other legal open educational resource services, the eLangdell free and open digital casebook/textbook service, and the Legal Education Commons, where law professors share their instructional resources online.

Mr. Mayer’s post also discusses the principles underlying The Free Law Reporter. The first of these is the idea that law professors and law librarians should have the freedom to customize databases and course materials to meet the particular needs of their students and the particular objectives of their courses; as Mr. Mayer writes, “Academic law libraries should have free and open access to the law, access that allows them to define and construct the educational environment for law students.”

In addition, Mr. Mayer characterizes The Free Law Reporter as a generative resource, that can foster innovation, creativity, and collaborative effort among law professors, law librarians, and other members of the legal educational community.

Mr. Mayer’s post should be of interest to law professors, law librarians, legal information systems developers, continuing legal education providers, ebook technologists, and the open educational resources community.