Chung, Mowbray, and Greenleaf on Searching Legal Information in Multiple Asian Languages

Philip Chung of the University of New South Wales Faculty of Law, Professor Andrew Mowbray of University of Technology Sydney Faculty of Law, and Professor Dr. Graham Greenleaf of the University of New South Wales Faculty of Law, have published Searching Legal Information in Multiple Asian Languages, forthcoming in Legal Information Management.

Here is the abstract:

In this article the Co-Directors of the Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII) explain the need for an open source search engine which can search simultaneously over legal materials in European languages and also in Asian languages, particularly those that require a ‘double byte’ representation, and the difficulties this task presents. A solution is proposed, the ‘u16a’ modifications to AustLII’s open source search engine (Sino) which is used by many legal information institutes. Two implementations of the Sino u16A approach, on the Hong Kong Legal Information Institute (HKLII), for English and Chinese, and on the Asian Legal Information Institute (AsianLII), for multiple Asian languages, are described. The implementations have been successful, though many challenges (discussed briefly) remain before this approach will provide a full multi-lingual search facility.

Call for Papers: LVI 2011: Law via the Internet Conference

A call for papers — with submission deadline of 15 February 2011 — has been issued for LVI 2011: Law via the Internet Conference, to be held 8-10 June 2011, at the University of Hong Kong in Hong Kong, China.

The conference will be hosted by the Hong Kong Legal Information Institute (HKLII).

LVI is the conference of the Free Access to Law Movement and the legal information institutes.

For LVI 2011, papers are invited on the following topics:

• Challenges and barriers in free access to law in Asia and elsewhere
• Multi-lingual legal databases and searching
• Legal issues in the provision of free legal information
• Governance and funding models for sustainability of free legal databases
• Making historical legal materials accessible online
• Social networking technologies and their implications for free access to law?
• Keeping track of legislative evolution online
• Quality control and timeliness of online legal services
• Standards for legal information on the web?
• Free access to law as community services
• International law on the web: Treaties, International Courts etc
• Finding law across the web – indexing and searching
• Litigation support on the web
• Innovative uses of online legal data
• Court registries and electronic filing / transactions
• Interactive and ‘intelligent’ legal services on the web
• Teaching law using internet resources
• Automation of large-scale legal data on the web
• Legal publishing via the web

For more information, please see the call for papers.

HT Steven C. Perkins.

Haydée Di Iorio et al. on Ontologies, ICTs and Law: The International Ontojuris Project

Professor Dr. Ana Haydée Di Iorio, Bibiana Beatriz Luz Clara, Esq., and Professor Dr. Roberto Giordano Leren, all of Universidad FASTA Facultad de Ingeniería, have published Ontologies, ICTs and Law: The International Ontojuris Project, in LOAIT 2010: Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Legal Ontologies and Artificial Intelligence Techniques, European University Institute, Fiesole, Florence, Italy, July 7th, 2010, at 95-102 (Enrico Francesconi, Simonetta Montemagni, Piercarlo Rossi, and Daniela Tiscornia eds., 2010). Here is the abstract:

This article presents the experience of the International Ontojuris Project, modeled and developed to search and retrieve multilingual legal information based on ontologies and on the Universal Networking Language (UNL). It also presents the issue of multilingual information management, the importance of data processing from the semantic point of view and the possibility of semantic interoperability between systems, basically on Web search engines.

Schweighofer on An Ontological Representation of EU Consular Law

Professor Dr. Erich Schweighofer of Universität Wien Arbeitsgruppe Rechtsinformatik has published An Ontological Representation of EU Consular Law, in LOAIT 2010: Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Legal Ontologies and Artificial Intelligence Techniques, European University Institute, Fiesole, Florence, Italy, July 7th, 2010, at 77-86 (Enrico Francesconi, Simonetta Montemagni, Piercarlo Rossi, and Daniela Tiscornia eds., 2010). Here is the abstract:

At present, EU consular law is under legal scrutiny by the European Commission. The CARE study reveals good pragmatic application but also significant implementation problems. As a site effect of our analysis, we have developed a concept of a legal ontology for knowledge description, multilingual information retrieval and semi-automatic application of consular law using a dialogue system. First experiments show the potential of this approach.

JURIX 2009 & Related Events

[NOTE: Updated on 16 December 2009 to link to the Twitter hashtag for these events: #jurix2009.]

This week the JURIX 2009 conference and related events will be held at Erasmus University Rotterdam:

• 16 December: AICOL 2009: AI approaches to the complexity of legal systems II (Follow-up Workshop): Multilingual ontologies, Multiagent systems, Distributed networks;
• 16 December: Business Process Compliance Tutorial;
• 16 December: Natural Language Processing Techniques for Managing Legal Resources on the Semantic Web;
• 17-18 December: JURIX 2009: The 22nd International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems.

The Twitter hashtag for these events is #jurix2009.

We wish all of our colleagues very rewarding experiences at these events.