Ignorance of the law is no excuse - PowerPoint

							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.
LAMP/open source/custom software
environment; XML + relationals.


                CS 502 4-21-2003
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
       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
       Legal text and the IS
       problems it presents

Sheer volume (and longevity)
Process-related problems
Text-related problems
Time-related problems




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       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
       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
       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
      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
      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
      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
       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’



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      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