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Translating legal texts to mathematical form is very interesting. It could decimate most legal jobs if a lawsuit can be converted to mathematical form and then

Translating legal texts to mathematical form is very interesting. It could decimate most legal jobs if a lawsuit can be converted to mathematical form and then 'executed' against the laws that are also in mathematical form. You get your judgement and the explanation as to how that conclusion was reached, all automatically. It could even cause headaches if contradictions in legal judgements are detected. It all relies on the conversions to mathematical form being done correctly though which, given that some laws can be intentionally vague, may be impossible.

petercooper 6y ago
In countries or legal frameworks based around civil law, I think that could possibly occur. It would be impossible to do this in a formulaic way in legal areas covered by common law, although having digitized legal "assistants" that could bring up and analyze relevant precedents seems almost guaranteed (if they don't exist already?)
Bayart 6y ago
Civil law probably has a big edge in computer-driven legal implementation, if that's where things are headed. I have no idea what would be in it for Common Law countries. Perhaps they'd be more driven towards using data mapping techniques to lay out networks of heterogeneous legal stuff (jurisprudence etc.).
dane-pgp 6y ago
> It could even cause headaches if contradictions in legal judgements are detected. I remember hearing an anecdote about researchers who tried to formally specify the benefits system of some European country, and they found that the system was slightly non-deterministic, in the sense that the outcome for the citizen would depend on which order various government departments processed the various forms that the citizen used to enrol into various programmes they were eligible for. It makes me wonder if these mathematical formalisations should support some kind of fuzzing, to check that entities doing things in slightly different orders (or earning slightly more/less) don't produce dramatic changes in outcome.
naringas 6y ago
IMO this is such an 'obvious' idea once you think about it that it will eventually happen. The law will go from written natural language to executable computer programs (formal languages). However a change of this mangnitude cannot happen quickly, (and might even be impossible to do peacefully). Abusing the "software is eating the world" analogy, we ain't seen nothing yet. Software is just barely opening its mouth.
- AndrewOMartin 6y ago
  There is no floating point representation for 'gross', 'egregious', or 'blatant'. At least not one that will be suitable in all cases.
  - noisy_boy 6y ago
    Yes but you can do a what-if analysis based on the parameter $degree being equal to 'gross', 'egregious' or 'blatant'.
  - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
    Right on. Consider whether forcing someone to unlock their smartphone should constitute compelled self-incrimination. This is a problem that US courts have flip-flopped on. [0] How would an SMT solver derive answer? It can't. You'd need a general AI. Even ignoring the subtleties of the real world that the ̶l̶a̶w̶ edit legal system must cope with, nuts-and-bolts legal concepts like mens rea can't be mapped to algebraic expressions. [0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/indiana-supreme-court-its-unconstitutional-to-force-phone-unlocking/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/indiana-supreme-...
    - naringas 6y ago
      but the law is not the judge
dalbasal 6y ago
Well technically (joke)... a decimation is 10%. I agree. Very interesting. Realistically, paperwork & bureaucracy is an ideal target for automation. That said, every input that you feed an algorithm is legally debateable... Structuring your inputs to be both legal and optimal is more storytelling than mathematics. There's enough play in these "subjective" parts that results could be anything. Still, having a major algorithmic in the mix changes the game. The fact is, that while PCs have been (a) on every desk and (b) paperwork efficiency machines for the last 30 years... the total number of legal/accounting/hr/admin jobs has increased in this period. The effects of technology/efficiency on "clerical" work is not predictable in the way it is on factories.
MaxBarraclough 6y ago
It's not possible to reduce all lawsuits to compact formulae. Part of the legal profession is in interpreting old laws in the modern context, for instance, which would take something close to a general AI. More broadly, reasoning about legal edge-cases needs a sophisticated understanding of the law and of the world. Also, jurors can't be replaced by software, as they must be 'peers' by definition. I imagine it would be much easier to build a system to roughly estimate the odds of a lawsuit being successful, inputting salient features of the case and running the numbers, without deep reasoning about the particulars. I don't know if work is already being done on this but I wouldn't be surprised. A lot of money must ride on knowing which corporate law battles can be won.
- sjy 6y ago
  Work is being done on this – here’s some in the human rights context: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10506-019-09255-y https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10506-019-09255-y But the outcome of high-stakes commercial litigation is much more complex than “win or lose.” Most cases settle, so the ones that result in published legal judgments which can be fed into a machine learning tool are an unrepresentative minority. Participating in this kind of litigation also costs millions and attracts public attention, leading to innumerable second-order effects (eg. public relations damage, law reform) that are hard to predict and may be more significant than whatever specific legal decision a judge makes. So being able to put a numerical probability on the legal opinion “we think the company has a good chance of winning this case” may not be that helpful.
smarx007 6y ago
Australian CSIRO is working exactly on that https://theconversation.com/csiro-wants-our-laws-turned-into-computer-code-heres-why-thats-a-bad-idea-130131 https://theconversation.com/csiro-wants-our-laws-turned-into... https://research.csiro.au/bpli/our-research/reasoning/ https://research.csiro.au/bpli/our-research/reasoning/ https://people.csiro.au/G/G/Guido-Governatori https://people.csiro.au/G/G/Guido-Governatori They are using https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deontic_logic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deontic_logic and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defeasible_logic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defeasible_logic describe laws in terms closest to how it's done in the legal community. Can't find a link but they codified some parts of the Australian import duties laws that we went through in a workshop of theirs that I had a chance to attend.
- contingencies 6y ago
  https://theconversation.com/csiro-wants-our-laws-turned-into-computer-code-heres-why-thats-a-bad-idea-130131 https://theconversation.com/csiro-wants-our-laws-turned-into... claims law-as-code is a bad idea because its "dynamic"/"always changing" and "discretionary"/"requires or open to interpretation". The first argument is nonsensical (computers are great at changing data: in fact way faster and more accurate than humans, having the capacity for things like single source of truth, change logs, peer consensus, and dynamic versioning while preserving historic versions automatically... and also better at publishing it, analyzing it, and documenting it). The second argument is an outright straw man fallacy. Who cares if some laws require interpretation. Just write MAY instead of WILL (like RFC language) to make it clear the judge can decide, then provide statistical information regarding past case law. Nobody is saying "fire all the judges", they're just saying make the law clear. Right now it's not clear, and it's a big problem. Refugee? Read up to date law in your language, automatically. Business? Determine what is required by law in order to execute a transaction. Human? Determine what you are and are not allowed to do in some field (like architecture, driving, sailing, pet walking or rock collecting) without being fined.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - 6y ago
Zhyl 6y ago
It sounds like what you are describing are Ricardian Contracts. [0] Also worth viewing is this talk by Clay Shirkey on technology tools for Government [1]. Ultimately, I don't see law being automated. As others have pointed out, most cases that go to court are all about interpretation and establishment of the circumstances (did events X, Y and Z happen), interpretation of the law (does law F mean that event X was illegal, and is event Y a mitigator or irrelevant?) and, more elusively, impact (how serious was X?). What this doesn't mean, though, is that there aren't tools that can't be used in the creation and management of law. If we have a simple dependency tree of documents and sources, we can trigger a review of downstream documents if a document is changed. We can statically check some aspects of the document, like a Legal IDE that would present itself more like an advanced spellcheck. Meta rules can ensure consistency, add in support for in-line reading (include a definition next to a paragraph even though it is defined elsewhere). Probably the closes thing you'll get to an 'automated' system would be for the 'process' that is currently done by administrators to be partly or fully automated. When charges are brought, a court date is automatically booked. When a judgement is made, a court report is generated, prison alerted etc etc. Basically, everything that people in tech think should be automated, shouldn't be, and all the things technology people think shouldn't exist should be automated. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardian_contract https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardian_contract [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEN4XNth61o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEN4XNth61o

petercooper 6y ago

In countries or legal frameworks based around civil law, I think that could possibly occur. It would be impossible to do this in a formulaic way in legal areas covered by common law, although having digitized legal "assistants" that could bring up and analyze relevant precedents seems almost guaranteed (if they don't exist already?)

Bayart 6y ago

Civil law probably has a big edge in computer-driven legal implementation, if that's where things are headed. I have no idea what would be in it for Common Law countries. Perhaps they'd be more driven towards using data mapping techniques to lay out networks of heterogeneous legal stuff (jurisprudence etc.).

dane-pgp 6y ago

> It could even cause headaches if contradictions in legal judgements are detected. I remember hearing an anecdote about researchers who tried to formally specify the benefits system of some European country, and they found that the system was slightly non-deterministic, in the sense that the outcome for the citizen would depend on which order various government departments processed the various forms that the citizen used to enrol into various programmes they were eligible for. It makes me wonder if these mathematical formalisations should support some kind of fuzzing, to check that entities doing things in slightly different orders (or earning slightly more/less) don't produce dramatic changes in outcome.

naringas 6y ago

IMO this is such an 'obvious' idea once you think about it that it will eventually happen. The law will go from written natural language to executable computer programs (formal languages). However a change of this mangnitude cannot happen quickly, (and might even be impossible to do peacefully). Abusing the "software is eating the world" analogy, we ain't seen nothing yet. Software is just barely opening its mouth.

AndrewOMartin 6y ago
There is no floating point representation for 'gross', 'egregious', or 'blatant'. At least not one that will be suitable in all cases.
- noisy_boy 6y ago
  Yes but you can do a what-if analysis based on the parameter $degree being equal to 'gross', 'egregious' or 'blatant'.
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  Right on. Consider whether forcing someone to unlock their smartphone should constitute compelled self-incrimination. This is a problem that US courts have flip-flopped on. [0] How would an SMT solver derive answer? It can't. You'd need a general AI. Even ignoring the subtleties of the real world that the ̶l̶a̶w̶ edit legal system must cope with, nuts-and-bolts legal concepts like mens rea can't be mapped to algebraic expressions. [0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/indiana-supreme-court-its-unconstitutional-to-force-phone-unlocking/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/indiana-supreme-...
  - naringas 6y ago
    but the law is not the judge

dalbasal 6y ago

Well technically (joke)... a decimation is 10%. I agree. Very interesting. Realistically, paperwork & bureaucracy is an ideal target for automation. That said, every input that you feed an algorithm is legally debateable... Structuring your inputs to be both legal and optimal is more storytelling than mathematics. There's enough play in these "subjective" parts that results could be anything. Still, having a major algorithmic in the mix changes the game. The fact is, that while PCs have been (a) on every desk and (b) paperwork efficiency machines for the last 30 years... the total number of legal/accounting/hr/admin jobs has increased in this period. The effects of technology/efficiency on "clerical" work is not predictable in the way it is on factories.

MaxBarraclough 6y ago

It's not possible to reduce all lawsuits to compact formulae. Part of the legal profession is in interpreting old laws in the modern context, for instance, which would take something close to a general AI. More broadly, reasoning about legal edge-cases needs a sophisticated understanding of the law and of the world. Also, jurors can't be replaced by software, as they must be 'peers' by definition. I imagine it would be much easier to build a system to roughly estimate the odds of a lawsuit being successful, inputting salient features of the case and running the numbers, without deep reasoning about the particulars. I don't know if work is already being done on this but I wouldn't be surprised. A lot of money must ride on knowing which corporate law battles can be won.

sjy 6y ago
Work is being done on this – here’s some in the human rights context: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10506-019-09255-y https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10506-019-09255-y But the outcome of high-stakes commercial litigation is much more complex than “win or lose.” Most cases settle, so the ones that result in published legal judgments which can be fed into a machine learning tool are an unrepresentative minority. Participating in this kind of litigation also costs millions and attracts public attention, leading to innumerable second-order effects (eg. public relations damage, law reform) that are hard to predict and may be more significant than whatever specific legal decision a judge makes. So being able to put a numerical probability on the legal opinion “we think the company has a good chance of winning this case” may not be that helpful.

smarx007 6y ago

Australian CSIRO is working exactly on that https://theconversation.com/csiro-wants-our-laws-turned-into-computer-code-heres-why-thats-a-bad-idea-130131 https://theconversation.com/csiro-wants-our-laws-turned-into... https://research.csiro.au/bpli/our-research/reasoning/ https://research.csiro.au/bpli/our-research/reasoning/ https://people.csiro.au/G/G/Guido-Governatori https://people.csiro.au/G/G/Guido-Governatori They are using https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deontic_logic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deontic_logic and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defeasible_logic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defeasible_logic describe laws in terms closest to how it's done in the legal community. Can't find a link but they codified some parts of the Australian import duties laws that we went through in a workshop of theirs that I had a chance to attend.

contingencies 6y ago
https://theconversation.com/csiro-wants-our-laws-turned-into-computer-code-heres-why-thats-a-bad-idea-130131 https://theconversation.com/csiro-wants-our-laws-turned-into... claims law-as-code is a bad idea because its "dynamic"/"always changing" and "discretionary"/"requires or open to interpretation". The first argument is nonsensical (computers are great at changing data: in fact way faster and more accurate than humans, having the capacity for things like single source of truth, change logs, peer consensus, and dynamic versioning while preserving historic versions automatically... and also better at publishing it, analyzing it, and documenting it). The second argument is an outright straw man fallacy. Who cares if some laws require interpretation. Just write MAY instead of WILL (like RFC language) to make it clear the judge can decide, then provide statistical information regarding past case law. Nobody is saying "fire all the judges", they're just saying make the law clear. Right now it's not clear, and it's a big problem. Refugee? Read up to date law in your language, automatically. Business? Determine what is required by law in order to execute a transaction. Human? Determine what you are and are not allowed to do in some field (like architecture, driving, sailing, pet walking or rock collecting) without being fined.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- 6y ago

Zhyl 6y ago

It sounds like what you are describing are Ricardian Contracts. [0] Also worth viewing is this talk by Clay Shirkey on technology tools for Government [1]. Ultimately, I don't see law being automated. As others have pointed out, most cases that go to court are all about interpretation and establishment of the circumstances (did events X, Y and Z happen), interpretation of the law (does law F mean that event X was illegal, and is event Y a mitigator or irrelevant?) and, more elusively, impact (how serious was X?). What this doesn't mean, though, is that there aren't tools that can't be used in the creation and management of law. If we have a simple dependency tree of documents and sources, we can trigger a review of downstream documents if a document is changed. We can statically check some aspects of the document, like a Legal IDE that would present itself more like an advanced spellcheck. Meta rules can ensure consistency, add in support for in-line reading (include a definition next to a paragraph even though it is defined elsewhere). Probably the closes thing you'll get to an 'automated' system would be for the 'process' that is currently done by administrators to be partly or fully automated. When charges are brought, a court date is automatically booked. When a judgement is made, a court report is generated, prison alerted etc etc. Basically, everything that people in tech think should be automated, shouldn't be, and all the things technology people think shouldn't exist should be automated. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardian_contract https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardian_contract [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEN4XNth61o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEN4XNth61o