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The most fundamental problem with natural language search engines is that the "natural language" part is more a limitation than a feature to me. Natural languag

The most fundamental problem with natural language search engines is that the "natural language" part is more a limitation than a feature to me. Natural language is meant for people to communicate with other people and not with computers. I believe that a well designed keyword/tag based search combined with factual auto suggestions extracted from formal/semantic sources (similar to wikipedia) could be far more efficient for people to use and computers to run.

gord 18y ago
I think I just said what you just said.. but then I read your post. Is this something you'd enjoy hacking on?
micks56 18y ago
I am in law school and as a law student I spend lots of time searching through past cases. My searching is done almost exclusively through Westlaw, the online database of Thompson West products. They have many different types of searches, but the two applicable to this discussion are (as they are written on the site) both "terms & connectors" and "natural language." T&C works well using your standard OR/AND/etc. However, natural language works so much better even though you type in the exact same words. The natural language search returns cases more on point and has one awesome feature: the most relevant text is in red type, set apart from the rest of the case. From the natural language search West is better able to determine what the legal researcher wants and shows it to him. I spent almost 2 years of law school searching using terms and connectors because I thought the same thing as you do. But I recently converted when I realized West returns better results from their natural language search.
- ajju 18y ago
  Hi micks56, I would like to ask someone who has a grounding in both law and technology some questions not directly related to this discussion but to software for lawyers in general. Your profile doesn't have an email ID. Care to email me at heuristix at gmail or reply back with your email id?
  - micks56 18y ago
    I just sent you an email. I am happy to answer any questions that you or anyone else has.
    - ajju 18y ago
      Thank you! Got the mail. I'll write up my question(s) today evening and email you.
- gord 18y ago
  @micks56 - re your legal search using natural language - Are you able to compare, say, Wests results to those of a pure google text search on the keyword terms? [ To do that you'd need some example of large legal texts fully online and thus indexed by google - I dont know if that exists ] Its sometimes hard to discern the value of the tech versus the quality of the implementation + usability factors - but your observations are interesting. I wonder how search on medical information compares... gord.
  - micks56 18y ago
    I am trying to think of a test that can be run on my West search engine and Google. West's legal resources dwarfs Google's. Google might as well be considered non-existent in the area compared to West or LexisNexis. That is just what those two companies do. They have people that enter cases into databases as they become available. Google just doesn't do that. I haven't thought of a fair test to run yet. The two engines do different things. My West can search case decisions, statutes, administrative codes, briefs filed to the court, secondary sources (sort of the research paper of the legal field) and the news. So I tried doing a search on the news only. I searched "ycombinator" and the results returned are news articles only, whereas on Google someone probably wants and gets the YC home page, this site, or the actual function. None of those show up on the West site. Then I ran a search of these terms on each (I didn't enter quotes on the actual searches): "massachusetts custody modification" On Westlaw, I get cases, and statutes on point. With extra terms I will easily get to cases that deal with my specific issue. On Google, the first link is a divorce resource site and the rest are for lawyers. Searching statutes might work. But the main reason statutes search well on Google is the Cornell Law site. The quality of results for statutes is probably a bigger testament to them and their cataloging efforts. I would say both search engines hit their target markets well. Most people searching "massachusetts custody modification" don't want 20 decisions of the Mass SJC. And people searching the same on Westlaw don't want attorneys. Google is much much faster though. It returns in a fraction of a second. Westlaw took about 12 seconds to return 10,000 hits. First three hits were decided yesterday, which is pretty cool. There is a group of people creating an open legal database. I can't remember its name. I think they are based in the San Fran area. I think it was started by some hacker that worked on opening up some other government data and is now on the court system. I have the bookmark buried somewhere and of course can't find it. Does anyone know which one I am talking about? We could maybe test that database versus the commercial West one.

gord 18y ago

I think I just said what you just said.. but then I read your post. Is this something you'd enjoy hacking on?

micks56 18y ago

I am in law school and as a law student I spend lots of time searching through past cases. My searching is done almost exclusively through Westlaw, the online database of Thompson West products. They have many different types of searches, but the two applicable to this discussion are (as they are written on the site) both "terms & connectors" and "natural language." T&C works well using your standard OR/AND/etc. However, natural language works so much better even though you type in the exact same words. The natural language search returns cases more on point and has one awesome feature: the most relevant text is in red type, set apart from the rest of the case. From the natural language search West is better able to determine what the legal researcher wants and shows it to him. I spent almost 2 years of law school searching using terms and connectors because I thought the same thing as you do. But I recently converted when I realized West returns better results from their natural language search.

ajju 18y ago
Hi micks56, I would like to ask someone who has a grounding in both law and technology some questions not directly related to this discussion but to software for lawyers in general. Your profile doesn't have an email ID. Care to email me at heuristix at gmail or reply back with your email id?
- micks56 18y ago
  I just sent you an email. I am happy to answer any questions that you or anyone else has.
  - ajju 18y ago
    Thank you! Got the mail. I'll write up my question(s) today evening and email you.
gord 18y ago
@micks56 - re your legal search using natural language - Are you able to compare, say, Wests results to those of a pure google text search on the keyword terms? [ To do that you'd need some example of large legal texts fully online and thus indexed by google - I dont know if that exists ] Its sometimes hard to discern the value of the tech versus the quality of the implementation + usability factors - but your observations are interesting. I wonder how search on medical information compares... gord.
- micks56 18y ago
  I am trying to think of a test that can be run on my West search engine and Google. West's legal resources dwarfs Google's. Google might as well be considered non-existent in the area compared to West or LexisNexis. That is just what those two companies do. They have people that enter cases into databases as they become available. Google just doesn't do that. I haven't thought of a fair test to run yet. The two engines do different things. My West can search case decisions, statutes, administrative codes, briefs filed to the court, secondary sources (sort of the research paper of the legal field) and the news. So I tried doing a search on the news only. I searched "ycombinator" and the results returned are news articles only, whereas on Google someone probably wants and gets the YC home page, this site, or the actual function. None of those show up on the West site. Then I ran a search of these terms on each (I didn't enter quotes on the actual searches): "massachusetts custody modification" On Westlaw, I get cases, and statutes on point. With extra terms I will easily get to cases that deal with my specific issue. On Google, the first link is a divorce resource site and the rest are for lawyers. Searching statutes might work. But the main reason statutes search well on Google is the Cornell Law site. The quality of results for statutes is probably a bigger testament to them and their cataloging efforts. I would say both search engines hit their target markets well. Most people searching "massachusetts custody modification" don't want 20 decisions of the Mass SJC. And people searching the same on Westlaw don't want attorneys. Google is much much faster though. It returns in a fraction of a second. Westlaw took about 12 seconds to return 10,000 hits. First three hits were decided yesterday, which is pretty cool. There is a group of people creating an open legal database. I can't remember its name. I think they are based in the San Fran area. I think it was started by some hacker that worked on opening up some other government data and is now on the court system. I have the bookmark buried somewhere and of course can't find it. Does anyone know which one I am talking about? We could maybe test that database versus the commercial West one.