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2.8 - Natural Language Processing for Legal Texts

from B. - Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, and Blockchain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 February 2021

By
John J. Nay
Edited by
Daniel Martin Katz ,
Ron Dolin  and
Michael J. Bommarito
Daniel Martin Katz
Affiliation:
Chicago-Kent College of Law
Ron Dolin
Affiliation:
Harvard Law School, Massachusetts
Michael J. Bommarito
Affiliation:
Stanford CodeX
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Summary

Almost all law is expressed in natural language; therefore, natural language processing (NLP) is a key component of understanding and predicting law. Natural language processing converts unstructured text into a formal representation that computers can understand and analyze. This technology has already intersected with law, and is poised to experience rapid innovation and widespread adoption. There are three reasons for this: (1) the number of repositories of digitized machine-readable legal text data is growing; (2) advances in NLP tools are being driven by algorithmic and hardware improvements; and (3) there is great potential to dramatically improve the effectiveness of legal services due to inefficiencies in its current practice.

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Legal Informatics , pp. 99 - 113
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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