Paper Info
Title
Utilising AI in the legal assistance sector—Testing a role for legal information institutes
Abstract
The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in law has again become of great interest to lawyers and government. Legal Information Institutes (LIIs) have played a significant role in the provision of legal information via the web. The concept of ‘free access to law’ is not static, and the evolution of its principles now requires a response from providers of free access to legal information (‘a LII response’) to this renewed prominence of AI. This should include improving and expanding free access to legal advice. This paper proposes, and proposes to test, one approach that LIIs might take in the use of AI (specifically, ‘decision support’ or ‘intelligent assistance’ (IA) technologies), an approach that leverages the very large legal information assets that some LIIs have built over the past two decades. This approach focuses on how LIIs can assist providers of free legal advice (the ‘legal assistance sector’) to serve their clients. We consider the constraints that the requirement of ‘free’ imposes (on both the legal assistance sector and on LIIs), including on what types of free legal advice systems are sustainable, and what roles LIIs may realistically play in the development of such a ‘commons of free legal advice’. We suggest guidelines for development of such systems. The AI-related services and tools that the Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII) is providing (the ‘DataLex’ platform), and how they could be used to achieve these goals, are outlined.
Year
DOI
Venue
2020
10.1016/j.clsr.2020.105407
Computer Law & Security Review
Keywords
DocType
Volume
Artificial intelligence,AI,Law,Decision support systems,Legal information institutes,LII,Free access,Free legal advice
Journal
38
ISSN
Citations 
PageRank 
0267-3649
0
0.34
References 
Authors
0
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Andrew Mowbray1369.15
Philip Chung2126.33
Graham Greenleaf33720.47